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Shannon News, 8 January 1924, Page 3

The British Museum reading room has been closed for its annual cleaning, and disconsolate readers are to be seen wandering in the Bloomsbury neighbourhood passing the dreary hours until their beloved retreat ■is restored to them, writes a London correspondent. There are about 3,000,000 books in the library and as a considerable proportion of them are never asked for a good deal of dust accumulates in the course of the year. It was Coventry Patmore who said at the lend of his long term of service as assistant librarian that of the forty miles of shelves in the museum forty fefct would contain all the real literature of the world. There are many more miles than forty now. It seems that a now invention —the optophone —makes it possible for blind persons to read books printed in ordinary tvpe. Nevertheless, Braille will still be preferred by the blind when selecting their bedside books. In a courageous ' speeeli delivered three years a,go, when threatened with total blindness,, Viscount Grey said that he found one advantage attached to his affliction—Braille is much super ior to printed books for reading in bod., “I can now lie in a perfectly natural position and read,” he said, “if I happen to drop off and have no dr&ams to-disturb my slumber, I wake up with my finger on the word where I left off:’’’