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Funding and governance of library and information services for visually impaired people: international case studies

Part2:Country studies

Japan

Overlaps - are they a problem?

In Japan the overlapping of the services is not considered to be much of a problem. It is probably because each service is poor in content.

There is very little cooperation between educational libraries and public libraries.

Some charities, voluntary organizations or not for profit organisations support public libraries in producing materials. These organisations have clear roles and responsibilities.

Services for visually impaired people by public libraries and those by libraries for visually impaired people differ in theory. How ever,they both provide services by cooperating with each other, through sharing union catalogues and mutually lending books. Voluntary groups are basically working on their own and do not have a nationwide cooperation system. Each of the libraries at schools for the blind has only a poor collection. They do not have a very good nationwide cooperation system, either.