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

Part2:Country studies

UK

Services to print impaired people in relation to services to visually impaired people

There is no official relationship between services to these groups.

NLB told us that while its constitution permits it to serve printdisabled people, in practice it does very little. Copyright legislation presents barriers to integrated services. NLB would like to see services to these groups converge where appropriate, enabling more needs to be met, more efficiently.

Share the Vision observed that some charities serve only those with actual vision loss because of their trust deeds whereas others e.g. Listening Books serve all print handicapped people. They felt that it is impossible to forecast what will happen. “While logically these services would come together to secure a greater return on their collective investment there is no real encouragement from central government to stimulate this. On the contrary, it could be argued that Central government policy towards the role of the public sector in providing public services could stimulate greater separation within the sector.”

Calibre Audio Library, which supplies both constituencies, also foresaw obstacles to a converged service, both from rightsholders who were not keen to see cognitive disorders included under the same umbrella as vision loss and from the imperatives of a privately operated postal service which would not want to extend the free postal concession.

The public library service does not expect dramatic change but foresees more close co-operation between all services supplying both groups.

The government response tends to confirm the expectations by other organizations:

“Services for both groups (visually impaired and print impaired) are provided by public libraries as part of a comprehensive and efficient library service as established by the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964. Services are also provided by various charitable organizations, who may specialize between the two groups. There is unlikely to be a significant change in government policy in the foreseeable future.”