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Funding and governance of library and information services for visually impaired people: international case studies
Part2:Country studies
UK
Preferred situation
Description
NLB
Would like to see a national accessible library service, with national strategy and co-ordination, backed by government funding. In any case, convergence of technologies and funding pressures will drive organisations to work together but the risk is that it will be ad hoc.
STV
A planned Government sponsored national infrastructure which coordinates provision of services. The voluntary sector produces and the public sector accepts its responsibility to purchase the products, distribute and provide access via whatever method the end user chooses. Central government contributes to the core central production via a merged voluntary sector agency which has a contractual relationship with the public sector and the publishing industry for access to their digital files to reduce production costs and maximise accessibility of content.
Funding
NLB
Government should fund the services, as they do for public libraries for everyone else.
Sconul
Central funding
Who would deliver
NLB
Mainstream libraries
Sconul
Joint special needs/library service, flexible of service provider to the user
How would organisations work together
NLB
Through national strategy and plans with clear roles and responsibilities
Sconul
Collaboration, consortia purchase of equipment, central stock reserve for loaning
How the services would be delivered
NLB
However users wanted them.
Sconul
User defined
STV
Preference is to explore the potential of the digital age to permit the user to specify which format s/he prefers for any particular purpose (large print, synthetic voice output, Braille, digital file to download) and to re-engineer the whole infrastructure to put the emphasis on user choice, accepting the need to maintain human voice recording for a while
Ideal level of service
NLB
All needs met
Sconul
Flexible, timely, responsive, user driven