WHEREAS, Access to the written word is an indispensable ingredient in the exercise of freedom and full participation in society for the blind as well as the sighted; and
WHEREAS, sighted people acquire reading material from newsstands, bookstores, public libraries, and pamphlet racks in grocery stores and a host of other sources, but the blind must rely almost exclusively on specialized libraries for their meager supply of recorded or Braille items; and
WHEREAS, less than one percent of the information produced for the sighted in print is made available to the blind in Braille or recorded form; and
WHEREAS, because reading material for the blind is so limited, it is critical that the blind of Maryland not be deprived of any of it through inadequate planning and unimaginative administration and cramped facilities; and
WHEREAS, the Maryland Library for the Blind and Handicapped is housed in a rundown, inadequate building which is too small to meet current needs, much less permit future expansion; and
WHEREAS, because of the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland, plans are being made for the acquisition of a new facility to house the Maryland Library for the Blind and Handicapped; and
WHEREAS, the library administration is proposing a building so inadequate that it will only accommodate two-thirds of the books which are available free from the National Library Service of the Library of Congress, and makes no provision whatever for developing or acquiring materials from other sources; and
WHEREAS, at minimum, a good library for the blind should have:
- enough space to house all materials available to it free from the Library of Congress, plus materials which it produces and procures from other sources;
- enough staff to provide individualized reader services
to patrons rather than abandoning blind borrowers to the mercies of a computer which selects books for them;
- a children's librarian to build a juvenile collection and to encourage the growing number of blind children to make full use of the library;
an aggressive program of volunteer recruitment and training with enough funding to produce locally at least as many books as the National Library Service;
(5) computerized equipment for the rapid production of Braille in response to individual requests;
- recording studios for the production of high-quality talking books and magazines;
enough staff to support these services, and to permit future expansion; and
WHEREAS, decisions made about the library building within the next year will determine the types and quality of services which blind Marylanders will receive for the next twenty years: Now, therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED by the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland in Convention assembled this fourth day of October, 1987, in the City or Frostburg, Maryland, that this organization calls upon the Maryland Library for the Blind and Handicapped, the Maryland State Department of Education, and the Maryland Department of State Planning to abandon the philosophy which views the library for the blind as merely a distribution center for materials produced by the Library of Congress and to build a facility and a program which is consistent with good library practice and adequately meets the needs of blind library patrons.