Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Among the libraries which were most active in promoting circulation by mail were the New York State Library at Albany, the New York Public Library in New York City, the Chicago Public Library, and the Library of Congress. Perkins Institution also was very attentive to requests, especially those coming from former graduates.

The library departments for the blind at first attracted much public attention. When, in time, they seemed neglected by sightless readers, who soon had read the entire collection, the library authorities gradually lost interest in these departments. Books which had first been displayed conspicuously in the front room of the library found their way gradually to a back room, then to the attic, and then to the furnace. New readers might drop into the library to borrow a book but could find no one readily available who even knew where the books were. Letters which came from hopeful readers asking about library service, or requesting the privilege of borrowing books, received little attention, as most public libraries in those days carried on very little mail order business. As a final irony, blind people were pronounced uninterested in library service.

In 1904 the Federal Government had stepped in by extending free mailing privilege to libraries wishing to lend books to sightless borrowers who could not call at the library. The libraries with a sustained interest did not restrict their lending to the district in which they regularly served seeing people. Some of them loaned books in several states, others included the entire country in their service district. It was evident, however, that there could be no great expansion of library service for the blind for most libraries, as the bulk of their borrowers lived outside of the taxing district supporting the establishment.

In 1928 the American Library Association asked the American Foundation for the Blind to make a study of the library needs of blind people and how they were being met. Careful study showed that some blind people were borrowing books from several libraries. Eliminating duplications, it was evident that less than 10,000 blind people in the United States were making any use of any library. But, worst of all, the libraries that wished to purchase books for their blind patrons had a distressingly limited source from which such books could be obtained.

Publishing for the blind was not a commercially profitable undertaking. Even if the seventy-five libraries having some slight interest in the blind could have pooled their purchasing power, their combined appropriations would be insufficient to justify even a nonprofit organization to publish many books. In 1911 the Howe Publishing Society for the Blind was organized in Cleveland, Ohio to raise money locally to produce in braille current literature which was being read and discussed by seeing people. This organization carried on for fifteen years or more but eventually ceased braille printing when the inauguration of interpointing made it necessary to purchase new expensive machinery required for such embossing.

The American Foundation for the Blind, with its advisory committee from the American Library Association, finally recommended that the Federal Government undertake to supply free books for the blind to a selected list of geographically well-distributed libraries, on condition that these libraries take care of the circulation in given zones without reference to whether or not these zones included an area larger than the taxing district maintaining the library.

The subject was under considerable discussion at the time, and the plan of having the Federal Government carry the burden of supplying books met with general approval wherever there was any interest. The Universal Braille Press in Los Angeles became interested in this potential new market for braille books. The concern, however, was the personal property of its manager, J. Robert Atkinson. Realizing that any federal appropriation for braille books would not likely be made to a privately owned company, he set up a nonprofit organization known as the Braille Institute of America, intended to handle government orders and distribution of books paid for with government appropriation, with the tacit understanding that the Braille Institute of America would purchase its books from the Universal Braille Press.

With little knowledge on the part of the Universal Braille Press and the American Foundation for the Blind as to what the other was planning, they both had bills before Congress dealing with the subject. For the Foundation, Mrs. Ruth Pratt, Congresswoman from New York and Senator Smoot of Utah introduced bills into the House and the Senate respectively authorizing an appropriation of $100,000 annually to the Library of Congress for books for the blind, such books to be deposited in regional libraries which would handle the circulation. Mr. Atkinson on his part arranged for Congressman Crail of Los Angeles to introduce a bill which would provide $100,000 annually to be appropriated to the Braille Institute of America for the purchase of braille books to be distributed to regional libraries throughout the country in proportion to the number of blind readers they might muster.