PA. orders 1 of 2 libraries for the blind to shut down, half a million recorded books sent to trash [View all]

[JPZenger]

http://articles.philly.com/2012-05-03/news/31539468_1_blind-services-digital-books-blind-community

Excerpts:
"In Philadelphia, books for the blind head for the trash

May 03, 2012|By Karen Heller, Inquirer Columnist

Keri Wilkins is incensed. She is a librarian passionately committed to serving the blind and physically handicapped in 29 counties, the entire eastern half of Pennsylvania, sending out almost a million digital books and recorded cassettes a year.

"I am appalled. I am angry," she tells me at the branch at Ninth and Walnut, founded in 1882, the nation's oldest library serving the blind, where almost a half-million mint-condition recorded cassettes are, by state mandate, headed for "recycling," that is, the trash. "This is the minnow swallowing the whale. I have spent my whole year fighting this merger."

...Critics say the decision was based on faulty research by a firm without library or blind-services experience, made largely by a now-retired Harrisburg administrator and with virtually no consultation from experts and stakeholders, the blind and physically disabled in eastern Pennsylvania."