Library For The Blind

My daughter’s school was out today, cancelled far too early for the potential of hurricane Florence arriving in our area.   As of tonight, we have no rain and some mild wind while the hurricane approaches the coast, hours away with a path that will have our area likely getting some decent rain with winds, but nothing catastrophic.  There is already much devastation, but it’s relatively far away from us.

But school was out and I thought it would be a good time to take my daughter to the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.   She’s been getting braille books and audio books from them, via mail, for a while, but since we happen to be fifteen minutes away from the state-wide library, a visit might be a nice thing.

We arrived at a quiet time and one of the directors said she’d be glad to take us on a tour while one of the staff pulled some books for my daughter.   We went to the racks in the back to see row upon row of audio books.  My daughter needed to touch everything to experience it and wanted to climb up the step ladder, pull out an audio book or two and ask me the titles.  

Then we went to the compact shelving, the kind that move and are all stacked against each other.   Each row has a big wheel on the ends you spin to move the shelf along a track to open up a space between so you can get to the books inside.   The wheel was exciting to my daughter, who wanted to go back multiple times to move the shelves back and forth.  

We found out there are over eleven thousand books checked in and out each week from the library, which has such mail volume it has its own zip code.   What surprised me though was hearing they have relatively few children they serve.   I knew there were more adult blind people than children, blindness onsetting for some late in life, but I didn’t suspect there would be so few children.

Next we saw the sound studio for audio book recording.   I’d never seen one of these before and it was unexpected.   Our guide opened what looked to be a large safe with a very heavy door.  Inside was a table, chair and complicated mic assembly.   There narrator sat inside the room (box?) and spoke the words in the book being recorded.   There was a window through which they could see the person doing the recording on the other side who could talk with them as needed through a mic.  

About that time, my daughter’s three new books arrived in a mail-returnable and reusable package—the same type as we’d received all her other books in in the past.   She thanked everyone and we headed to the car.   As we were getting in, she asked if she could start to read one of the books on the way home.   We had fun with her spelling words and asking me what some of them were, such as ‘stegosaurus’.   She also discovered some new contractions and figured them out with the context of the tactile pictures included on the page.

I told her we could come back any time she wanted new books, or we could mail back in the ones she’s had for a while so other children could enjoy them.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Sleeping Bag Campout:  Several days ago we told the children we might have to sleep in the basement if Florence came directly towards us as was the predicted path at the time.   They haven’t forgotten though and have been excited about “camping out” in the basement.   They have a little concern about high winds and the possibility of windows breaking, but that most certainly won’t happen tonight, or at all.   Regardless though, they wanted to camp out.   We let them stay up late and put them in their sleeping bags on the sofas in the living room on the main floor.   They’re both excited about the incoming weather, not fully understanding the amount of destruction the hurricane will be bringing.