IN VALE OF DARKNESS

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 10, 7 March 1930, Page 2

IN VALE OF DARKNESS

A PROFICIENT LIBRARIAN MARVEL WROUGHT BY BRAILLE AUCKLAND, March 6. A librarian, totally blind, who has developed a library index and catalogue in Braille at the jubilee Institute for the Blind is the admiration of visitors to Auckland attending the annual conference of the New Zealand Libraries Association. ' Mr Clutha N. Mackenzie, Director of the-Institute, said in an address at the conference this morning, that Miss 0. White, a blind librarian kept the addresses and entries of incoming and outgoing books on Braille indexes, maintained interested correspondence with her readers, advised and selected books and did her work within her small community much as an idea! librarian should. The Braille system cannot bo rapidly and easily learned by any blind person. In fact, the bulk of blind people losing their sight after forty seldom attain proficiency, though they often acquire, a skill sufficient to enable them to read slowly and maintain the thread of a story. Most of the younger blind attain proficiency astounding to sighted people.