Public libraries should sell large print books

When Margaret Hodge suggested, at the Public Library Authorities Conference in October, that libraries begin selling books, there was dismay amongst booksellers and a forthright response from The Booksellers Association. But there is one vital and underprivileged sector of the community, the visually impaired, where being able to buy large print books at the library would be warmly welcomed.

Historically, libraries are where you go for large print books. Very few bookshops stock large print books and the recent RNIB initiative, Focus on Books, whilst very welcome, has only resulted in about 100 titles being available for booksellers to stock (the vast majority of these being print-on-demand titles).

Nearly all Public Libraries have a section of large print titles, normally limited to a few hundred titles, predominantly fiction.

Within the RNIB’s Right to Read report, Overdue, issued in 2003, whilst discussing the difficulty people with sight problems and reading disabilities have in finding out which titles actually exist in a format they can read, they appealed: “We call on publishers and booksellers to come together to create a database of all large print and unabridged audio books produced commercially.”

To the best of my knowledge our company, www.largeprintbookshop.co.uk, is the only organisation to respond to this appeal. (However, we have recently removed all audiobooks from our website so that we can devote all our attention to large print books). We have the most comprehensive list of what is available in large print, and our database comprises about 20,000 titles. We buy a monthly bibliographic data feed from Nielsen Data, and supplement this with an immense amount of manual work, adding titles from publishers who do not inform the bibliographic agencies of the existence of their titles. We also spend a lot of time amending the records, as many publishers neglect to tell Nielsen when a title is no longer available.

The result of this is that we have a resource of unrivalled accuracy which is free to use by anyone who logs onto the website. We are only too pleased when libraries make use of the resource. The opportunity exists for libraries to partner with us in order to enable the general public to buy large print books, because they cannot get them from normal bookshops.

Greater access to large print books is very much in accord with the brief for the ‘Framework for the Future’ where ‘books, reading and learning’ and ‘community and civic values’ should be at the heart of libraries’ modern mission.

Reading and learning: One in six people in the UK struggle with literacy. Larger print sizes are a proven aid to reluctant readers and those seeking to improve their literacy. “Research and action studies confirm that Large Print improves reading speed and comprehension and is an extremely effective alternative tool for students reading below grade level. The larger font and additional white space between lines slows the eye and increases the care that students take with the text. Because Large Print books appeal to struggling readers they are more willing to pick up books and read, often encouraging their classmates to do the same.” (www.galeschools.com.

Community and civic values: The RNIB estimates that there are 3 million people in the UK who have a visual impairment or a reading disability that makes them unable to read conventional print. The figure is probably growing with an ageing population with declining vision. At the moment there is no realistic alternative to the Public Libraries to satisfy the large print reading needs of this sector of the community. The Public Libraries could recognise that they are the first port of call to the visually impaired, enabling them to continue their lifelong pleasure in reading, and increasing the range of accessible titles.

Summary
I have mentioned that there are 20,000 large print titles in print at the moment but this is a minute proportion compared to regular print titles. Less than 1.5% of new books are issued in large print, and they remain in print for a very short while. For example there is very little backlist of large print books (no Birdsong, no Captain Corelli’s Mandolin); the improvements in print-on-demand technology has meant that the out of copyright classics have now been made available, and they need never go out of print again (Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Dickens, etc).

If the Library Service Modernisation Review recognises that it is ideally placed to provide a lead in the promotion and provision of large print books, either for borrowing or buying, they could prove the catalyst that encourages mainstream publishers to produce their own large print editions, with the eventual result that many more large print books are published, and become available through normal booksellers, both independents and chains.

Guy Garfit
www.largeprintbookshop.co.uk
The Old Police Station
Priory Lane
Royston, SG8 9DU
Tel: 01763 252687; Fax: 01763 252611

This article first appeared in the Libraries Modernisation Review consultation document, "Empower, Inform, Enrich" published on 1st December 2009.