VIRGIL

I attended my first meeting of VIRGIL today (Visually Impaired Reading Groups In Libraries). This is a collaborative project of some Scottish library authorities who got together to share resources for visually impaired (vip) reading groups. The visually impaired want to have the same benefits as other readers by being able to read/listen to the same book at the same time. Quite an expensive option with talking books at £60 a time. Up until now I have been running a visually impaired reading group using Calibre, an organisation who use volunteers to record talking books. This in itself is a great service to subscribe to.

Funding
With VIRGIL each authority commits  to buying one set a year at a cost of around £600. Initial funding was put in by the Scottish Government's Public Library Quality Improvement Fund to buy 33 sets of 10 cd talking books and 2 large print copies. Stock can move between the authorities freely through Articles for the Blind. The books and cd talking books can be bought through the library suppliers and all talking books are read by a professional actor. Funding has also extended to the groups attending the Aye Write Book Festival in Glasgow.


However, similar to the Scottish Reader Development Forum, another benefit to being in collaboration with others is the meet up to organise and run it. So today, apart from coming away with a full set of A Thousand Splendid Suns for my group, I also have information on PENfriend - a pen that reads blurbs on talking books for visually impaired library borrowers - and information on events for Make a Noise in Libraries Week. I also got roped into starting a wiki for all the vip reading groups to contribute reviews to. And we discussed various routes to more funding. In other words another great networking morning!


http://www.slainte.org.uk/news/archive/1104/1104.htm
http://virgilbookgroups.wordpress.com/