| National Library renews area of reading for the blind |
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| Saturday, 03 January 2009 03:42 | |||
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The National Library of Portugal (BNP) Monday inaugurated the new field of reading to the blind and starts this year to scan the Internet and placement of books in braille and sound, said the director, George Couto, the agency Lusa.{mospagebreak}
The BNP celebrates as the forty years after the creation of service for the blind and reading notes at the same time, the bicentenary of the birth of Louis Braille, creator of the French system of writing and reading for the blind. The new area of reading the BNP will have ample space (about 500 square feet) and exclusively for the visually impaired, which includes deposit of collections and logistics adapted to the work of braille printing and scanning, as well as reading and writing of books sound. After this process of modernization in 2009, said Jorge Couto to Lusa, will proceed to the "conversion of cassettes and braille books to the Internet to digital." They are "hundreds of thousands of pages" that will be scanned. According to the director of the National Library of Portugal, there are about 1,700 titles in audio, nine thousand volumes in Braille and about 430 in electronic format (eBook). The collection of books in Braille includes, for example, the first book printed in Portugal, but the areas with higher expression are school textbooks and literature. Among the titles of books sound include, among others, the writer Albert Camus to read "L'Etranger" ( "The Foreigner") or Paul Quintela to read the translation of "Ballad of love and death of Ensign Christopher Rilke "by Rainer Maria Rilke. In 2007, only in service of BNP were ordered about a thousand titles. The National Library and Center Albuquerque and Castro are two of the main institutions that produce longer publications for the visually impaired. The BNP heads a group of Portuguese organizations that have joined for the celebrations of 200 years of the birth of Louis Braille throughout 2009, including the Association of blind and partially sighted of Portugal (ACAPO). On Monday, the opening of the celebrations at the National Library will present the Secretary of State for Culture, Paula Fernandes dos Santos, and Assistant Secretary of State and Reabilização, Idália Moniz.
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