Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide an evidence‐base for home modification guidelines for people with visual impairment due to age‐related macular degeneration (AMD), from the perspective of people with AMD, by exploring the home modifications they find useful and would recommend to other people with visual impairment due to AMD as being effective.

People with impairments may not be aware of their own coping with inability strategies until they are asked to express their strategies. A qualitative approach using semi‐structured individual interviews was used to elicit the perspectives of people with AMD with regards to their preferred home modification interventions. Interviews were recorded and then transcribed verbatim into text for thematical analysis using Nvivo 8.

In total, 31 individuals (aged 79.1±5.6 years) with AMD and no other ocular diseases were recruited from a low vision clinic or the Macular Degeneration Foundation database in a metropolitan city. Interviewees had not received any formal home modification assessment from a government provider. Nevertheless, 70 per cent of participants stated that they undertook home modifications themselves or with the assistance of family and friends. The most important functional modifications as perceived by the participants concerned the installation of hand rails, non‐slip matting, colour contrasting safety stair nosing, single lever taps, slip resistant flooring, lift chairs and motion sensors that activated pathway lighting. Kitchens, steps and bathrooms were perceived as hazardous locations. Most participants had difficulties with reading fine‐print material on kitchen appliances, washing machines, microwave ovens and remote controls for electronic devices in the home.

An evidence‐base for useful home modifications as suggested by people with visual impairment was perceived to be a valuable resource for other people with visual impairment who may not yet have developed adaptive strategies. Industrial and interior designers and low vision rehabilitation services who aim to improve functionality of the home environment will also find these suggestions useful.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

OUR pages continue the discussion on book‐display, about which all has not been said by any means. The ingenious librarian will always sharpen his wits upon the attracting of readers, and the main problem in the matter is merely: what sort of reader is it most desirable to attract? We do not apologise for this reiteration, because it is the fundamental subject now facing librarians. We are not in the least moved by a comment in a contemporary that we are decrying libraries when we assert, and in spite of him we do assert, that fiction issues nearly all over London show a decline. That decline, we repeat, is due to the slight increase in the employment of readers, and to cheap fiction libraries. What the public librarian has to decide is if he shall compete with such libraries or more definitely diverge from them. If a middle course is preferred—as it usually is by Britons—what is that course? Ultimately, is the educated reader to be the standard for whom the library works, or the uneducated? Or, to put it another way, is the librarian in any way responsible for the quality of the books his community reads? Our readers, young and not so young, are invited to help us to answers to these live questions.

The utterance at a recent council estimates meeting of an Alderman to the effect that he opposed increase of the book‐fund of the libraries in the town because, whenever he wanted a book, he bought it, was, we suspect, a vainglorious one used for a special purpose and time. It was obviously, too, that of a man who may read on occasion, but is not a regular user of books. There are many such and, no doubt, their limited point of view is to be encouraged, so far as book‐purchase is concerned. What it disregards, or does not understand, is that the real reader cannot easily contemplate life without books; he never has enough of them, even if he is not a hoarder of them. There are thousands such. Their homes are not large enough, and their purses are too limited, for them to buy everything they want to read. The “Alderman” can feel that books are cheap; he spends more, if he has the means, on a box of cigars, or a bottle of whiskey, than any ordinary book costs. A single visit to a theatre with his wife (with the inevitable accompanying dinner or supper and transport) costs him more than a shelf of them. If he throws away the book when read, or rejected—for only a few such books are read through by the type under consideration—that is of little more con‐sideration than his disposal of cigar ash or used theatre tickets. In this stringent time the greater part of the community depends upon the borrowed book. Inevitably this will increasingly be the case. Every man and woman, however, who loves books desires to possess them, and every wise librarian encourages that desire. It can reduce the use of libraries very little, if at all, and our business as librarians should be to provide for the literate nation, indeed to assist its making. There are many ways in which this might be done—the provision of lists on “Books for Every Home” with clear notes on why, for it must be realized that not every citizen knows the books that are commonplace tools. In how many homes, for instance, is Whittaker's Almanack to be found? A reference book, of course; but almost the first need of a household is a set of the best tools of this sort. Has any library yet issued a list with this special intention? Say, “Six Books necessary to Every Home”? We assume that when a reader is passionately drawn to a book he must buy it, but such attraction is mainly felt by those who are already book‐lovers. For others there are such questions as, where shall we put the books suggested? An answer may be that every librarian, in his own area, should urge that built‐in bookcases should be a feature in every house plan. He might do much to solve a real problem. He can continue, too, to assist book‐buying by his periodic exhibitions of books for prizes, presents (Christmas and birthday) and help to answer the question, “What books of great literature ought to be in every home for children and for life‐keeping?” His every convert would become also a life user of libraries.

Scholarly communication in the U.S. has been closely examined in the past two decades by librarians because of the acceleration in costs of serial, scholarly communication. Specific disciplines of research have increased at unprecedented rates, namely the areas of scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publishing.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

During the latter part of the twentieth century, mental hospitals, originally built to provide asylum from the excesses of “community care” in the 1800s, began to be perceived as themselves damaging. Therapeutic communities within traditional hospitals offered a hopeful alternative. This paper aims to provide a succinct historical critique of the developments.

Narrative and historical review.

Attempts at reform met with varying degrees of success. Some communities closed down in the wake of public scandals while others were eminently successful. Organisational change presented social and psychological threats which were difficult to overcome. Leadership was an important factor in determining the outcome.

This paper gives an insight into the social‐psychiatric approaches and organisational theories of the time. It is published in the belief that many of the themes remain relevant today.

AT the time of writing the future of the Library Association is still uncertain. The revised bye‐laws, approved by a large majority at Hastings, have been submitted to the Privy Council and a reply is still awaited. This delay and uncertainty must be causing some concern at Chaucer House and indeed, there was evidence of this in last month's issue of the Library Association Record which urged members not to worry if voting papers did not reach them by the statutory date. In other words the office does not really know under which set of bye‐laws it is at the moment operating. This situation ought really to have been foreseen: in the event, it has proved embarrassing and presumptuous to try to operate the re‐organisation proposals as early as January 1962. We have waited so long for re‐organisation: ought we not to have delayed putting it into practice until 1963 when it could perhaps have been done with some semblance of order and dignity?