As long ago as 1857, the Liverpool Public Libraries set the example of providing books in raised type for the blind. At Nottingham, one of the first to follow this lead, I remember many years later visiting the room set apart for the blind, and watching several blind people at work producing new pages in embossed print from another sightless person’s dictation. Along the walls were deep cases enclosing long sets of portly quartos or folios--novels by Scott or Dickens in eight or ten volumes apiece, Macaulay’s _History of England_ in seventy-two, the Bible in thirty-eight, and so on. At that time, the supply of books for the blind had been so far centralized that most libraries relied upon collections at Manchester, Nottingham, London, or other places, run chiefly by voluntary organizations. And now, few if any public libraries provide books for the blind themselves, the National Library for the Blind, in Tufton Street, Westminster, or its branch at Manchester, being a depot for all. This admirable institution, at once a great bookstore and a place for both recreation and educational work, with its reading rooms, music room, and hall for meetings and discussions, was provided by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. Public libraries and other institutions all over the country are entitled to borrow from it for the benefit of their blind readers, on payment of a moderate subscription. “It is closely affiliated with the Students’ Library at Oxford, which is gradually being built up to supply the special needs of University men.”[13] Stamping machinery is now used for the production of metal plates, from which any number of copies of books in embossed type may be obtained, though the process is costly. The Carnegie Trust has provided funds for the manufacture of metal plates by the National Institute for the Blind and by the Royal Blind Asylum and School at Edinburgh. All copies of standard works thus printed--if the word may be used--are presented to the National Library, and the stereotype plates remain on hand for further issues. The work of transcribing books by hand is, however, growing enormously, and is of vast importance, as is shown by the fact that during 1920, 431 complete new works of literature running into 1,371 volumes of Braille were produced in this way from ink print by the Library’s voluntary workers (of whom there are some 500) whilst during the same period 89 complete new works were published by the stereotyping houses. It will thus be seen that if the blind of the country depended only on the stereotyped books produced, their choice of reading matter would be exceedingly limited.