Access to library books changed lives. Nurse Isabel Scott’s 1934 diary entry from her tour aboard a hospital ship around the south coast of Newfoundland gave one example. She met and wrote about a self-sufficient 60-year-old blind woman in the outport of Point aux Gaul who had become a widow at the age of 30, and lost her sight at about the same time. “She wrote for books and instructions, and learnt Braille by correspondence, and has been receiving books from the Toronto Library for a number of years. She also continued doing her housework, and knitting.”
Nurse Scott describes a visit to a CNIB client, Mrs. Hooper (1:32)
“
she... was fed with the manna of the talking book falling from the heaven of our Library Department…
— Sherman Swift, CNIB Librarian
Sherman Swift personalized CNIB Library users in his annual report for 1939. “How about that dear old lady who had once been a teacher and who had travelled hither and yon about the world learning various languages and mingling with cultured men and women of many lands…She found finger reading slow going, though she stuck to it (and still sticks to it) until she, too was fed with the manna of the talking book falling from the heaven of our Library Department…”