Study On Undersupply And Strategies Of Service For The Visually Impaired In Guangzhou Library

Visually impaired people can not use the library service normally due to their physical defect.As one of the non-profit public cultural undertakings,the public library should provide equal,equitable,inclusive services,so it plays an important role in the realization of visually impaired people's cultural rights.With the government's attention to the disabled,the advocacy and practice of the concept of "free,equal and barrier free" in the library and information field,the service for disabled groups in public libraries has been developing rapidly.Guangzhou Library established an area for visually impaired people in 2012.With the accessibility of facilities,collections and reading activities,Guangzhou Library aims to provide visually impaired people with a shared center of knowledge,learning and communication.In order to evaluate the service effect and improve the service quality,this thesis investigates the overall situation of the services for visually impaired people in Guangzhou library by the questionnaire and in-depth interviews,analyzes the information needs and behavioral preference of the visually impaired,and provides the guidance of public library services for the visually impaired.Through an extensive study of relevant literature,a questionnaire survey and some in-depth interviews,this thesis sums up the effect of the service to visually impaired people in Guangzhou library: to improve the barrier-free facilities construction,to enrich barrier-free resources,and to promote reading activities.Nevertheless,in the service of the visually impaired,the library still has unbalanced problems of supply and demand,such as the lack of collection resources,inaccurate provision of services,the lack in librarians' professional skills,and so on.With a thorough analysis of the reasons for above problems,the thesis proposes that Guangzhou Library can improve the standardization of services for visually impaired people from four perspective,including the construction of barrier-free resource,the innovative accessibility service approach,the improvement of accessibility service level and the persistence of long-term service.