Head Tale

I don’t think I’ve blogged about this yet but about a month ago, I moved into a new position at RPL as Outreach Services Librarian.  This a one-year term position filling a maternity leave.

The past month has been a bit of a blur as I learn about my new position, the history and workflow of the unit I’m now in charge of as well as learning about what’s happening in the wider world (library and otherwise) in terms of service to the visually impaired, print-disabled and home readers (previously “homebound” and before that, “shut-ins”.)

This position feels like a great fit for me for all number of reasons – not least of which (which I didn’t get into at my interview as I didn’t think it was appropriate) but I’ve had a long history of vision troubles myself – going way back to when I was two years old and had two separate surgeries on my eye then on through undergrad when a potentially serious vision-related issue was discovered which is still being monitored to this day.

Below is a photo of part of my learning process in my new job.  Along with RPL’s IT Manager, we met with the CNIB’s Assistive Technology Specialist to have a demo of some of the current assistive technology that’s available in preparation for some equipment that RPL will be purchasing for our system.

As a fan of technology (and one of the many reasons why this job feels like a good fit), the technology that’s available for the visually-impaired is especially impressive – screen readers, CCTV’s, voice recorders and much more.  Very cool!