March 1986 B ackground Blind and physically disabled individuals throughout the United States and its territories receive library service through a network of cooperating libraries. Formal in structure, this cooperative network is supported at local, state, and federal levels. State governments fund direct service through regional libraries and sometimes subregional libraries.
Many local governments fund subregional libraries, deposit collections, or local service points.
Some network libraries also receive private funding. The diversity of administration reflects the political, financial, and geographic differences, but patrons throughout the country, regardless of their location, have equal access to the same braille and recorded materials. To promote a uniformly high level of service, NLS establishes policies and procedures for network activities and funds the process by which the American Library Association establishes standards for service. This network, the oldest network of American libraries, was established in 1931, when Congress enacted a bill sponsored by Representative Ruth Pratt and Senator Reed Smoot entitled An Act to Provide Books for the Adult Blind. In that year, eighteen libraries, many of which had been independently acquiring and lending braille materials to blind adult patrons, were designated as regional libraries in a national network for distributing materials produced by the Library of Congress.