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National Library for the Blind
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===Incorporation=== Towards the end of Arnold's life, the library began to experience serious growing pains. After many delays, the library was registered as the '''Incorporated National Lending Library for the Blind''' on 15 September 1898. Dow was particularly active during this uncomfortable transition period. The annual membership fee charged to blind readers was raised in stages to two guineas. The poorest readers were allowed to pay less – in the hardest cases very substantially less – but only after the committee had considered individual applications for remission. The first paid staff were recruited: Miss McLaren as Secretary and Miss Lohr as Librarian. These appointments considerably eased the difficulties of day-to-day routine, but the accommodation problem became steadily acute. By 1904, the stock had grown to nearly 8,000 volumes, with yearly addition of more than 500. The library moved to new premises – an adapted shop and basement at 125 Queen's Road, [[Bayswater]] – in September 1904. McLaren and Lohr both retired in the following year. The new officers appointed to replace them proved unsatisfactory, and in 1906, [[Winifred Austin|"Ethel" Winifred Austin]] took up the new combined post of Secretary and Librarian.<ref name=ethel>K. A. Manley, 'Austin, (Ethel) Winifred (1873β1918)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/72371, accessed 10 July 2017]</ref> Austin proved to lead arguably the most eventful of the library's history.<ref name=obit>{{cite book|title=The Library World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HmAwAQAAIAAJ|year=1958|publisher=AndrΓ© Deutsch|page=166}}</ref> Despite postage rates for embossed volumes for the blind being reduced by the [[United Kingdom Postmaster General|Postmaster General]] in 1906,<ref name=ethel/> financial problems continued, and after [[World War I]] began, it became very difficult to retain staff. The premises at 125 Queen's Road Bayswater was gradually taken over and, by 1915, the last space in the cellar had been filled with shelving. The former premises of the [[Royal Architectural Museum]], owned by the [[Architectural Association]], in [[Tufton Street]], [[City of Westminster|Westminster]] were then acquired and remodelled, and the library moved into its new headquarters in 1916.<ref name=ethel/> In 1916 it was not only rehoused; it was declared free for all blind readers. Its change of name to the '''National Library for the Blind''' was approved by the Board of Trade, and it obtained exemption from the payment of rates under the [[Scientific and Literary Societies Act 1843]]. Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, Chairman of the [[Carnegie United Kingdom Trust]], became Chairman of the Library, and H. J. Wilson became vice-chairman, Secretary of [[Gardener's Trust for the Blind]]. Ethel Austin's earliest proposals of 1911 for the amalgamation of small libraries for the blind into one centralised system proved abortive. She gave talks at national conferences and from 1913 she wrote regularly for ''Librarian and Book World''.<ref name=ethel/> By 1917, the Braille collections of the Home Teaching Society, the [[Girls Friendly Society]] and the [[Catholic Truth Society]] had been taken over. During the same year, the Library of the Manchester and Salford Blind Aid Society was presented to the National Library for the Blind and incorporated into NLB as its Northern Branch.
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