Local News - Staff at an agency that provides audio resources for blind and learning disabled students across the province were shocked last month to find out Trent University was not renewing its lease.

The agency which has been at Trent for 30 years was told it would have to leave its 2,000-square-foot space at Blackburn Hall to make way for administrative offices.

“We’re sad to leave. It’s worked out for us beautifully for the last 30 years,” said Pam MacDougall, executive director of the Ontario Audio Library Service. “We were all sort of shocked in the initial stages and overwhelmed.”

The move has left the audio library scrambling to find a new accessible space in the community before the May moving deadline. The agency is also trying to find a grant to cover costs it will face.

“Because we were part of the university we had access to services like e-mail, Internet, photocopiers and fax machines,” MacDougall said. “We don’t have a phone system, for example.”

Marilyn Burns, university spokeswoman, said the space is needed for administrative offices to support the university’s growing student population.

“It’s due to the core space needs here at Trent,” Burns said.

MacDougall said Trent has agreed to allow the agency to continue using the school’s library and have offered to help with the move.

“While this is very sad for us, we want to leave this on a very positive note with Trent,” MacDougall said. “Over the last 30 years they have been good friends to us. They helped the organization to grow.”

The audio library began as an ancillary service at Trent 30 years ago in the Bata Library. In 1983 it was incorporated as a non-profit organization and moved to Blackburn Hall in 1990.

The library works in conjunction with W.R. Ross Macdonald School in Brantford, a residential school for the blind.

The Brantford school hosts a library of audio resources such as books on CD that are available for free to students from elementary schools to colleges and universities across the province.

The Peterborough audio library has an army of about 200 volunteers who read books, which are recorded and made into CDs at the Trent site. The agency, which also has six staff members, is funded primarily by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities as well as the Ministry of Education.

Barb Butler, production quality control at the audio library, takes the recordings and edits them to get them ready to be burned onto CD.

Butler, who is visually impaired, has worked at the library for 24 years. She uses a special software called Jaws, which tells her what is going on on the screen.

She moves back and forth between three computers working on the production of the CDs.

She said moving to a new location will mean learning a new neighbourhood and finding a different bus route.

“It will mean learning a new building, but that’s OK,” she said. “If it has to be it has to be.”

MacDougall said Dave Smith of DNS Real Estate is helping the agency find a new home.

The agency has three satellite reading sites at churches in Peterborough, Lakefield and Lindsay. The Trent site also has soundproof reading booths the agency paid about $25,000 for in 1990.

MacDougall said it wouldn’t be possible to move the soundproof booths.

Another concern for the agency is maintaining volunteers after the move. Many students and university professors volunteer at the audio library. MacDougall said it won’t be as convenient for those volunteers to put in a few reading hours if they have to go to another location.

Mary Timms, who has been reading at the library for two years, said she will follow them wherever they go.

“I really enjoy reading,” said Timms, a retired teacher/librarian.

“It’s wonderful just to have this quiet time every week,” said Timms, who was taking a break from reading a sociology textbook.

She said she sympathizes with the dedicated staff at the library.

“The move will be very difficult,” Timms said.