Professor George Maxwell Richards, President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago accepted the invitation of the Executive Director of NALIS, Pamella Benson to tour the National Library of Trinidad and Tobago last week. This however was His Excellency’s second visit to the National Library facility, having visited on the occasion of its formal opening in March. His Excellency also completed registration, joining the 50,000 plus registered users of the National Library of Trinidad and Tobago.

The tour included visits to the Children’s Library, Young Adult Library, the Technical Services Department where all the procedures involved in making material available to the public are carried out, the Adult Library, Heritage Library were His Excellency took the opportunity to view displays which included the “Lights of Divali” Exhibition, the Calypso History Month Exhibition and the photographic exhibition of Sparks/Wild Fire spanning three decades of performances.

The President expressed his delight at the facilities available in the Children’s and Adult’s Libraries to the differently abled in the society. These include JAWS for Windows, a synthetic speech technology which verbalises screen output for persons who are visually impaired. Magic Screen Magnification Software used to enlarge text and graphics; the Duxbury Braille Translation Software and other Braille software for producing professional Braille documents. He was introduced to the Next Talk software used to instant messaging capability which allows access to the hearing impaired.