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Visually Impaired Student Thrives Working with Digital Files

In a dimly lit room, whose quiet is occasionally interrupted by a low electric hum, a Texas A&M University Libraries student worker scans dissertations written by Aggie scholars for preservation. 

“It’s really interesting to see from the back end how most of the world’s archives create their digital holdings,” said Grace Henry, a sophomore history major, as she sat next to a digital scanning machine. “These kinds of files have been a big asset for me in my research, so I have a greater appreciation for the work that goes into this.”

While Henry is making Aggie scholars’ contributions to academic literature available to remote users, she’s also making them more accessible to library users with vision loss like herself.

“I struggle to read print media in general,” Henry said. “Digital files give me the option to change the font size or the text’s background so I can see it more clearly, or hear the file read aloud.”

Accessible files, she said, allow for a greater audience to engage with the materials and ultimately lead to a greater understanding of our history and ourselves.

Henry is interested in studying the past, especially the American Revolution and the United States’ political founding, because she said it helps her understand in a big-picture sense why things are the way they are.

“I'm taking a class where we are researching Civil War prisoners,” she said. “Most of the research materials my classmates and I access are physically stored in archives on the East Coast.”

Remote access to digital collections is almost imperative in this research and her research of the founding era.

“I don't have the money to travel to the Library of Congress, but they have a giant collection I can access online,” she said. “Digital collections like these allow for a greater audience to be able to view, access and engage with the materials.”

How would she access these sources without the existence of digital collections?

“I would have to either spend a bunch of money requesting material scans or I would have to physically travel to the archives and go broke doing so,” she said, laughing at the thought. 

Henry is considering graduate school and becoming a history professor. For now, as the hum of the scanning machine accompanies her student worker hours, she’s comforted by the idea that she’s helping students like herself by maximizing their access to library and research materials.