“Thank God I can read books now,” said a patron of the Dimmick Memorial Library in Jim Thorpe about the wide selection of large-print best sellers that are now available.

“People have been asking about large-print books,” said Susan Sterling, director of the Dimmick Memorial Library. “They were always hard to find.”

“Originally, we just had the large-print books, what few we had, incorporated with the regular fiction books,” explained Sterling. “Then, we joined a program where we are getting the top three best selling books in the nation every month in large-print format.”

Once a number of these books were received, the Dimmick staff decided that, to make the large-print books more accessible, instead of intermingling them with the regular fiction titles, they should shelve them in their own section.

The new section is starting out with 120 large-print books by best selling authors: Dick Francis, Stephen King, Robin Cook, Patricia Cornwell, Clive Cussler, Sara Paretsky, and Robert B. Parker.

“The library belongs to a program that sends us automatically, at a discount, the three best sellers on the Editor's Choice list,” Sterling said. “I buy all the best sellers anyway. This way, I have a regular size best seller and a large-print version.”

Print is measured in point size, with one point equal to 1/72 of an inch. The local newspapers are printed in nine point, popular books in 11 point, and large-print books are 16 point or larger.

large-print books appeal to seniors, readers requiring prescription glasses, struggling and reluctant readers, English as a second language readers, and speed readers. And because at the Dimmick Library a large-print copy is purchased at the same time as a best seller, a second copy of newly released popular books is available.

Ironically, the Dimmick Library in the Borough of Jim Thorpe owes the introduction of the large-print book to another Thorpe, Frederick Thorpe of Leicester, England. In 1964, Thorpe, a retired book and magazine distributor, decided to reprint classic books about twice the size of the original printing to meet the needs of poor-sighted readers.

These oversized editions were difficult to handle, so in 1969 Thorpe's company, Ulverscroft, began to reset the books in 16-point type and printed them in standard-sized bindings. As these volumes fit easily on existing shelving, they were more readily accepted in public libraries. Thorpe became a large-print evangelist, traveling around the English-speaking world promoting the acquisition of large-print books.

In 1980, Thorndike Press of Waterville, Maine, now a division of Gale, Cengage Learning, decided to address the needs of the more than 20 million partially blind Americans by publishing large-print library collections. They are members of the National Association for Visually Handicapped. NAVH founder Lorraine Marchi called Thorndike Press “One of the leading publishers in the large-print field.”

Earlier this year, the company approached the Dimmick Library, offering it high quality large-print unabridged best sellers at discount prices. Books are printed at a standard size of 5½-inches by 8½-inches and have a laminated hard cover that serves as an integral dust jacket.

Amazingly, although Thorndike’s large-print books have more pages than conventional books, a conventional copy of Stephen King’s Under the Dome is 1,074 pages, versus 1,415 pages for the large-print edition, and the large-print edition is over ten percent thinner than the standard edition.

The large-print editions circulate for two weeks, the same as other books in the Dimmick Memorial Library’s collection.

The Library has made a commitment to maintain the quality of its services and materials in the face of the economic turndown and significant budget cuts. It is a private library and depends to an increasing amount for support from its patrons to keep the library functioning.