Obituary: Ronald Sturt

Ronald Sturt's obituary from the Guardian, February 2003.

The librarian Ronald Sturt, who has died aged 81, founded the first talking newspaper in Britain.
In 1968, while visiting Vasteras, in northern Sweden, to study public library services for disabled people, he found a tape recording of the local newspaper made for blind people. Back home in Aberystwyth, his enthusiastic talks about the experience drew the offer of financial support from the local Round Table if he would "do something about it."

So, with the support of the proprietors of the Cambrian News and the Cardigan & Tivyside Advertiser, Sturt launched the Cardiganshire talking newspaper on January 1 1970. Initially, the tapes went to 18 local blind people, but the idea was quickly taken up in neighbouring Montgomery (now Powys), and today it goes to some 250 "readers" in English or Welsh.

Through example, and Sturt's tireless evangelism, the idea spread to the whole of Britain. By 1974, there were sufficient local groups to form the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom (TNAUK). Sturt was chairman, and later president, and retained a keen interest in the project until his death. TNAUK also developed a commercial venture, producing many daily newspapers and magazines in aural and machine-readable forms.

Sturt was born in Chobham, Surrey, and educated at Woking grammar school. In 1939, he began a career in accountancy, but this was interrupted by tuberculosis, and sanatorium life sparked a lifelong love of books and reading.

In 1947, he switched to librarianship, working in Surrey, Brighton and Westminster, before, in 1954, becoming regional librarian for mid-Hertfordshire, where he took books in to patients at the local psychiatric hospital. Later, he designed the first professionally run, integrated library service for hospital patients and staff, at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Welwyn Garden City.

In 1963, this initiative led to the formation of the Library Association's hospital libraries & handicapped readers' group. Sturt served on its standards committee, was chairman of the group and edited its quarterly periodical.

In 1964, he was headhunted to lecture at the College of Librarianship Wales (now the department of library and information studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth). By the time he departed in 1972, the college had 400 students and 40 teaching staff, and had acquired an international reputation as the largest library school in the UK.

Sturt himself moved on to the City of London Polytechnic (now London Guildhall University), first as chief librarian and, shortly afterwards, as assistant provost, the post he held until retirement in 1981. While in London, he made another important innovation by founding the National Bureau for Handicapped Students (now Skill) in 1975.

Sturt was affably benevolent, a devoted Methodist, a lively-minded man relaxed in manner and superbly organised. In 1990, when his second wife, Felicity, also a librarian, was mayor of Chelmsford, Essex, he was happy to attend official functions with her as "Mr Mayoress".
He is survived by Felicity, whom he married in 1961, their daughter and two sons, and the daughter of his first marriage.

· Ronald Ernest Sturt, librarian and pioneer of talking newspapers, born October 21 1921; died January 6 2003