Oklahoma School for the Blind librarian Sandi Hilbern recalls buying Henry the Library Bear for $2 at a garage sale.

“The kids come up and hug it,” she said. “That’s why I go to garage sales. I don’t buy things for myself. I buy for the kids.”

Hilbern has been doing things for the kids since long before she became the school’s librarian in 1998.

She said she plans to keep doing things for the kids after she retires as librarian Friday.

Although not blind herself, Hilbern said she can identify with vision-impaired children.

“I’’ve been one-eyed since birth,” she said. “It’s never been a problem, but I’ve always had a problem with depth perception. I had a crossed-eye, and I was always teased as a child.”

Hilbern said experiences prompted her to seek a career to help the blind. Hilbern was a vocational rehabilitation counselor for 23 years, working mainly with people who were blind or deaf and blind. She spent 18 years as counselor at OSB before retiring for the first time, in 1998.

“They offered me a temporary position at the library,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about libraries, but I did know about blindness. I got a scholarship from Northeastern State University. They gave me a waiver to teach. I completed the 20 hours to be certified in libraries in a year.”

Under Hilbern’s direction, the OSB library has become an entirely different and busier place.

“When I first got here, there were two tables and stiff chairs in the reading area,” she said.

Now the area has a pile of beanbag chairs, a row of computers — and Henry.

The library also has grown to have the largest collection of Braille literature in Oklahoma, Hilbern said.

“The collection has really increased and now we’re about to run out of space,” she said.