I feel a bit sad about this.

[MathsMadMummy]

my mum is a librarian and told me about the budget cuts to libraries (fair enough, everyone's suffering, no reason they should be excluded) but she's quite sad that the majority of the cuts are specifically from children's services.

isn't that a bit backwards? I thought children were the future, aren't they worth investing in?

not that mum really gets to do much librarying anyway - too much time teaching people how to use computers and helping people do their NHS choose-and-book thing etc... hardly any books in the library anymore

My local library is full of large print mills and boon, Jeffrey Archer paperbacks and books about the war. If they had a half decent selection, more people would use it. The childrens section is full of TV show spin offs. Bloody depressing.

yep, my mum told me every year they get less and less money to spend on children's books. it's such a shame because there's no end of brilliant titles coming out for kids but they can hardly buy any of them!

Well without wanting to state the obvious tokyo - in response to your query as to whether disadvantaged children actually use libraries - right now many may not use them. If libraries close or children's services are drastically cut then they certainly won't be using them.

As services are cut the take up will be even lower than it is now as what is offered becomes less appealing to families. So eventually you will be absolutely right and families certainly won't be using libraries at all.

Disadvantaged children would have access to libraries if they were mandatory in schools...that is a bugbear of mine, that a school is actually allowed to pass on having a library.

If schools used part of their budgets to have well equipped libraries (which, by the way are proven to RAISE academic acheivement), then public libraries wouldn't have to necessarily spend lots on children's seervices...they could spend less money, and offer support services to what schools are already doing.

Quite. I remember in primary school having lessons on how to use the library: we practised in the tiny school library and went to the "real" one as a trip. We were shown how to use the referencing system, how to behave and how to ask the librarian for help finding our favourite authors. I can still remember it clearly, including the book I asked for, 25 later. Maybe that's the key to getting them used.

I don't think my school had a library but to me it didn't matter as obviously I grew up around books and libraries, I was lucky.

one of my mum's favourite duties is showing the local schoolchildren around the library, she also does lots of visits to the schools to talk about books etc. she'll be really sad if she can't do that anymore.

I disagree tokyo re. factual research. If my children want to research a topic we still head to the library - for example, when I was pregnant and wanted to find books about how the body worked, when the DDs do school projects on subjects like the history of London, the Vikings, Cleopatra etc. Of course this isn't serious academic research but, given their ages - 4 and 6 - knowing the Dewey system or having access to the very latest information isn't necessary. Being able to run around the children's reference section and pull out books at random that interest them and allow them to discover new topics is far more important at this age than absolute factual accuracy in all their reading material (and as you say, wiki is notorious for its errors anyway).

I myself am doing a work project based on poetry at the moment - the first place I headed was my library to borrow all their poetry compilations.

"but when I was still studying essay-requiring topics it was all from books"

Hmm. I'm twice your age, but I did an OU Arts Foundation last year which involved essay writing and I used very few books, even though I have access to one of the larger university libraries in the country and it's only ten minutes away. I used journals heavily, and they are mostly online these days. I didn't use Google, but the front end for searching journals is effectively Google. It's an open question as to if the best preparation for using university libraries these days is an old-fashioned physical library or Google

" it is much better to go the other way round surely - get them good at reading/critiquing/consolidating info from books first, then they can learn how to search the internet properly."

You might be right. The alternative argument might be that as doing it with books is so laborious it might put them off the whole idea. Should people learn to solder before using a computer? Should people learn to (again) process 35mm black and white in a hand tank before using a digital camera? Should people learn to play the piano from sheet music before using an iPod?

At root, your argument is that real knowledge is in books and the other stuff is somehow second-rate. That's a hidden premise, and it's a distinctly dubious one. Fetching journals from JSTOR is precisely the same as getting an inter-library loan of a physical copy (if, indeed, it even exists physically these days); it's just faster and you can do it without leaving your sofa. I love the smell of books in the morning, they smell of knowledge, but I'm not sure that they have any inherent value over digital formats.

Coming next: why LPs are real music.

And on a slightly different note, in my work as an editor, I can't tell you how often I come across whole paragraphs (in both fiction and academic dissertations) that have just been lifted or taken as verbatim from Wikipedia...

I think you're arguing about two different matters.

"real knowledge is in books and the other stuff is somehow second-rate"

As you say, this particularly doesn't apply in academic circles where the internet is a fantastic time-saving device (see my earlier note about the time I wasted as a student laboriously photocopying articles)

The OP's point is that children gain something from libraries and the physical experience of being surrounded by books - irrespective sometimes of the quality of those books - than they do from sitting in front of a screen. This applies particularly at a very young age. The choice of information offered in a library is so easy to access for a six year old in a way that they cannot do in front of a screen.

"Being able to run around the children's reference section and pull out books at random that interest them and allow them to discover new topics is far more important at this age than absolute factual accuracy in all their reading material (and as you say, wiki is notorious for its errors anyway)."

OK, suppose instead of access to a library (which is fine for us urban folk, but isn't quite the same benefit for people living in rural areas where the mobile library comes once a fortnight) you had government-funded online access to the OU Library plus an analogous collection aimed at children, with librarians with information skills a mere email away. Wouldn't that be better in almost every way, as well as providing access to many more people? I'd be prepared to bet there are more children who do not have access to a decent children's reference section (for reasons of transport, geography and so on) than don't have access to the Internet.

To re-iterate, I buy books like other people buy potatoes, and scarcely a day goes by when I don't add another one to the pile. However, I don't think that there's anything inherently superior about books over online resources, horses for courses etc, and if I had to identify which was better for schoolchildren, I think I'd say that giving them access to good quality online resources (ie, those available in universities and things aimed at children of a similar quality) rather than the shambles of Wikipedia would be a better use of the money than giving middle-class kids cheap access to old copies of EB.

EveWasFramed72 - what about those who are home schooled who don't have access to a school library?
or those children who are excluded for whatever reason
they still need public libraries

"The OP's point is that children gain something from libraries and the physical experience of being surrounded by books - irrespective sometimes of the quality of those books - than they do from sitting in front of a screen. "

Then that's an argument for closing public libraries and spending the money on ring-fenced provision of libraries in schools. As someone points out upthread, some schools have stupidly closed their in-house libraries, and that's plain wrong.

Your idea might be fine for older kids (and I take your point re. urban access) but would be useless for eg, my children (aged 6, 4 and 20 months). My baby in particular loves books and 'reading' - turning the pages, looking at the pictures etc. I doubt he would get anywhere near the same experience from looking at a screen, even in Kindle/iPad etc.

And I bet (don't know this for sure) that children who are exposed to books as pre-schoolers are more likely to be good readers when older.

Shall we get rid of the public access parks too then as we all know its mostly MC mummies breathing the lovely fresh air and they could afford to breathe it at their weekend home?
Providing opportunities for as many people as possible to access the things that raise the quality of our lives and improve our life outcomes is part of what makes us a society as opposed to a collection of people looking out for themselves.

Our school has a library (and has jsut spent £2000 on new books)! As did the all the schools I went to (all state, not posh) plus all the classrooms have book corners. Are schools really getting rid of their libraries?

Libraries are a free, non-commercial focal point for the community where people of all ages etc mix for various purposes - comparable to our local leisure centre. I thnk they're irreplaceable and the area where I live, at least, would be a much poorer place without it.

Good point, compo...I don't have the answer. I just know that libraries are given high status in the US (and children in the US who are home schooled do have a 'base' school, where they are allowed to participate in after school events and other services that the school offers, including the library, even if they don't attend classes there.), and here in England they are treated as un-necessary, and anyone can work there...it drives me mad! But, I am a school librarian in England (in a school that didn't want a qualified librarian), so do what I can to raise profiles...

Schools aren't necessarily getting rid, Star...they don't have to have one to begin with, and there are surprisingly quite a few that opt not to have one!

"And I bet (don't know this for sure) that children who are exposed to books as pre-schoolers are more likely to be good readers when older."

Or, alternatively, that children whose parents value books and therefore have them around the house are likely to be good readers. Cause and effect is hard to disentangle. Good reading is probably correlated with wearing Boden clothes: I don't think that giving disadvantaged mothers good quality cotton tops is going to add a year to their child's reading age.

Libraries are a totem of our society, but we should understand what we're funding them to do. If they're community centres, why bother spending money on books? If they're about child literacy, why have endless shelves of Great Trouser Buttons of the Luftwaffe military porn? If they're about democratising information, why not buy fewer books about World War Two and spend the money on JSTOR? And so on, and so on.

I love libraries. I'm just not sure what they're for, and in trying to be all things to everyone, they end up being not much to a few.

Then maybe libraries should be run according to the needs of the communities, let them have a proper stab at being all things to all people. Why not tourist information and coffee and internet access and military porn (I'm guessing that is coffee table books for retired colonel types and not actual military porn?)and bills and moons for the grannies and horrible toddler song times?

Maybe we could have Free-libraries ad a group of parents could set up their own. It worked in Sweden y'know

Don't get me started Tippychocks...

The government funding to build our local playpark has just been cancelled so we're now trying to get a group of local residents etc together to apply for private/charity funding instead.

As well as running our own schools, it seems we now have to build our own parks. Soon we'll we'll be expected to do our own dentistry...

tippychooks gets the prize;she has described perfectly the library where I work.

I think people should bear in mind that Libraries are incredibly cheap; I'm told the budget for the county wide library service is approximately 1% of the total council's budget.

Why is running libraries as local co-operatives inherently laughable? One of the ironies of the faux outrage here in Birmingham about academies and free schools is that parents are all desperate to get their children into the local foundation grammar schools which are in governance terms essentially academies; the only difference is that the King Edward VI foundation dates back to 1552. It all rather smacks of new money being dirtier than old money.

Libraries were run historically by all sorts of organisations, as were schools, universities, museums, hospitals, theatres and the rest of the things that the state has wrapped up over the past fifty years. There are other ways than the state, and they aren't all preposterous.

Because not all communities have the resources or education or know-how or community spirit to draw on to take on that kind of responsibility. If you're living hand to mouth, worried about how to feed/clothe/keep your children warm and safe, getting them access to books and free swimming lessons will be low on your list of priorities.

That's where we rely on the authorities has to step in. That's what we pay taxes for and it's part of living in a decent modern society, as opposed to the 19th century.

"Because not all communities have the resources or education or know-how or community spirit to draw on to take on that kind of responsibility"

Credit Unions have been pretty successful though. Playgroups are not uncommon. Baby-sitting circles. Reading groups. All the things that churches organise. People don't only have a sense of community for their friends, it's possible they might see their way to having wider responsibilities.