to think that we NEED libraries? This is horrific.

[StuckInTheMiddleWithYou]

Would MN like to run a campaign on this?

www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-hands-off-our-public-libraries-2057131.html

Gaelicsheep, a public library near where I work offers free access to a range of online databases and streaming services, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, International Index to Music Periodicals, Grove Dictionary of Music, Naxos Music Streaming etc. While lots of the users will have computers at home, the library also needs to have terminals on site so that everyone can access these academic/premium resources easily

Ed Vaizey "loves libraries" as much as Dave Cameron can empathise with parents of children with SN. But they both say it's down to the local authority to decide how to implement the huge funding cuts and there is nothing they can do.

I'd like to suggest to Mr Vaizey and co that we get volunteer politicians in to run the country. After all, you need no special skills or experience, do you? Let's have volunteer nursery workers and teachers too. As part of our Big Society.

Thanks to Andrew Carnegie and later the 1964 Public Libraries Act the UK has one of the best public library networks and provision in Europe, if not the world.

For all the faults people love to point out (bogeys on books, assistants with faces like cats' bums) it's still a tradition worth supporting and defending.

Please visit the Voices for the Library blog and like it on FB, follow it on Twitter if you care about your public library service.

Great post, Mina. When I went to a Spanish library, there were hardly any books! You had to know what you want and wait for someone to bring it to you. And books were much more expensive to buy there too. Don't know if things are still the same there, but we are so lucky to have our libraries!

Every time I see this ing thread I want to post this is not horrific.

I agree with Pascoe.

Appletrees, you have no idea how much local libraries mean to people. My stomach actually turned over when somebody mentioned the possibility of the library where I learned to read, closing. I will actually cry if it's closed. Seriously.

Sure, it's bad. It's just, you know, it's not horrific. Save it. It's not horrific.

you are not alone. I sobbed and sobbed when I read the news. For many people - children and adults - the library is a lifeline, as education, a haven. For many of us, we got our education there and we wouldn't have got it otherwise. For many children, right now, the children I teach, the loss of the library will make it very very much harder to do their homework. It's where they work, get access to the internet, as well as borrow books.
We piss it away at a huge huge cost to the country. Those people who say 'well I don't use it so...' THE MIND BOGGLES at such inability to see outside one's own narrow experience or personal prejudice.
'What will happen to the families with children who cannot afford books or magazines at the shops or local newsagent? Where will they get information for school projects if they do not have access to a computer or encyclopedia?' the honest answer is THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT so there you go.

Losing access to education and knowledge on this sort of scale IS horrific. IMO

Well they could just stop the school projects or do them in school time instead.

I agree with you about libraries. School projects is a very poor argument though.

curlymama are you from conservative central office too?
Or just escaped from having your social conscience surgically removed at a BUPA hospital?
What made you think like this? Seriously? If you're not being paid to?

libraries are a valuable resource should not be messed with
books are important people often don't know what they might be interested in and just stumble upon a piece of knowledge which can very well change their lives, no exaggeration

I think a lot of these cuts will be made locally by local government thus absolving central government, it is a kind of 'localism' I suppose, but as anyone who as ever lived in small places subject to local prejudices can tell you, they don't always know best, a window on the world a chance to escape can't be underestimated

after this I expect museums will stop being free too

Stop school projects? Do you mean stop homework? Stop asking children to do their own research/learn independently?
really??

We have a brand new library in our city. It's beautiful.

Whenever I go in it's packed.

I know computers are neede to provide access to specialist subscription resources - it's great when those are made available. But that's why the computers shuldn't be booked out by people checking emails or FB.

I know they need to cater to the whole community, I just wish it didn't mean so much dumbing down.

Yes, stop primary projects definitely. They don't have enough time to learn to read and write. The "underprivileged" in terms of education won't suffer. Projects require a great deal of parental input. In my experience they're pointless.

shutting libraries?

The Coalition are a bunch of c*nts

One way of making sure there's no meritocracy, no chance of people improving their lot by studying or reading their way out with books they otherwise couldn't afford

don't tell me their blaming this ideological move on labour as well.

they're

imagine what my grammar would have been like if I'd had no library to go to growing up!

sakura, it was the labour govt who made plans to shut ours (this area) and it hasnt been since the new govt that the plans changed and they have stayed open!

"The Coalition" is systematically shutting down libraries. It's part of its general plan

From the OP's link:

"The culture minister Ed Vaizey has this week launched "The Future Libraries Programme.
..The 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act is being dismantled by stealth. Under that act, the library service is under the superintendence of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. It is the responsibility of central government to take action if a local library authority defaults on its statutory obligations to the public.

All of that will become utterly irrelevant if those services are allowed to slip out of the public sector into the hands of private companies, voluntary or community bodies, or supermarkets. The Government, while claiming to be empowering local groups, will in fact be wriggling out of its own responsibilities.

No one who has seen the lifeline offered by libraries, particularly in deprived areas and particularly to children, will be in any doubt as to the extent of this betrayal. Public libraries are not a luxury, a social add-on, but a necessity. They are never more desperately needed than in times of economic hardship.

Pass the running of them over to private enterprise, local bodies or charities ? or to a fashionable muddle of all three ? and the effect will be to dismantle it beyond repair. Indeed, the areas where books and reading are most desperately needed are precisely those where communities are enfeebled and private companies are uninterested."

Maybe so but ours have been saved since the change in govt

so you're saying that, in fact, the Tories, want to support public libraries??

Is that your point?

Despite hard evidence to the contrary

No, Im saying our libraries were threatened/listed for closure whe labour was in power.

12 of our local libraries were under threat of closure by the council in 2008 and 2009 when the labour govt was in power. It isnt simply a matter of conservatives in, libraries out.

fair enough. Two wrongs don't make a right, though. The Coalition are still a bunch of *** for thinking it's okay to target public libraries in a systematic way like this

LIbraries really are a lifeline

Libraries are valuable but more should be done to ensure the people who need them most use them. Our children are teenagers now but when they were small we went, every week, to storytime and made some very good friends. We live in London where there is a huge divide between rich and poor. I don't think I recall ever seeing anything other than middle class families in there and not just at story time either. When the summer reading missions were on it also seemed to be all the middle class children dashing in and out and completing their folders. So, overall, of course we need libaries but the infrastructure needs visiting and a far more developed outreach service made available because certainly here in London parents don't seem to be coming from the estates to the libraries so perhaps the libraries need to go to them.