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October 20, 2006
Closing the libraries of Lancashire
A few weeks ago Councillor Kevin Ellard of Lancashire County Council wrote me an email in which he said I had misunderstood the noble intentions of Lancashire County Council in an entry I called "no books in Lancashire"
I replied that I would be delighted to be corrected and he drew attention to a report which he and his colleagues had written reviewing the future of the libraries in the county. This report was written and published after a decision had already been implemented to close many of the libraries in the county.
I searched Councillor Ellard's report for anything which committed the council to raise the quality of the book collections, which had evidently declined considerably, and failed. The report contained little factual information and nothing that, in a meaningful way, would have addressed the views of the local people, to my understanding. I found nothing at all that inclined me to reverse the view I had expressed, nevertheless I wrote to Councillor Ellard and suggested we could discuss these things as, perhaps, I was missing something. The views the report expressed were much in line with the kind of things said by the MLA, so there were reasons why his colleagues might have seen validity in what they wrote. I just didn't think they were right. He didn't reply..
A few weeks later and I was sent the draft performance figures for English counties for last year and observed that in Lancashire book lending had fallen by 7% in the year, which is one of the worst figures in the country (not quite as bad as Hampshire but almost). So I felt some justification for my views and wrote again to Councillor Ellard to ask if he would like to resume the discussion as I know some things that could be helpful to them. He replied that the correspondence was finished and would I kindly put an entry on the blog to say that I was wrong about books in the libraries of Lancashire
Today comes news of more library closures in Lancashire, to the dismay of the local people.
Posted by Tim Coates at October 20, 2006 11:05 PM