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January 28, 2008
London Evening Standard
Printed an edited version of this letter tonight
"A L Kennedy was absolutely right to condemn the decline of our public libraries in her Costa Prize-winning speech. There used to be a presumption among those who worked in them that anything might be worth reading and anything that had been published could be made available.
But for anyone under 40, the public library service is an odd, out-of-date institution, kept alive for similar reasons to the Anglican church.
There was no need for this to happen. The destruction came about because those who run our libraries, although provided with plenty of money, gradually reduced the emphasis on books. The situation is worst in London, where only 4 per cent of the £200 million annual budget is spent on books. Most of the funds go on administrative and professional management.
Very few libraries are open in the evening when young Londoners need them and the buildings are mostly decrepit and dirty. The result is that only 15 per cent of Londoners believe libraries are relevant to their lives and book lending has halved in a decade.
It is up to local councillors responsible for libraries to do something to stop their administrators behaving in this way. Most do not know how; they could do worse than listen to Hillingdon's Cllr Higgins who has introduced some simple improvements which have doubled the usage and the popularity of his libraries."
Posted by Perkins at January 28, 2008 10:31 PM
Comments
In her Costa Prize speech, A L Kennedy not referred to the collapse of English public libraries’ book stock but also to overcoming her fear of flying.
Any library user with such a phobia would be instantly cured if told a helicopter were waiting outside. What a boon this would be! All too often the quest for a book - even from the past decade - involves cross-county, even cross-country treks. Try finding The Swift Foot of Time (1983) by Nancy Phelan, an Australian who was over here in the late-Thirties and, after selling soap in the Midlands, spent the war in Devon, and wrote one of the funniest, even shocking accounts of life there. It’s a hoot. Shocking to think there are no copies in Sussex libraries: readers cannot learn that "Barnstaple was full of dashing Poles, famous for biting the nipples off local tarts" or that her daughter's "kitten slept on the dough when I left it to prove by the fire. It was full of black fur but too precious to waste, so I ate it all, fur and all".
For new writers and others, well-stocked libraries provide the greatest prize - readers.
Posted by: Christopher Hawtree at January 29, 2008 2:01 PM