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February 23, 2008
Hampshire county council to spend 350 thousand pounds more on books
Long enduring readers of this blog will be pleased, if astonished, at this morning's news that Hampshire County Council, out of the blue, has announced that it will increase the spending on books for public libraries by 350 thousand pounds.
Hampshire has over the past ten years, under the same stewardship, reduced expenditure on books for libraries to the point that there are hardly any left. A long difficult and hard fought battle by local people to reverse this policy has, at last, apparently, begun to work.
It has always seemed that the battle for Hampshire libraries was akin to the thin red line commanded by Sir Colin Campbell at the battle of Balaklava. If they had given way the Russian cavalry would have broken right through to the harbour and destroyed the entire British Fleet. If Hampshire county council (which is among the largest in the country) had continued to remove from and deride the role of books in public libraries, then the entire public library service was under imminent threat.
Keep holding the line. We have not won yet-- but at least we have forced a small retreat in one corner of the field. We can now urge other councils to make similar improvement and for Hampshire to do more.
Posted by Perkins at February 23, 2008 12:33 PM