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September 14, 2008
What will Andrew Motion say about libraries?
The poet laureate has recently admitted he finds his job very difficult and that writing verses for the Queen is hard to do.
It is interesting then that he has been given the job of Chairman of the MLA. Will he find this a difficult job, too? It is better paid and although the company is not quite so elevated, he might find it a challenge, too.
His views about public libraries are on the record-- he doesn't use them because the stock of books is poor-- as he reported to the Camden New Journal earlier this year in an article in which both he and Andrew Wilson made their views known. This is interesting territory because Councillor Flick Rae of Camden along with Michael Clarke, the chief librarian have recently confirmed their view that the policy of downgrading books in the libraries of Camden is one they intend to continue to follow vigorously.
The disregard for the opinion of local authors shown by Mrs Rae and Mr Clarke is bewildering to see. Rude, even. You would have thought as guardians and promoters of the use of libraries, they would take the opposite view.
Will the Government now intervene to stop Camden ruining its libraries as The 1964 Public Libraries Act requires them to do? They should; and now it is Andrew Motion's job to decide whether to make such a recommendation to the Minister. Will he?
Flick Rae and Michael Clarke don't seem to understand the simple difference between obtaining information and reading a book. They talk as if one was the equivalent of the other. It is as if they have never read anything interesting in their lives. They are not the people to be running a large public library service (actually the best funded one in the country). They appear to say that nothing written more than 5 years ago is worth hanging on to. How ridiculous.
They both need to be replaced.
Posted by Perkins at September 14, 2008 8:10 AM
Comments
In Brighton and Hove libraries, the non-fiction shelves are now all being labelled with this word "Information". It seesm to suggest that readers should simply regard books as a repository of facts to be flicked through rather than something read, digested, thought upon.
A social divide is opening up, and growing wider: those with the money to find and buy books of their own, and those left with the slim pickings of public libraries which are no longer interested in fostering the knowledge and thinking which lead to self-sufficiency.
Posted by: Christopher Hawtree at September 14, 2008 11:31 AM