By: Borin Van Loon

Borin Van Loon — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:02:16 +0000

It’s all well and good making a programme about these trophy libraries (actually only a handful worldwide) in big cities. However, a bit misleading in the programme’s introductory passage to link it to the community struggles happening in the UK over the past 2 years against library closures, cuts to funding and service degradation. The inference was that the former negates (or solves) the latter, so everything’s alright. In a county such as Suffolk where most of the population aren’t in big towns, but in scattered and sometimes remote villages and smaller towns. where the public transport has been cut by the County Council slashing subsidies to essential services, how will those people access their library service? If we had a huge, glossy trophy library in Ipswich, the county town, as they have in Norwich, it’s not going to improve things very much for library users in the rest of the county. In fact, with all the extra money needed for one project it is more likely that funding would be sparser elsewhere. Who is going to ensure that a reader in a small town 25 miles away will be able to borrow a book, language course, CD or a DVD? Suffolk has had its library service privatised with one third of its funding cut. How can the service not suffer? Please do not peddle the all-to-easy line that massive glass and concrete libraries in a few big cities are a sign that all is well. The fight to save an invaluable cultural service continues in small, out of the way places where people actually live; places which aren’t very sexy or headline-grabbing, where old buildings have to be made to work because there isn’t anywhere else and there certainly won’t be any new funding for new branches in the foreseeable future.

Comments on: Special report: The library returns

By: Borin Van Loon