Further reading
Caitlin Moran on library closures. “Caitlin Moran (author of the funny, touching and pretty sensible adult book, How To Be a Woman, whose column is the reason I buy The Times on a Saturday) used her weekly column in yesterday’s The Times Magazine, to condemn library closures.”
Patrick Ness, Carnegie Medal acceptance speech. “an excoriating acceptance speech, in which he lambasted the government’s policy on libraries”
Philip Pullman “Leave the libraries alone, you don’t understand their value”. Widely publicised and well-received speech by the world-famous author.
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Numbers
293 libraries (258 buildings and 35 mobiles) are currently under threat or have been closed/left council control since 1/4/13 out of c.4265 in the UK. The complete list is on "Tally by Local Authority" page as are other changes to budgets such as cuts to hours, bookfund and staffing. Public Libraries News estimates 78 libraries and 14 mobiles were lost in 2012/13, although this is likely to be an underestimate. CIpfa have calculated that 201 library service points were lost 2011/12 . Public Libraries News has tracked down links to 142 of these via counting up all reports about public libraries in the media each day. Full Fact have analysed the accuracy of the figures. For a list of new and refurbished buildings see this page,
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Having pondered (and studied) this question since I first began working for libraries in 2003, at this point I tend to think of a library as being of value in every context of our lives, the only issue being how efficiently librarians can break down the traditional barriers of time (in a chronological sense) and distance between the reader and the knowledge and wisdom of others that might be of value:
“People wish also in the main, to give their fellows and themselves the opportunity for self-improvement … human sympathy … the universal desire for an increase of human happiness by an increase of knowledge of conditions of human happiness”
Library Daylight – Tracings of Modern Librarianship, 1874-1922, Edited Rory Litwin.
“the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you”
Boing Boing, 17 November, 2006, Zadie Smith on the practice of reading.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/17/zadie_smith_on_the_p.html
(It is not without reason I do not think that we have evolved this way.)
If I can add a brief bibliography to the latter post:
Great Britain. Ministry of Education; Bourdillon, H. T. (1962). Standards of Public Library Service in England and Wales. Report of the Working Party appointed by the Minister of Education in March 1961. (Chairman, H. T. Bourdillon.). London : H.M.S.O.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/standards-of-public-library-service-in-england-and-wales-report-of-the-working-party-appointed-by-the-minister-of-education-in-march-1961-chairman-h-t-bourdillon/oclc/558643663&referer=brief_results
HANSARD 1803–2005. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS BILL, (Hansard, 30 June 1964, Second Reading)
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1964/jun/30/public-libraries-and-museums-bill
Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1964/75?view=extent
The public library system of Great Britain: a report on its present condition with proposals for post war reorganisation, Library Association, 1942. Lionel R McColvin
Also the books cited on the subject of the science of happiness in the following presentation:
The Economics of Happiness and Libraries
http://www.slideshare.net/oslergareth/library-camp2012-happinessindex-14833820