The One Show did a slot on library closures and on voluntee-run libraries this evening.  Below is a transcript.  A link will be added here when it becomes available on iPlayer.
Alex Jones (AJ): Now we all know that councils across the country are having to make drastic cuts and local libraries are particularly in the firing line.
Matt Baker (MB): Some have managed to stay open through the dedication of volunteers but can this work for every library?
AJ: Anita Rani has been to find out.
*scene of bookshelves, Anita Rania (AR) is sat reading a book, she looks up…*
AR: Libraries have always played a really important role in my life. I love everything about them: that cosy warm feeling, distinctive musky smell but most importantly the fact that you’re surrounded by all those brilliant words.  But with budgets being squeezed, councils are having to make difficult choices.  Across the UK many librarie are closing or reducing their opening hours and librarians are losing their jobs.
*scene moves to the outside of a one-story Victorian looking building in a wooded street*
AR: This used to be the library of Friern Barnet in North London but [AR rattles padlock on its frontdoor] it doesn’t exist anymore and that has prompted an angry protest from the people that want to use it.
*scene shows people protesting outside the library, with vehicles beeping their horns in support*
AR: Last month, some of the locals decided to occupy the building in protest [Picture shows young people chanting and banging on the library door]
Martin Russo (MR): People feel that the library is the centre of their community.  It will partly destroy this sense of villageness and this sense of community.
AR: The council told us budgets meant they had to save £1.5 million from their libraries service and they acknowledge that not every resident would be happy with their changes.
MR: I feel devastated that my local library has closed and doesn’t seem right.  Our community has said no.  All the schools and all the businesses around here have said this library needs to stay open.
*timelapse of a large marquee being set up full of books*
AR:  In the weeks following the closure, the protest group decided that they would try and run their own makeshift libraries on Saturdays,  They call it the People’s Library and it relies on the honesty of local people to return the books.  According to the group, the council have offered them a building where they can run their own voluntary library but campaigner Martin Russo is keen to find out if a library run by volunteers can ever hope to survive in the long term.
*Scene shifts to another road, similarly leafy, with old buildings, this one with bunting*
AR: So I have taken him on a bit of a trip outside London.  Here in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire,  they have set up a library with no professional staff.   The One Show first paid them a visit two years ago [See link here]and now I am taking Martin to see what he thinks.
*The pair walk into the library and are greeted by Tony Hoare (TH)*
Tony Hoare, chairman of Chalfont St Giles Community Library: Hi there and welcome to the library [he shakes hands with Martin].  We fought tooth and nail for the library not to be shut and in an ideal world you want it to be run by the County but unfortunately there isn’t the money to do it. 
AR: So in Chalfont the local people agreed to keep the library going themselves. Volunteers don’t get paid but the library does get a grant from the Council – and others – to buy books.  They also ask users for a voluntary £10 annual subscription to help with running costs. 
TH:  It’s going extremely well and a huge improvement over when it was a county library.  When they closed it, there were about 4500 books.  There’s now 7000.  It’s now open 50% more of the time. 
*Picture shows an older lady (V) sitting talking to children at a story time*
AR: They even managed to keep children’s groups going.  Storytime is happening just behind me.  I love storytime so I’m going to go and join them.
V: In the old days they had the same books on those shelves for what felt like years and now a lot of them are given by people from the village.  The literary quality of the books is up by miles.
AR:  Do you think that this model should be rolled out across the country.  Do you think it would work?
V: No. I don’t.  You desperately need a community like this where people all know eachother and are prepared to come in and help.
AR: So what do you do when you’re in a community where don’t have those, where it’s not a particularly affluent community, what do they do?
V: I think that the authorities would really have to keep those libraries going.
AR:  Martin is really impressed with what he has seen in Chalfont St Giles and the success the volunteers have had in improving the service but could something similar work in Barnet?
MR: I don’t think it can, no.  I’m sorry but it is no replacement for a paid library service from the local authority with paid librarians. 
*Back to Friern Barnet, with it’s “Speak Up for Libraries” flags and “What no books?” posters*
AR: In Friern Barnet the people’s library is contuing to operate.  The campaigners do not want it to become a replacement for the council library.
MR: None of us have the time or the inclination to run this service.  We’re far too busy.  We’ve got families, working full-time and studying.  It’s really disapppointing that the council has not listened to us.
AR: The campaigners are considering whether one course of action might be to challenge the closure in the Courts.   In other parts of the country, some councils have been forced to rethink their plans to close libraries.
*Back to the Studio.  AJ and MB are sat down with Melvyn Bragg*
MB: Well, Melvyn, you’re a Cumbria lad.  Did libraries play a big part in your growing up?
Melvyn Bragg: At one stage of my life, they were everything, absolutely everything.  Well, we didn’t have books.  We lived in a council house yard and in the corner at the bottom was the library and I used to go with my Dad Tuesday nights and Friday nights up the steps.  Mr Carrick was the librarian and he used to say “I think you should read that, I think you can move on to that now” and for four or five crucial years before I went to a school that had a library, I just read and read and read from that library.  It’s fantastic these volunteers trying to keep them open and they are all over the place and good luck to all of them.  It’s for many people it’s the entrance to a hundred new worlds.
AJ:  And you’re a good man because you did say that you are doing your books to a library in London.
Segment ends