If we were ever to have solved the problems that we have, those people who work in the service needed to have understood the idea that there have to be priorities in what is done – and the stock of books in each library is and always should be the first. It is that the library profession has enthused about everything from pretending to give health advice to three dimensional printers to pretending to know about coding that has confused politicians about what libraries are for – and – sadly – lost the library service its wonderful reputation with the public.

Quite right Clare. This was intended a short ideas post – there’s a whole ton of stuff that public libraries can do for people and adult learning and return to learning is right there in it too. I also like the idea of coding clubs.