| |
Let us campaign to stop these library philistines
• WHAT are we to make of the cold, jargon-ridden uninformative statements emanating from the council’s “‘assistant director of culture” about the future shape of our public libraries in Camden (Borrowed time: jobs to go at libraries, July 23)
Some staff – probably the kind who unfailingly help and guide me on frequent visits to my nearest library, people with training, experience and endless willingness to help the public – are to go. Others will be “held on temporary contract” which suggests they are to be mucked around and left in a state of uncertainty about their jobs. What a shabby reward for service to the serious reading public!
We learn that humans are to be replaced – such is the relentless march of techno-obsession – by machines; which will almost certainly be costly and break down and become obsolete and in need of expensive replacement. The remaining staff will be “embedded” and from that position will have to “move around and offer help”. Has all this been thought through? (Don’t respond to that question if the answer involves appointing expensive management consultants with little knowledge of what a public library actually is).
Public libraries have increasingly become social centres providing lecture rooms, art galleries, cafés and facilities for mothers and children. All that is admirable and desirable, but the heart of any library is the large well-stocked space where the public may peruse and borrow books, or sit and study them, and experience a quiet they cannot find in the world outside, often not even at home. It is unbelievable that any servant of a responsible council should threaten these last havens of quiet in the way envisaged in the oddly named “Growing Your Library” scheme (can we grow libraries as we can grow potatoes on our allotments?). Library users and librarians should band together to halt this philistine nonsense.
ALAN BROWNJOHN
Belsize Park, NW3
|
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
