Library cuts and job losses condemned by leading authors

Councils are expected to look to volunteers in attempt to balance budgets hit by the government's spending review


Benedicte Page The Guardian, Monday 22 November 2010

Writer Kate Mosse said she did not understand why the government was ‘cutting this frontline support for literacy’. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian


Writers Philip Pullman, Kate Mosse and Will Self have criticised government cuts that could see up to a quarter of librarians lose their jobs over the next year. Widespread library closures are expected as councils cut their services and look to volunteers in an attempt to balance budgets hit by the coalition's spending review.

Mosse said "frontline support for literacy" was being cut, while Pullman declared that the librarian "is not simply a checkout clerk", and Self condemned the "crude calculus of cost-benefit analysis" involved.

North Yorkshire is considering reducing its 42 libraries to 18 over four years, while Leeds is proposing to axe 20 smaller libraries. Cornwall, Brent, Lewisham, Hammersmith and Fulham, Richmond, Barnsley and Warrington are also planning closures.

In Buckinghamshire, 14 libraries could become volunteer-run; in Gloucestershire, 12 will be closed if volunteers do not step forward. Camden, Westminster, Oldham, Southampton and Cambridgeshire are among the councils whose plans include greater use of volunteer staff.

Recent statistics from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy showed a drop of nearly 1,000 in the number of paid library staff in the 12 months to March 2010, a 3.4% fall to a total of just under 25,000. Over the same period the total number of volunteers in UK public libraries rose 7.7% to 17,111.


Philip Pullman, (pic left -  by Eammonn McCabe), author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, said he was "greatly concerned" by developments. "The librarian is not simply a checkout clerk whose simple task could be done by anyone and need not be paid for," he said. "Those who think that every expert can be replaced by a cheerful volunteer who can step in and do a complex task for nothing but a cup of tea are those who fundamentally want to see every single public service sold off, closed down, abolished."

The full piece at The Guardian.