Please can we have our library books back?

As you might expect, the campaign against library cuts has involved some imaginative tactics. The latest idea on the Isle of Wight was a mass borrowing - users taking out their maximum number of books.

On the island this is a rather generous 30 titles per person, and by emptying the shelves they seem to have hit a nerve.

This plaintive e-mail arrived from the Isle of Wight Council:

"The weekend's good-natured protest certainly saw a marked increase in people using the library and the interest in the local service has certainly been noted."

"While we do have plenty of titles left at Newport we would however ask people who may have taken out more items than they intend to read - some people took out the maximum limit of 30 - to return them so they are available again for other library users."

It seems seven times the usual number of books were borrowed on Saturday. Lord Louis Library in Newport saw a 7000 reduction in their usual total available of 37,000.

Now the Library service is keen to re-assure people that the libraries are still open, though it seems there are some shortages:

"While some sections, particularly adult fiction and children's picture books have been particularly popular among protestors, there remain plenty of other titles available."

I suspect some of those opposing closure will want to hang on to the paperbacks that they've liberated, just in case. On the Island they're planning to move from eleven libraries to just two - with improvements at Ryde and Newport, an on-line and mobile service and helping volunteers to run extra services.

All sides agree that there is a need for modernisation. In Westminster today North Swindon Conservative MP Justin Tomlinson pointed out that the service he used to oversee on the council spends only seven and half percent of its budget on books.

Dorset Lib Dem Annette Brooke talked of a contradiction in continuing to support the scheme supplying books for new-born babies, if when they learn to read they can't find a place to borrow books nearby.

The Minister responsible for Libraries is the MP for Wantage Ed Vaizey. He pointed out that the debate about the future of libraries didn't begin with the cuts.

Hitting out at what he called "Labour's rank hypocrisy, spreading pointless scare stories" he guaranteed the coalition's commitment to its statutory duties under the libraries act, something that Labour had put up for review.

He called for more innovation, from automatically signing up new borns to the library, to the sort of investment seen in Swindon's new £10 million library. He declared "The death of libraries has been greatly exaggerated."

It may be worthwhile getting that in writing, from the parliamentary record Hansard. Most of us rely on the on-line version nowadays, rather than the bound volumes in the library of course...

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