U.K. public libraries dead by 2024? A TeleRead perspective
A library activist group called Libri warns that public libraries in the U.K. may be dead in 20 years. In A minute’s silence, please, for the late public library, the Independent spells out the details from Libri’s report and elsewhere.
“There were 377 million loans recorded from British libraries in 2003,” says writer Ian Herbert, “down from a reported 480 million in 1999.” U.K. libraries are spending just nine percent of their budgets on books, many of which are now outdated.
It’s a lesson for all librarians, especially here in the States where short-sighted cities are squandering money on contruction or maintenance of library palaces downtown at the expense of hours and collections in neighborhood branches.
Even well-off cities such as Seattle, site of the new palace shown here, can’t do everything when times are tough. Priorities, please. As it happens, just a fraction of U.S. library spending goes for books and other text. Let’s learn from the mess across the pond, which is apparently is even worse than ours.
Net vs. books
Given the U.K. book crisis, is it any wonder that schoolchildren at many libraries now beeline for the computers–to visit Web sites full of questionable information–rather than reading books as their predecessors did?
“In the past,” the Independent quotes one librarian, “we’d have a rush of book inquiries when children came out of school with their homework at four o’clock. “Now it’s only the Internet. It’s been the biggest change in my 30 years here.”
A far cry from the past
Compare that statement with the reflections of a British writer quoted as saying: “I used to go to the library so much it made my mother cry. I practically lived at the local library I visited…I withdrew 10 books a week and went once during the week and twice on Saturdays.”
Yes, that’s a writer speaking. But clearly more books and newer books would help–and not just the young:
Stewart Fawcett, 65, has long since exhausted the library’s supplies of travel books on Crete, something of specialist genre for him. His Heald Green borrowing record on the subject includes the 1890 tome Travels in Crete , which he obtained on order, but the most modern guide he can find today is dated 1993. “The Crete books are way outdated,” he grumbled, settling for a James Herbert paperback instead. “I can’t find anything of interest.”
The article cites a recommendation that more money go for books, presumably the paper variety. Yes! But along the way, why not also consider a well-stocked national digital library system in the TeleRead vein to reach Net-oriented children, stretch resources and vastly improve the number and freshness of books?
Related: “UK libraries out of use by 2020″ and Is this the library of the future? from the BBC, which offers an audio in RealPlayer format. In the latter story, it’s clear that books are being played down. What’s the point? Are libraries to be little more than free video stores? I’m all in favor of multimedia, but a little balance could go a long way.
(Report found via LISNews.)
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