Interesting post over at The Guardian online about public libraries in Britain. Critical of the amount of $ being spent on buildings, when collections seem to be dwindling and some libraries are closing outright. Rachel Cooke writes that "expenditure on books in our libraries is below 8% of the total public library funds, and in inner London that figure is just 5.7% (across the country, councils spend just 1.6% of their funding on children's books; several councils, Hackney and Doncaster among them, spend less than 1%." Disturbing stuff! Cooke also has an interesting perspective on the Idea Store (having not yet visited one, I can't say if she got an accurate picture, but it's certainly not the picture painted at conference sessions I went to about Idea Stores! They neglected to mention the waifish book collection!)
Fun stat: "1.5 million visits to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium library last year makes it the UK's busiest library." I'll be putting that one on my list for December.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saving public libraries in Britain
Labels:
england,
funding,
idea stores,
MLA,
politics,
public libraries
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