I could not agree more with your leader (Editorial, 18 June) and the wonderful, life-affirming institutions that are public libraries. While sitting in my local community library writing this letter, I am surrounded by myriad activities including a well-attended jobs fair, people browsing shelves, and a cafe stocked with delicious food.
It is a sad indictment that our libraries are being decimated because local councils are being starved of the very necessary funds to keep them alive. Every generation from a child in arms to a centenarian can feel at home in a library’s multicultural, inclusive atmosphere. Loneliness is the scourge of our disconnected and alienated world, so libraries help to solve a real mental health problem by opening their doors to everyone. I agree too that helpful, knowledgeable staff and volunteers are the lynchpin that ties it all together. I am very fortunate that in Norfolk we have not lost this educational, vibrant, inclusive mine of information. I could not be more grateful to our far-sighted county council.
Judith Daniels
Norfolk
• Your editorial reflects the despair my father, AW McClellan, would have felt at the current treatment of this vital service. Invited by the BBC to give a talk in celebration of the centenary of the General Public Libraries Act in 1950, he pointed out that the public library offered “free access to facilities for reading books of every field of knowledge, expressing every point of view” in contrast to films and newspapers which were edited to provide a large enough audience or readership to provide a profit or convey a particular political slant. His use of a unique mass observation survey to determine readers’ interests and views led to the creation in Tottenham of his Service in Depth scheme, which is still reflected in public library shelving to this day. He concluded his 1950 talk by pointing out that the first action of the Nazis when coming to power was the public destruction of the library books. While the current attack on libraries is not so drastic, we already have much reduced accessibility to variety of view and expertise. My father’s ideas are laid out in detail in his book, The Reader, the Library and the Book, and I have tried to capture his unique contribution in my biography, Public Library Pioneer. Let us hope that the increasingly desperate campaigns in local areas finally awaken politicians to the threat these cuts pose to democratic freedoms.
Keith McClellan
Banbury, Oxfordshire
• There is a law in Britain to protect public libraries: the Museums and Libraries Act 1964 imposes on local authorities a statutory duty to provide comprehensive and efficient public library services. In 1964 parliament passed a law to protect public libraries from the vandalism, castration and closure currently being inflicted on them in the name of austerity, but which is nevertheless illegal. It means too that any public servant, politician or prime minister who knowingly breaks the law is a criminal and liable to criminal proceedings and presumably debarment from continuing in office.
Keith Martin
London
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