Endangered shelf life
Libraries should be cherished, but the comfortably off are letting the side down
Rebecca Front
Wednesday July 19 2006
The Guardian
It’s a small thing, but it rather brightened my day to read about it. A handful of flagship libraries are getting additional funding to make themselves more attractive, and therefore more viable. One of them, in Richmond, west London, opened its doors recently, restocked, redecorated and ready for the 21st century. I have a vested interest in the story of the demise of libraries: for one thing, I am co-writing a comedy set in a crumbling and dysfunctional library, and have had a niggling worry that this might in some way contribute to the rot besetting the service as a whole; and for another, our own local library – which is neither crumbling nor dysfunctional – is one of those whose funding is being steadily eroded by the council.
