Pattern for the future (From The Oxford Times)

Pattern for the future

6:40am Thursday 2nd September 2010 in

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Sir – My letter suggesting that volunteers could avoid the closure of libraries in these straitened financial times drew two replies.

On August 19, Mr Winterbottom agreed with me, last week, Sylvia Vetta says that volunteers cannot run libraries. Volunteers all over the country are running village shops and charity shops, and are capable of running the smaller branch libraries, whilst the larger town libraries would need a librarian to oversee volunteers in the routines of lending books.

Many volunteers would be parents and grandparents well used to reading to children and could well undertake the invaluable sessions for children organised by libraries in holiday periods.

The Friends of Kennington Library should not bury their heads in the sand and hope that, because a centrally funded service is unversally recognised as valuable, this will cut much ice with our cash strapped masters. I see in today’s Guardian newspaper that Suffolk County Council is preparing to hand over its library service to community groups.

I feel that this may be a pattern for the future and that we should all prepare for it.

Martin Sheldon, Headington Quarry