UK library closures and the fights to save them

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/17/library-closures-campaigns-fights-cuts-uk

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Hundreds of libraries have closed or been confronted with closure in the past five years as local councils across the UK deal with funding cuts. Here are some of the most notable threats to libraries – and the efforts that went into trying to save them.

Kensal Rise library, London

The library was closed down alongside five others by Brent Council in 2011to save £1m annually. Writer Zadie Smith was vocal about the importance of saving the library, stating: “I can see that if you went to Eton or Harrow, like so many of the present government, it is hard to see how important it is to have a local library. But then, it’s always difficult to explain to people with money what it’s like to have very little. But the low motives [of the government] as it tries to worm out of its commitment ... is a policy so shameful that they will never live it down.” Local libraries, Smith said, are “gateways to better, improved lives”.

Following a protracted campaign, a volunteer-run library plans to open next year in a community space within the former council-run branch in Bathurst Gardens. Melvyn Bragg gave a talk there about his latest novel in October to raise funds for it.

Related: Librarians take legal battle against library closures to government

Bowhill library, Fife

This month, Fife’s decision to close 16 of its libraries was attacked by high-profile Scottish authors including Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. One of the libraries due to close is Bowhill, a place that Rankin – the creator of fictional detective John Rebus – said had been his “refuge and a place of constant wonder” when he was growing up. “I’d take the maximum number of books allowed each week and remember the thrill of being told I’d reached the age where I could have an adult ticket and take books from the adult fiction section,” Rankin said.

McDermid added: “These are libraries in small villages that don’t have other resources, and so libraries have a role that is more than just the lending of books. They serve as a community hub in so many ways – they’re a warm place to go when you can’t afford to put your heating on, and there are people who don’t have computers whose only access to the internet is in a library. To throw them away seems to me to be short-sighted.”

High Heaton library, Newcastle

Last year campaigners fighting the threatened closure of High Heaton library celebrated a new three-year lease acquired by Newcastle College, which decided to run some of its classes for students from the building.

Two years previous, authors including Philip Pullman, Julia Donaldson, Malorie Blackman and Anne Fine branded Newcastle council’s plans to close the vast majority of the city’s libraries as “wrong and immoral”. In an open letter, they wrote: “This is no time to cut libraries. It is the young and the elderly who disproportionately depend on branch libraries. The cost in educational underachievement would far outweigh any savings made by cuts. It is not the role of a Labour council to act as a conduit for the coalition government’s ‘austerity’ cuts which disproportionately hit the poorest and most vulnerable. We call on Newcastle’s councillors to reconsider this wrong and immoral course.”

Breck Road library, Liverpool

Also in 2014, residents in Liverpool expressed concern over the proposed closure of Breck Road library, claiming the people of north Liverpool would suffer as a result. Breck Road’s proposed closure was part of Liverpool council’s plans to shut down 11 libraries out of the city’s total of 18.

Later, a “love letter” to Liverpool’s libraries from a group of more than 500 writers, including poet Carol Ann Duffy, Caitlin Moran, Jonathan Coe and Meg Rosoff, ensured they stayed open. “The loss would devastate Liverpool – it’s a massacre, and at the expense of the children of Liverpool most of all,” the supporters wrote. “With recent figures showing that one in three children does not own a book, it seems to us terrifying that even the chance of borrowing a book is about to be taken away from many Liverpool children.”

Sydenham Library, London

The library was among five Lewisham libraries threatened with closure in 2011 – it lost its public status that year and is currently being run by community organisations.

At the time, there were read-ins at the library as part of a national day of protests at proposed cuts across the UK. Writer and life peer Baroness Mary Warnock said the closure of her local, which opened in 1904, would be barbarism. “In times of economic misery and unemployment, we need more not less consolation from libraries, more access to newspapers, books and computers, more places to sit, research and make friends. It is barbarism to close it,” she said.