Dear Sirs,

In your roles as Ministers at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport I would like you to reconsider your position on the closure of small local libraries, and school libraries. As a primary school teacher for over a decade, a parent and a children’s writer, I believe your Department must step in and  prevent wide-spread  destruction of these esssential local facilities.

If you wash your hands of this you are saying that:

• you don’t care about children who have no books at home , in fact, you don’t care about anyone who has no other access to books
• you think the excitement and specialness of entering a physical world of ideas isn’t important for lots of children or adults
• you want children to see reading as only  something you do to fill in worksheets at school
• you think Library events such as Toddlers’ Storytime, talks to the elderly about nutrition and drop-in sessions for people for whom English is an additional language no longer need the space they have been used to
• you think writers don’t want small local spaces to work in and connect with their readers – without commercial pressure
• you don’t think support for adults who find reading and writing a real challenge needs to be done at an approachable  local level
• you think it will be OK for people who haven’t got their own transport to have to travel miles to find a library that is still open
• you think it will be acceptable to expect people  who have got transport to travel miles
• you think people in bed & breakfast accommodation don’t need anywhere to go and learn, that the homeless have  no right to books,
• you think only people who can pay should have a safe and comfortable environment in which to read study and meet others nearby
• you think people who have no internet access don’t need any learning facilities near them
• In short you don’t care about libraries and everything they do, you just want money to be saved at the expense of our culture.

Yours

        Philippa R. Francis,  MA (Hons ) Primary Education,  BA (Hons) English Literature

I am far from the only one to feel this way, please read these

• Candy Gourlay and Teri Terry
• Philip Ardagh
• Bryony Pearce
• Lucy Coats
• Kathryn Evans
• Nick Cross
• Keren David
• Jon Mayhew
• Nina Killham
• Sarwat Chadda
• Alan Gibbons  founder of the Campaign For The Book
• Nicky Schmidt offers a South African perspective