Libraries closure protests expected
Some 80 events nationwide scheduled in co-ordinated day of action against library closures
Click here for an interactive map of all the scheduled events
Author Philip Pullman has described the spontaneous surge of popular support for libraries threatened with closure by local authority cuts which will see Save Our Libraries Day protests taking place up and down the UK tomorrow, Saturday 5 February as "one of the first great shots across the bows of the cuts battleship".
Pullman, author of the celebrated Northern Lights trilogy, compared the activism over the threatened library closures to the student protests over tuition fees, saying: "I hope it'll bring to the attention of even the thickest-headed local council member that there is a great deal more passionate feeling about libraries than they bargained for."
At least 80 events will take place tomorrow, with a roster of notable authors coming out against the cuts, which now threaten more than 400 libraries across the UK: among them, Kate Mosse on the Isle of Wight protest, GP Taylor at Easingwold in North Yorkshire, Philip Pullman and Mark Haddon at read-ins in Oxfordshire, and Julia Donaldson lobbying the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.
Famous names from entertainment are also taking part. Comedian Phill Jupitus will work as a librarian for a morning at Plymouth's St Aubyn library to mark his support for Save Our Libraries day.
Manwhile actor Ralph Ineson who plays Amycus Carrow in the Harry Potter films will do a reading at Norbury Library in south-west London, with everyone invited to come along dressed as a character from the JK Rowling books.
Campaigners are looking ! for crea tive ways to make their point. In Milborne Port in Somerset, a hooded "book snatcher" will descend on the library, stealing books from children and the elderly inside, and leaving them instead with signs that say "illiteracy", "poor life chances", and "social isolation".
At Sheffield central library there will be a "mass Shhh-in", with supporters encouraged to make the traditional librarians' reproof, followed by a rousing three cheers for the library. Campaigners at Sydenham library in Lewisham will release 26 balloons, each one bearing a letter of the alphabet, as a symbol of library's role in supporting literacy. In Gloucestershire, a band of "flying authors" will spend the day racing between every one of the county's 43 libraries.
Readings, petitions and campaign speeches are the staple, with many using music and fun activities for children, promising a celebratory atmosphere to focus on how popular local libraries are within their communities.
Social media have been key to the rapid spread of the co-ordinated protest, with Twitter and Facebook campaigns proliferating from organisations such as Voices for the Library, The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and book industry magazine the Bookseller. And the campaign has travelled overseas, with the Twitter hashtag #savelibraries initiated on a whim two weeks ago by a Shropshire lecturer and bibliophile! , @mardixon now adopted by library supporter groups in the US, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Feelings are running high, with Philip Pullman's impassioned speech in defence of the public library service, originally made at an Oxfordshire campaign meeting and later posted online, picking up tens of thousands of readers and a huge response.
The author said he is still receiving responses to his speech. "I had an email yesterday from a woman brought up in Blackbird Leys [a low-income Oxford suburb where the local library is one of those threatened with closure] saying that the library had been the sole place where she could find release and escape. A child in the same position, from next year on, would find him or herself with nothing at all."
Pullman added that his own experience as a schoolteacher taught him that claims libraries are a narrow, middle-class issue are simply not true. "I defy anyone to tell me, looking at a class of children, which will love libraries and which won't," he said. "Sometimes it's the child of a single mother living on benefits; sometimes it's the child with plasma screen TVs and three holidays a year, but no books in their home. In every class in every school there are children whose lives will be changed by a library. Taking that away from them is not fulfilling your proper duty as a local authority."
Councils hard-pressed by government budget cuts say the harsh reality is that difficult choices must be made, with other vital services including those for the elderly and disabled also crying out for funds.
Keith Mitchell, the council leader in Oxfordshire, where Philip Pullman lives, has queried whether local authors have "thought through the impact of their messianic message about literature on the most vulnerable in our society". Oxfordshire proposes to stop funding 20 of its 43 libraries.
But author Alan Gibbons, who runs the Campaign for the Book, pointed out that there are more than 20 local authorities, including Cornwall, Devon, Lincolnshire and Norfolk, where no library closures at all are planned and queried why others felt it necessary to axe half their service. "Culture minister Ed Vaizey should call a halt to all closures under the 1964 Libraries Act and demand that the councils that are unable to manage their services properly should be made to listen to those that appear to be protecting them better," Gibbons said.
An interactive map of all the Save Our Libraries Day protests can be seen here
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