Further to this post, here's a Daily Telegraph leader about the financial pressures on public libraries. It has an end-of-civilization air about it, but the problem it highlights is a real one:
When David Lammy, the culture minister, wrote to local authorities at the beginning of the year, urging them to keep public libraries open, about 50 were threatened with closure. His words, supported by no more tangible help, seem to have had a negative effect, for today the figure is more than 100, out of a total of just over 3,000. This is a crisis.
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Free public libraries have been a glory of Britain since the Public Libraries Act of 1850.