@Carol Haynes: As a "pretext" for what, exactly? I don't quite understand. Do you mean to say the pretext is for the
Libraries Transformation Project? (Or perhaps a more accurately renamed
Libraries Rationalisation Project.)
Is that project defined somewhere as being the implementation of a stated government
national policy for the rationalisation/consolidation of libraries or for cultural "transformation" by that means?
If several/all councils are doing it, then it sure looks like it could be a co-ordinated strategy - i.e., not just/only a cost-saving tactic by each locality.
Are you able to suppose as to why there might be a concealment of this by euphemistically calling it "a cost-saving tactic"?
Messing around with libraries would arguably be unlikely to usefully "transform" libraries
per se, but it
probably would be likely to transform the
culture of those localities where the libraries have been removed.
That would be because it would directly change (reduce?) the people's right and ease of access to so many things previously taken for granted and as funded (your point) by the people in those communities - e.g., including media such as CDs, DVDs, microfiche, books/literature, magazines, informational pamphlets - all containing information and knowledge and even related to the co-ordination of local cultural events.
These would be things that otherwise normally might all have been accessed/distributed through the local library facility. And what of the travelling libraries that I recall being so useful in outlying small villages in the UK?
It will leave a vacuum.
Are you aware of there being any stated or mooted intention to fill the vacuum caused by the closing-down of local libraries? e.g., (say) the institution of local "cultural reading rooms" funded by local religious groups and/or by local employers/corporations or by the EU Commission on Libraries (if such a thing exists)?
That could be interesting, and certainly potentially transformational for the local culture(s). Maybe that is the long-term intent? Cultural re-engineering?
In any event, if you implement the project at a local level in each and every council's domain, then wouldn't that directly imply a potential nation-wide cultural transformation?
So, if the project
was being progressively applied across all localities, then it brings us back to the question I asked above:
Is that project defined somewhere as being the implementation of a stated government national policy for the rationalisation/consolidation of libraries or for cultural "transformation"?