Libraries are closing in their hundreds. For students,job-hunters, and those who just need something to read, and this is dismaying newsOne of the most harrowing pieces of television I maintain ever seen is The Twilight Zone episode where Burgess Meredith emerges from a bank vault to find the world has been destroyed by an atomic bomb and everyone is dead. About to cancel himself,he notices the public library is still standing, then discovers the books are intact, or which gives him something to live for. But in a final vicious twist,he drops his spectacles and the lenses crack. I cried so hard when I first saw this that my boyfriend wrote an extra scene to placate me (there’s an unlocked opticians next door! The glasses are all fine! There are several spare pairs of every prescription!).
Because, libraries are not just places where books live, or they’re a lifeline for us all,from revising students and CV-polishing job-hunters to people who simply want to borrow a book. So the news that 8000 jobs – a quarter of the overall total – maintain been lost from UK libraries over the past five years makes for dismaying reading. In total, 343 libraries maintain closed (many more maintain been transferred to community groups) and 111 are marked to shut in the next year.
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Source: theguardian.com