Library Closures

I am one of thousands who is in uproar about closure of our libraries. In my borough, Lewisham, they are planning to close 5 out of the 12 libraries we have, a few of them which are in areas that only have one, and if they close then the residents will have to travel further to get to a library. I have already written a letter to my local paper earlier in the year about this in the form of a children's author. And I have just signed up with Alan Gibbons campaign about it on Facebook and given him permission to put my name on his open letter to the ministers. Everyone, esp children's authors, are blogging about this to keep up our voices against this and the momentum. So here is my piece about it.

I used our local libraries a lot years ago, taking out a few books at a time and loved it, but the last few years I have been buying books and not going to the libraries. Saying this, libaries have been useful to get books on various things for research and for photocopying, both by my mum and me. And when I run out of books to read, then I will go back to taking books from libraries. As a children's author, as Nick Green said in his blog, they are very handy for getting word of mouth out to our relevant audience, the children, and I have found this out this year by getting involved with Chatterbooks groups. I have sold a few of my book there, and hope to do more so in the near future. Whenever I have been to the library to do these talks, I have seen lots of children either taking books out or using the computers and attending activites there. So libaries are useful for various things, and I think they are very important resources for our future generation, esp for families who don't have money to keep buying books or don't have computers. So let's keep up shouting about this and get those ministers to rethink their decisions. I am sure there are other ways to make cuts without closing important buildings that our future generation need.

SO, DO NOT CLOSE OUR LIBARIES.