For Councils up and down the country the library service has been a bit of a white elephant. It produces less income than it produces and is a massive drain on a Council's service budget and is therefore always one of the first services to see the budget axeman.
Once they were the only way most people came into contact with books because they were expensive to buy, but now, well they've turned into another facet in our throwaway world, leaving the poor old library, which was probably one of the first green services to recycle, to become a thing of the past.
For the library service to survive anywhere in this country it needs a complete revamp. There's hundreds of them up and down the UK, if they were all to get together their combined buying power would be immense, they could then not only be libraries but also bookshops giving the Council's a legitimate way of making money rather than increasing taxes and parking fees.
What better place to buy a book than a library?
