Not only should a library be accessible for people with disabilities
or little means, a library should be accessible so it is used. I
cannot place enough emphasis on this. If a library is not accessible,
people with any other alternative will choose the alternative, and
that starves the library of users, and of course, of the all-important
usage figures, and the service will starve.
Also, 5 miles is a really long distance between branches in a city.
Using that formula, the Mitchell would be the only library remaining
in Glasgow, and I would not exactly call it accessible.
Cristina
On Feb 8, 2011, at 16:03, David Kenvyn <[log in to unmask]
> wrote:
> I think that we need to step back a bit (especially from personal
> abuse)
> and think what libraries are about.
>
> Libraries are a storehouse of knowledge organised for use by their
> communities, which can be academic, geographical, professional,
> based on
> age etc.
>
> In order to be used by their community, they should be accessible.
> This
> means that people should be physically able to get to a library.
> They
> should be free at the point of access. They should be available for
> anyone in the community that they serve. They should cater for the
> interests of their communities.
>
> The attack on public libraries means that there will be communities
> that
> will not have access to a library service, because the nearest
> branch and
> the mobile library service have been abolished. Having a big,
> shiny new
> library in the city centre does not help if you do not have the
> means to
> travel to that library. The attack on public libraries means that
> people
> with limited mobility will not have access to library services
> because the
> journeys are too difficult. It means that the housebound service
> will be
> under threat. It means that access to knowledge will be limited.
> It
> means that access to fiction, stimulating the imagination, will be
> limited.
> It means that people will not have the means to sustain their reading
> skills, or the means to keep their minds active. It means that local
> identities are undermined.
>
> Equally, the attack on academic libraries is an attack on the very
> learning
> ethos of their institutions. How can people learn without the
> means to do
> so? How can research be done without access to the sources of
> information?
>
> Libraries are fundamental to a civilised, literate, dynamic
> society. We
> need to say that the attack on libraries is a disaster for the whole
> country, and that the coalition government should seriously think
> about how
> they can deliver what they say they want to deliver, if libraries are
> undermined in the way that we all know is coming.
>
> I should add that this is my personal view.
>
> Regards
> David Kenvyn,
>
>
> Tel: 0141 777 3143
> Internal: 4429
> Fax: 0141 777 3140
> E-Mail: As above
>
>
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