UK: Public Libraries: Government Scraps Promised Library Measures
As you'll read, it's not only on the U.S. side of the Atlantic where public library funding is an issue.
Remember all of the discussion from the UK a few months ago (March, 2010) about improved funding for public libraries. Well, at least as of today, it seems to have been a lot of talk.
The new culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has decided not to implement 2m pounds (per annum) of library spending commitments set out in his predecessor Margaret Hodge's Public Library Modernisation Review policy statement in March.
Hunt is scrapping the measures as part of a 73m pounds saving being made by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as part of its contribution to reducing the fiscal deficit, the DCMS announced today.
Free internet access in all libraries and the promotion of library membership as an entitlement from birth have been abandoned. Meanwhile the extension of the Public Lending Right to non-print format books (estimated at £300,000) has been suspended and is to be considered instead at the spending review in the autumn.
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