Librarygate

I have bought many wonderful books for 10 or 20p as a result of Lambeth Council's policy of selling a library book if it hasn't been issued for two years. But it's so sad to go in to the library and find whole sections of shelving as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. So I resorted to taking my favourite books home, not to read, but just to save their status as library books by getting them date stamped.

After a few years of my library book rescuing efforts, I read in the Streatham Guardian of three temporary 'information hubs' Lambeth Council set up. In six weeks, they issued a handful of books at a cost of over £70,000 - just to raise their ranking prior to an audit. One 'ghost library' issued no books at all, but each 'hub' cost £12,700 to install and £5,325 to run per month. Crazy. For that money they could have filled all the empty shelves in the Borough's libraries with books AND raised Librarians' wages.

An Audit Commission spokeswoman later said the library opening hours were not even taken into account in the cultural services inspection and did not affect the Council’s score.