I guess the library situation across the pond is desperate enough that they’re commissioning studies about how to save the whole damn thing. One rec from the papers delivered was to allow libraries to creep up on Waterstones and get all up in they’s grill. Worked for Borders.

In the document, Hodge raises the prospect of libraries being allowed to sell books as well as lend them. She asks how online borrowing can be simplified, and how “a universal home delivery service” could be made available. Her presentation also indicated strongly that she was in favour of a more national library service; one in which you can “borrow a book in Bromley and return it in Birmingham” – and one in which libraries keep pace with technology. “Sleepwalking into the era of the iPhone, the eBook and the Xbox without a strategy,” she suggested, “runs the risk of turning the library service into a curiosity of history such as telex machines ortypewriters.”

Not all was doom and gloom: there are, Hodge said, many terrific examples of good, dynamic libraries, “but for my money, they are too few and far between.” This was due in part, she suggested, to a reluctance to modernise: “There is a trend among some librarians that we have to value the traditional library and they are resistant to change. Others, however, are really pushing the boundaries and that’s where we need to learn.When you’re facing big challenges you’ve got to think oustide the box and ideas that seem fanciful today may be commonplace in a decade,” she said.