Oxford county council leader, Keith Mitchell, claims authors are out for themselves by campaigning against library closures: http://bit.ly/hei9lN
This makes me so angry! Authors are paid 6.25p each time one of our books is loaned out, up to a maximum of £6,600 a year (and only the top 250 authors collected the maximum amount last year). If libraries closed and people bought my books instead of lending them – I’d be much better off.
So, why would authors fight to keep libraries open if not for our own gain?
We stand against library closures because we are passionate about getting people reading and raising literacy levels. Closing valuable resources such as libraries works against that.
Please tell people about this case if you can; we need to put an end to the attitude that we are fighting against library closures for selfish reasons. I try hard to keep politics out of my blog posts, but matters may have to change if ill-considered, self-centred comments like this keep being made. Just because Keith Mitchell thinks of himself before others doesn’t mean that everyone else does.
Tommy
27/01/2011 at 6:32 pm Permalink
I saw this too and couldn’t resist tweeting him a money saving suggestion that he cuts his salary to save money, along with any other ignorant members of the government.
02/02/2011 at 9:27 pm Permalink
A little research on the part of Mr Mitchell would be nice. As Tommy points out, authors are hardly rolling in the riches we receive from the Public Lending Rights system, and many of us do free events at libraries to help support these vital local services.
My local library in Skegness provides a vital service for the community, not only in terms of loaning wonderful books, but also providing a safe, warm and friendly environment for the elderly and vulnerable. Speaking to the librarians, I’ve now heard countless stories of elderly library users terrified that their library will close, thus depriving them of the books they love and the warmth and companionship they find there. I believe very strongly that libraries and books have a great civilizing role in society, and that we will be a much poorer country without them.
So stop making flippant, uninformed statements, Mr Mitchell. In these difficult times you were elected to tackle issues responsibly and with a degree of intelligence – please don’t let yourself and your electorate down again by talking about matters you have clearly not researched.
After all, the consequences could be disastrous… For the monsters of the Caves love their libraries and, in general, are not too fond of political types…