Val McDermid and Damian Barr urge Scottish councils to halt library closures
Val McDermid and Damian Barr urge Scottish councils to halt library closures
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Authors say plan to shut more than 20 public libraries could have devastating effect on Scotland’s cultural future. The writers Val McDermid and Damian Barr have urged councils in Scotland to abandon plans to close more than 20 public libraries, with the worst affected in rural areas.
A number of councils across Scotland have proposed cuts in library services, including shutting 13 in Aberdeenshire, seven in Moray and five in Perthshire, as they wrestle with significant funding pressures. McDermid and Barr, the ambassadors for a campaign to promote public libraries led by the National Library of Scotland, said closures could have a devastating effect on the country’s cultural future and on equalities.
“You’re taking away the opportunity for the next generation to make a mark,” said McDermid, who credits her childhood visits to Kilmarnock’s public library for her career as a novelist. “You’re leaving it to the prosperous middle classes to decide what our society should be and you’re depriving people of a future. It is burning the seed corn,” she added. “They should be opening more libraries.”.
Barr, the author of the award-winning memoir Maggie & Me, said: “Every library that closes is a dark day for that community and for our country. They are engines of social mobility and community cohesion. “Libraries are like the NHS: they should be ringfenced, they should be protected in perpetuity, because we understand that their value is not just on the day that somebody goes, their value is for ever when you open a book and you learn something about yourself or about the world.”.
