YP Letters: Library policy that's a real-life work of satire

SHEFFIELD Council continues its destruction of the city’s once great library service with the dumbing down of the Reference Library at Sheffield Central Library, with the Dewey System used by libraries all over the world replaced with category order, making it harder to find books.

The council also made an additional cut of £98,000 from the staffing budget this year.

To put this in context, the volunteer libraries will get additional funding worth over £200,000 per year after the council’s original plan of having them become self-funding failed miserably.

It is also worth noting the well documented fall in visitor numbers (60-90 per cent) at volunteer libraries that the staff left so the backwards logic of Sheffield’s library policy seems to be that well used staffed libraries in the city have money cut, whereas volunteer libraries losing lots of users continued to be funded.

The biggest irony of all this is that if staffed libraries were losing users at the rate volunteer libraries were, they would be marked for cuts or closure.

It really is beyond satire!