This week and last I've been following the newspaper articles in defense of public libraries by Lauren Smith in the Guardian and in The Independent. And screaming inside at the amount of commenters pointing out that we don't need libraries as we have Google and that all librarians do is stamp books so surely volunteers can do that. Many of the Library Twitterati have posted succinctly replying to the comments so I shalln't waste my time engaging in this too much.

I do find it ironic that these comments have been made in the weeks of A'Level and GCSE results (and the usual 'standards are slipping' debates) and public outcry over the numbers of students unable to get university places. Public libraries are a place where you can learn for free. They are also a place that will help you with your resits, your job based learning, your job/uni applications, your gap year plans and so on. But then I guess you can do all that on Google. If you have a computer. And internet access. And the skills to find, use and evaluate web based sources. Anyway, I wasn't going to entertain this!