h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have recently found out that the funding for the library at the university where I work is being cut again and that our department is spending too much. The whole thing about library funding annoys me so much.

As a child I loved my weekly trips to the town library. As a teenager it became my sanctuary. At university as a student and as en emplotee I have watched as library facilities decline due to a lack of funding.

This seriously gets my goat up. Libraries are such a wonderful resource, not to mention being vital for good research. It seems funny that this wonderful thing should be on the decline. People may say that the internet is taking it's place. But if this forum, and others, are anything to go by, there is nothing better than curling up with a good book. The Internet will not replace that but as we see here, it is used to share information and used alongside books.

I know how you feal! My Library has recently had large spending cuts and now we can't buy new books that people want to read! It gets on my nerves as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are shutting my local branch library. Says it all.

That's just pathetic. I loved my library as a kid. I was brouth up on a rough council estate and the library was my sanctuary. Without it, many families I knew would not have had any access to books. I know that there is only a finite amount of money but people really have some of there priorities wrong.

We have a small library in the village where I live and it's opening hours have been cut twice since we moved there. It's so sad that people are being prevented from accessing such a vast amount of information.

All the libraries where I live in suffolk have been installing lots of computers hooked up to the internet with free use in a way to try and encourage more kids into them, the problem is that you can now no longer go down to the library and search their catalouge for a really good book because all the terminals that used to be just catalouge searches atre now obsurced by crowds of kids browsing the net on somebody elses phone bill. It's kind of ironic because now I access the library catalouge from my computer at home and then go down and fetch the book. Why can't they just spend the money on something to read? And why is it that there always seem to be loads of books that are either the same or extremely similar and never seem to be take out whereas you can never get hold of a copy of the one that you do want and when you do find it, it's at some obscure little library in the middle of nowhere?

I can understand your annoyance. I too feel that too much money is being spent making computers accessible. I have nothing against children learning about the technology. But it seems strange that people are continually down on computers for turning children into brainless zombies but shouting if the same children don't have a computer in every class room.

What about spending money ensuring that children can read and write? I also think that books are vital to encourage the growth of imagination. Without imagination the guy who invented the transistor would probably have got nowhere. And that would have meant no computers.