Val McDermid and Damian Barr urge Scottish councils to halt library closures

The Guardian

30-01-2025

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.'
The National Library of Scotland, one of the UK's four statutory book depositories, is launching its 'love libraries' campaign on Valentine's Day to help mark the centenary of its foundation in central Edinburgh in 1925.
Campaigners have been alarmed by a steep increase in councils identifying libraries for possible closure in recent months, after a decade of incremental closures and service cuts that heavily affected school libraries.
Information requests have established that 42 public libraries have already closed in Scotland since 2014, with overall staffing cut by 25% and library funding reduced by 30%, despite a statutory requirement on Scottish councils to protect services.
About a third of school librarian posts, which are not protected by law, have also been cut in the last decade. Some councils are proposing mobile or virtual libraries instead, or asking for volunteers to run public facilities.
Sean McNamara, the director of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland, said this raised serious questions about whether the Scottish government was properly enforcing the statutory protections for libraries.
McNamara said a meeting earlier this week between Angus Robertson, the Scottish government's culture secretary, and council representatives to discuss libraries and cultural policy was welcome, but specific action and funding was needed.
'The cuts that are happening at the moment could be really, really damaging,' he said. 'Library numbers have recovered since Covid but people need their libraries there. They need staff in them that can provide the services to support their reading, to support their digital inclusion, to reduce social isolation. If they're ripped out, then the heart of those communities is gone.'
Robertson has come under pressure at Holyrood from the Scottish Green party MSP Mark Ruskell to intervene more directly and review the statutory duty to provide public libraries.
The culture secretary confirmed on Thursday he would look at 'any measures' that would help protect library provision and access. He said it would 'grieve me greatly' if libraries were to close.
'As Scotland's culture secretary, it matters greatly to me that people right across the country have access to libraries,' Robertson said.
Robertson said he wanted to see a close partnership with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the umbrella body for Scotland's 32 councils which he met earlier this week.
Scottish councils and cultural bodies have been given more money in the new budget, with a previous ban on council tax rises scrapped this year. A record number of arts and cultural organisations have also received funding from Creative Scotland.
'Both of us are agreed that we want to do everything that we can to promote and support culture and the network of cultural organisations and cultural venues and libraries right across Scotland,' Robertson said.