Threat to good books

Published: 1 July, 2010

• THERE are significant numbers of young people who make use of the Swiss Cottage Library, and the British Library, but show little awareness of how the resources they are enjoying are under threat (Letters, June 24).

Attending meetings during exams might be pushing it.

I’m sure serious students and readers would have voiced their disapproval of the new Hampstead Library layout that has the reading tables in the front, the noisiest part of the library!  

Currently our small, local libraries, like Hampstead, are starved of books, quality magazines and journals.

Serious users have to go to Swiss Cottage, the only good lending library in Camden.

But even there current ordering practices mean that there are 85 copies of a Harry Potter book and no copies of the beautiful picture biography of Wells Coates by his daughter, entitled Door to a Secret Room.

Wells Coates was the influential architect of the Isokon Building which, miraculously saved from Camden Housing Department, still stands proudly in Camden.

One in 10 books I’ve searched for have been “borrowed” but never returned.

The new self-checkout and check-in system guarantees more theft of books.

Popular demand is what determines the ordering.

Swiss Cottage has some real gems mostly, thankfully, kept in their stocks.

Once brought up for loan it’s a lottery as to whether they be returned with coffee stains, ink marks, or at all?

JOYCE GLASSER
Savernake Road, NW3