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Mobile library service future still uncertain
The future of Whitby's much loved mobile library service remains uncertain.
A spokesman for North Yorkshire County Council told the Whitby Gazette it is looking at all options for its library services, including mobile libraries, in the face of 25% Government cuts to its budget and further reductions expected in the Government's autumn Comprehensive Spending Review.
A campaign to save the mobile library from the chop was started last November when news of the plans was revealed in the Whitby Gazette and a petition was mounted to save it.
He said: "Some current library services are therefore at risk, though the county council is blazing a trail in looking for innovative solutions to provide the best possible service with the money available.
"One way of doing this is by working with local groups that can offer space in a building.
"The county council's library and information service is now working with half a dozen community groups to bring library facilities to venues such as village halls, an extra care development, a community centre and village pub."
But Danby county councillor Herbert Tindall said locals are continuing to fight the plans.
"We're putting up a fight to save it but I'm very worried about it," he said.
"We've lost so much already in the rural areas – they've done away with public phone boxes, a lot of post offices have closed in the villages so the library service is about all we do get now.
"It's a very valued service and we don't want to lose it."
Among many groups who are fighting to save it are local Women's Institutes.
Anneke Wood, secretary of Glaisdale WI, said: "Using the village halls for libraries certainly wouldn't work in Glaisdale.
"Our village hall is used by so many groups that there isn't the space for library books and besides, who would there be to run a library in it?
"Fifty years ago it might have worked but now there wouldn't be the people available because so many go out to work and the active retired ones are already busy running so many community efforts.
"The library van gets round a massive area and elderly people particularly depend on it.
"My parents couldn't get to the library if it didn't come to them.
"The trouble is that once it's gone, we won't get it back again."
Chairman of Glaisdale Parish Council, John Thompson, added: "It definitely wouldn't work in Glaisdale village hall.
"There are some local people who go into Whitby to shop and could use the library there but many elderly people don't drive or have had to give up driving.
"Anyway they couldn't carry heavy bags of books.
"People who need it most are to be deprived of it – it's another loss to the rural community."
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Saturday 04 February 2012
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