UK Culture Secretary wants to turn London libraries into Barnes & Noble chains

Listen to this. Library usage is down, says UK Culture Secretary Margaret Hodge! Boost your stats!

She wants London libraries to institute:

• home delivery
• direct marketing
• in-house cafes
• “a Loyalty Card that gives users a one-day travelcard or a pair of cinema tickets for every ten visits”

She does have a couple sane ideas, namely merging all London city libraries, currently unaffiliated, into one citywide system. However, “It is unclear how much new funding would be required to institute the changes Hodge proposed, but she’s looking for results.”

Apparently she thinks libraries are just really bad at selling themselves… if libraries just marketed and programmed more and better, they’d have tons of users! I guess she is not aware that library branches all over the UK are being closed due to lack of funding and are, I’m sure, doing the most programming they can with the limited funds they have.

Finding funding isn’t her problem, though… she just wants those results.