The Isle of Wight council (IWC) has responded to the successful protest taken by Island residents last weekend.
Over 500 people turned out at Lord Louis library on Saturday to help clear the shelves in protest at the proposed cuts to nine of the eleven libraries on the Isle of Wight.
The protest made the local evening news on the BBC and Meridian and was mentioned in the Guardian yesterday.
The message was clear
A whopping 6918 books were borrowed from the Library, compared to the usual 1,200 for a Saturday, with the crime section being cleared first.
George Brown’s response to the protest was, “The weekend’s good-natured protest certainly saw a marked increase in people using the library and the interest in the local service has certainly been noted.
“While we do have plenty of titles left at Newport we would however ask people who may have taken out more items than they intend to read – some people took out the maximum limit of 30 – to return them so they are available again for other library users.”
Make your views known
If you haven’t responded to the library consultation yet, make sure you do so before 7 February.
As was pointed our by Cllr Steve Stubbings at last night’s public meeting in Ventnor, the consultation states
Q. Are our views going to be listened to?
A. Yes. No decisions have been made and these proposals are
suggestions which need residents’ comments to refine them. The council needs to know what residents think, so it can make the right choices about the service.
Podcasts and video of the protest to follow on VB.
