“LIBRARIANS CULLED TO SAVE CASH” is the headline in The Bookseller. Call me a cynic, but I wish it had had me reeling and writhing and fainting in coils – it didn’t. Not long ago there was an online petition to Downing Street regarding a possible cut in funding to the British Library – a cut that would probably have resulted in admission charges being introduced. The official response to the petition ran along the lines of: “Hey, we only asked them what they’d do if we cut their budget. It’s not our problem if they decide they have to charge.”

The Bookseller’s article referred not to the British Library but to Dorset and Kent county councils, which are making significant cuts in the number of professionally qualified people they employ. There’ll still be folk behind the desks at the library, you understand, they just won’t be librarians. Hampshire proposes to cut 27 librarian jobs and reduce the pay of an additional 17 staff by £4,500 each. Does any of this matter to readers? Yes, it does.

We here at Books love libraries – which, like The Bookseller headline, is perhaps not surprising. Yet, in these strange times, it is worth trumpeting that love, so we are very glad to have Marina Warner’s account of her extraordinary bibliophilic adventures. I can see how a person might be scared of a library – I have been myself – with their mysterious classification systems, warreny stacks and rustling silence.

Overcoming that fear is where librarians come in. The library is the territory, the librarian the native guide. It’s the same thing in many bookshops, too: if the people at the tills might as well be selling soap, how can they help you to discover what you might want to read? With libraries the brilliant thing (remember this?) is that it’s all completely free. No, I can’t be a cynic, because I still find this amazing. I have a plentiful supply of new books, yet I am a regular library user.

And . . . speaking of new books. You may be wondering why we don’t have a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this issue. With a book of such formidable girth, deadlines simply wouldn’t allow, so seek the news pages and Times Online for word of Master P. this week.

Next week you’ll be able to read our own Amanda Craig’s magisterial analysis of the entire Potter oeuvre. In the meantime you can get Volumes 1-6 out from the library, right?

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