Libraries could be brought into the 21st century by locating them in shopping centres and offering loyalty cards and cinema ticket rewards for visits, the Culture Minister said yesterday.

Days after she was denounced for saying that the Proms were unrepresentative of society, Margaret Hodge provoked further anger with her proposals for reforming public libraries.

Mrs Hodge, who suffered a public putdown by Downing Street after her comments on the Proms, said that it was vital for libraries to maintain relevance to the Google generation.

Among her ideas were opening public libraries during evenings and all weekend and striking deals with Starbucks or Costa coffee shops. Mrs Hodge said that libraries could, for example, have advertising tie-ins with Amazon: “You’ve borrowed the book – now send a new copy to a friend.”

In a speech in Brighton to the Association of London Chief Librarians, she told delegates that although spending had risen by 17 per cent in the past ten years, the number of books borrowed had dropped by 34 per cent. Mrs Hodge said that there was no reason why public libraries should not be used as widely as they were in their peak year of 1980, despite books becoming cheaper to buy.

Tim Coates, former managing director of Waterstone’s and author of the library report Who’s in Charge? Responsibility for the Public Library Service, said: “Book collections have become poor to the point of uselessness and that is a problem which is not addressed by clubcards or Costa coffee shops. Good coffee doesn’t make a poor bookshop into a good one – and neither will it do so for a library.”

He observed that, since last October when the London borough of Hillingdon made investment in book stock its priority, the use of its libraries had more than doubled.

In 2005 the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee called for increased spending on books and estimated that more than £600 million was needed to repair neglected library buildings. Desmond Clarke, a library campaigner and former director of Faber, dismissed Mrs Hodge’s ideas as “mismatched, short-term, quick-fixes” in place of real policy. Christopher Hawtree, the author who ran a long campaign to save a library in Hove from closure, mocked the proposals, saying: “These loyalty cards, any bright teenager would see a great scam there. Take out a dozen books, don’t read them, bring them back and get a free coffee or whatever.”

Speaking at the Institution for Public Policy Research on Britishness, Heritage and the Arts this week, Mrs Hodge praised “icons of a common culture” such as Coronation Street and attacked the classical music programmes of the Proms. Her criticisms drew an immediate response from Downing Street, which said that the Prime Minister “thinks the Proms are a good institution”.

Yesterday Mrs Hodge called for libraries to provide a web-based lending service with home delivery, allowing books to be borrowed in Bromley and returned in Barnet. Preempting questions about how her proposals would be funded, she said that “there ought to be scope for efficiencies through greater collaboration”.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist