Well, what a week it has been for the Save Botley Library campaign!
On Saturday, we had the wonderfully successful Read-In, featuring Philip Pullman and Julia Golding.
The Read-Ins were hugely successful not just in Botley, but around the county, and lo and behold a couple of days after this tremendous show of support for our threatened public libraries, the county council finds it has a bit more cash after all!
Wednesday's Oxford Mail reported:
A one-off pot of £450,000 has been created to fund services that residents want to escape the axe, based on consultations to be held in the summer.
The report quoted Save Botley Library’s Neil Clark who said: “We are not interested in privatisation by a US multi-national or volunteer groups. We want them to reverse the policy, end of story.”
Then yesterday, we learnt that another £300,000 has been found!
The Oxford Mail reported:
MORE cash has been promised for Oxfordshire’s threatened libraries after County Hall netted its second Government windfall of the week.
The new money that the county council has found is of course nowhere near enough, but it is a step in the right direction and a sign that our campaign is working.
In the lead up to Tuesday’s important budget vote we must do all we can to put pressure on county councillors to vote against the Conservative cabinet's budget proposals and protect the future of Oxfordshire’s council-run library service!
So please carry on with your letter-writing and emails to council leader Keith Mitchell and Nicola Blackwood MP, and other councillors who may be planning to vote for the budget. (some useful addresses can be found here). And do try and attend tomorrow's big march in Oxford against the county council's planned cuts, organised by the Anti-Cuts Alliance, which starts at Manzil Way, Cowley at 11.30am.
You can hear Neil Clark of Save Botley Library campaign speaking on Radio Oxford's Phil Gayle Breakfast Show here (the feature on libraries comes in at 23.30 minutes into the programme). Later on, at about 45 minutes into the programme, you can hear another Save Botley Library campaigner, Gawain Little, make the case against cuts to local services.
FORWARD TO VICTORY!
Please could you tell me how to make contact with those fighting to keep Oxfordshire libraries open? I work for the Voices for the Library campaign and am also an Oxford resident. We're trying hard to link up campaign groups nationally and are working together with most of the major camapaigns - Alan Gibbons, Bookseller etc. but so far I have been unable to connect with campaigners in my own city! Very embarassing! Mary Hoffman was kind enough to give me an email address but nobody replied. Can you help? If so please write to mickfortune@voicesforthelibrary.org.uk or visit the website at www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk.
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