Conservatives threaten Wiltshire Libraries

8.46.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 9th Jun 2010

In their latest desperate attempt to save money following the move to one council Wiltshire Conservatives are cutting half a million pounds from the libraries budget, which may mean library closures in Wiltshire.

At the moment the county has 31 libraries, plus a mobile library service which visits 280 villages and communities.

There are 216,000 library members and they make 2,100,000 visits and borrow three million items per year. 221 people are employed by the library service.

Nowadays libraries are not just about books, though Wiltshire does have three quarters of a million of them. There are also CDs, DVDs, Audio books, and access to the internet. Your library will also be able to give you information on such things as bus routes, police, tourism, local events and local clubs, and it may hold "meet the author" events, creative writing workshops, or performance events - rhyme times, theatre, puppets, and others.

A spokesperson for the Conservative council said, "There are no plans yet for closing libraries but we are of course looking closely at the future of the service."