A superficial third leader, and a news report in this morning's Times manage to muddle some serious issues about public libraries, such as the closure of forty branches last year, the fall in money spent on books, and the loss of qualified librarians' posts, with trivial issues like noise and food, and some untruths: 'early libraries were associated with the church', for example. There were few churches in Babylon, or in the first Ptolemy's Alexandria.
By contrast, through Lorcan Dempsey's blog, I find the US Council on Library and Information Resources No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century, which, though discussing a different sector, is a much more serious treatment.
Update: can you spot the deliberate mistake? Maninder Kaur did (see comments)
