Carl Clayton makes a good point on the SINTOblog. His question on the legal basis under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 for charging at different rates for reserving items held in other libraries in the same authority, and those obtained from outside the authority, will send chief librarians scurrying to their council solicitors.
Reservation charges have always seemed to me a tax on the purposive reader, and unjustifiable. It occurs to me too that the Easyjet approach to public services which Conservative councils such as Barnet are now introducing, by which the council provides a very basic, poor-quality service free of charge, and then makes the user pay for anything extra, has been pioneered by public libraries for many decades.
See A free public library? for the original post
