Monaghan libraries cannot afford new books or newspapers

PUBLIC LIBRARIES in Co Monaghan have been told they will not be able to buy any more new books or daily newspapers this year due to funding cuts.

The county librarian was informed by Monaghan County Council in the last fortnight that the new-book budget of €165,000 had been suspended due a shortage of funds.

The library’s new-book budget had already been cut by almost 20 per cent at the start of 2009.

"We librarians are very disappointed and quite annoyed, but there has to be good reasons for it," Joe McElvaney, Monaghan county librarian, told The Irish Times. He said Monaghan's six libraries served a population of more than 55,000, and had become much busier in recent months and always did during a recession.

Other libraries have had cuts of over 80 per cent in new-book funds for 2009, while libraries across the country have experienced average cuts of 10 per cent, a Library Council spokesman said.

The budget for new books in Galway city and county’s 30 libraries was cut from €550,000 to €100,000 at the start of the year, according to the Library Council.

Galway Library has had to limit daily newspapers mainly to city branches and cut the number of new books to one between all branches, Maureen Moran, senior executive librarian at Galway Library, said yesterday. She said Galway libraries were busier than ever as “it is one of the few places you can go now without spending any money”.

She fears that cutting funding will dismantle all of the work done in the last few years, and will bring us back to the 1980s “when people didn’t want to borrow books because they were so dirty”.

A Library Council spokesman said libraries have also lost book funding in a grant from the Department of Education for primary school books, and many expected cuts in the new-book fund to increase.