http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/authors/tim-davies/ Recent content in Tim Davies on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/davies-rvw/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/davies-rvw/ For those of us who work in public libraries these are, in the words of the old Chinese proverb, 'interesting times'. The service is under scrutiny at both local and national levels, with an intensity unknown in previous generations. Public libraries are in the news, with headline stories on the BBC's Today and Newsnight. They are the focus of demonstrations and read-ins, as councils struggle to balance severely reduced budgets. They have become a shorthand method of describing the difficult choices hard-pressed local authorities are having to make: such-and-such a 'backroom function' is worth x number of libraries.