Bad news on Muswell Hill Library this week – as Labour-run Haringey Council has gone back on its promises to put in more money to give the library a much needed bit of care and attention.
There were worrying signs back in July last year, when at a public meeting the Director of Libraries didn’t really seem to know what was going on with the library plans – and it has now been years and years since Labour first started talking about restoring and rennovating the building (e.g. see here).
Which brings us to this week – and Labour have gone back on plans to put in extra money for Muswell Hill Library. As my colleague Gail (Muswell Hill ward councillor) said:
Muswell Hill Library has seen years of neglect by Haringey Labour and again the only commitment is another patch-up job. I am deeply disappointed that the library will not be extended after much consultation of residents and library users.
Lynne Featherstone 
Now we see what drives young people away from reading books, raising the literacy rate amongst Haringey’s young people, ensuring young people are taking advantage of our public libraries.Personally Lynne, I have always been a public library member, however, terminated my membership purely due to the lack of activity within the library and the unwelcoming environment. Perhaps encouraging younger people to volunteer and operate reading groups, IT groups or all types of educational programmes. Although I would claim not to be a critic of public libraries, on the contrary I do everything I can to promote them; I am, rather, a critic of those who currently manage libraries locally, and wished more was done to bring younger people into our public libraries, in order to raise the literacy rate and ensure young people don’t spend all their time on the internet. Far to many young people spend double time on internet, i.e surfing MSN and various other tools, when clearly they could be doing something far more educational. Meanwhile, young people should be spending less time on the internet rather go to the library……. personally, alot of the stuff on the internet is either academically unverifiable or if you were to use that at uni, straight away your marks will go down. At university level, you are encouraged to use books, not the internet which any Tom, Steve or Kevin can upload whatever they want. The public libraries are a good tool for young people you really want to learn and earn good grades. You should instigate a meeting between yourself and the Director of Haringey libraries to assess what efforts can be made to draw younger people into public libraries, so our libraries can be utilised to improve the borough’s poor literacy rate. Here are a few interesting articles- http://www.parentscentre.gov.uk/usingcomputersandtheinternet/plagiarism/http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Familyleisureandrecreation/DG_071029http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,2084971,00.htmAccording to an article printed by The Telegraph, “Those aged between 16 and 24 spend 14.7 hours a week online compared to 13.4 hours in front of the TV set, according to the survey of 7,000 people.”That is a joke! The article further states, “Young people in UK devote 14.7 hours a week to the web, an hour less than they spend watching television.”