SIR - Bradford is notorious for hiding its light under a bushel, so it was no surprise to find, purely by accident, that our libraries have now made an important facility available to every library card holder.
By going to the website, http://www.bradford,gov.uk/libraries, users can access some of the most important research facilities from their homes, merely by quoting their library card number. These include the Oxford English Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the entire contents of more than 50 UK and Irish national and regional newspapers, including the T&A, Grove Art Online, providing web access to the entire text of 34-volume Dictionary of Art and The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, including access to more than 500 sound samples.
All these (and more) are fully-searchable in a more user-friendly manner than using the index of the hard copy edition. Subscribing individually to any one of these services could cost many hundreds of pounds.
I was amazed (but not surprised) to find that not all library staff were aware of this service. But hats off to Bradford for bringing its services into the digital age!
Karl Dallas, Church Green, Bradford
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