SIR – As councils everywhere address their new financial challenges, focus is falling on public libraries as potential areas for economies, creating some controversy.

The problem is that public libraries have a great future behind them.

For more than a hundred years, these noble institutions offered access to books and learning to those with few other sources available to them. Staffed by knowledgeable and caring professionals, they reinforced the culture of reading for pleasure and education, as well as providing a local source for reference facts and material.

But, as we now view life through the kaleidoscope of the internet and Google, the world of information has assumed a very different aspect. It is available 24 hours a day from your own home – and even your mobile phone – and contains just about every word written or fact recorded, all accessible in a few keystrokes.

Like the local blacksmith or the street corner post office, the absolute need for the public library has diminished, and it is understandable that those bearing the cost should now consider its current and future value.

We shall all be sorry to see them go, but the world moves on – sometimes painfully, but move on it must.

Graham Hoyle, Kirkbourne Grove, Baildon