Unless you are a librarian you are unlikely to have heard of Eileen Colwell but she put Hendon on the map. How? She set up the first ever children’s library service there and Hendon Children’s Library became internationally famous.

But Eileen Colwell was never just a library administrator. She was a gifted storyteller who saw her job as bringing children and books together. Her collections, A Storyteller’s Choice and half-a-dozen others, were frequently reprinted by Bodley Head and Puffin Books.

Today they may seem a little dated but then they were revolutionary.

And now? Barnet is proposing to dismantle not only what Eileen Colwell started and successive children’s librarians have fostered and developed, but the whole library system, which stretches back to Victorian times.

Libraries and their place in our society, far more than issuing and returning books, has to be savaged in order to ‘balance the books’ according to Barnet’s current consultation document. I am willing to bet that no librarian was involved in drawing it up. No librarian would have entertained these ideas for a moment.

It has been compiled by those who know to a pound what the service costs and what can be saved but have no idea at all about its value and what will be lost.

So no, none of your three schemes will do, thank you. Go away, tear it up, and get someone who knows about the value of libraries in our communities to think again about the problems and how they might be resolved.

Barnet has been told it has to save money and someone, somewhere, has decided that the library service should be sacrificed. We all know, don’t we, that once Barnet sells its library buildings to its favourite developer there will be no way back.

I have a suggestion to make. Several years ago now, the Mayor of London placed a levy on our council tax to help pay for the Olympic Games. No consultation. No discussion. Just an additional tax. I cannot see how Barnet benefitted from this or why we should pay more than, say, Newcastle.

I have no idea now what I paid or, rather, what I pay because the levy continues. It goes out of my account every month.

I suggest Barnet tells Mayor Boris Johnson that enough is too much already and stops paying it. No, I don’t want it back. It should be devoted to saving for our library service, which is far more important than whatever Boris spends it on.

Dennis Pepper

Windsor Road, Finchley Church End