LIBRARY campaigners say an improved offer from Dorset County Council to continue some support for the county’s threatened Libraries does not go far enough.

Supporters of the 20 libraries that could lose council funding have welcomed an offer from the authority to continue to provide a stock of books, three hours of librarian support a week and the continued use of the self-service withdrawal system.

However, they claim the improved proposal put forward by the council’s library manager Tracy Long still does not solve their principle problem, which will be finding volunteers to keep the libraries open if the authority withdraws its funding.

The council is currently consulting on proposals to withdraw funding from 20 of its 34 libraries from April next year in a bid to save £800,000.

Acting chairman of Ad Lib (the Association of Dorset Libraries) Tim Lee said: “We have been told that, if Dorset goes ahead with its plans to cease to fund these small libraries next year, we will continue to get a circulating supply of changing books, as we do at present.

“We have been campaigning for this as we know that any library will soon lose readers without constantly changing books to attract them in.

“Tracy Long’s ‘Easter present’ to us also includes either 300 or 500 new books a year for each branch depending on its size, together with the retention of the very expensive self-service system recently installed in all Dorset’s libraries.

“This means that any library that wants to ‘go it alone’ will still be linked to the Dorchester headquarters.”

The Ad Lib group has come up with its alternative solution to find the required savings, which would spread the impact across all 34 libraries.

Mr Lee added: “This is a very welcome improvement on the totally unworkable proposal from the library service – but it goes nowhere near solving the problem facing our village and small town libraries.

“The new offer virtually takes away the essential help of our professional librarians, who would work in each community library for only three hours a week.”

Mr Lee said the problem facing communities was finding the volunteers to keep the libraries going during the rest of their opening hours.

Mike Chaney, Ad Lib member and is chairman of the Friends of Puddletown Library, added: “The council says it wants to have a library system that’s sustainable. I don’t believe a system which depends on volunteers is sustainable.