LIBRARY campaigners are urging Dorset County Council to save jobs by keeping the county’s 10 under-fire Libraries open.

This month sees the final decision on the future of Dorset’s library service, with a proposal to withdraw funding to 10 of the county’s 34 libraries being recommended to the council by officers as the authority seeks to save £800,000.

However, Ad Lib (the Association of Friends of Dorset Libraries) is calling on councillors to back another option, which involves making cuts across the service in order to keep all 34 libraries open.

A report considered by the council’s community overview committee on Monday, June 20, stated that the option supported by Ad Lib would see six posts lost in the library service, compared to 24 posts if 10 libraries were to lose funding.

The campaign group is now calling on the public service union Unison to back its fight as they say the matter has now become a jobs issue.

Acting chairman Tim Lee said: “It looks obvious to us that the union representing library staff should want to back our campaign.

“The plan we are advocating, which would keep all 34 of the county’s libraries open, saves four times as many jobs as the one the professional management of the library network is backing.

“The case they are putting to the county council shows that many more jobs will go if their plan is accepted.

“Yet it would save not a penny more than the alternative scheme we are backing for making the economies the council needs to achieve.”

Ad Lib spokesman and chairman of the Friends of Puddletown Library Mike Chaney added: “It’s difficult to see why the library chiefs want to put at least 18 more members of staff out of work than they need to.

“You would think they would be making every effort to keep staff on.”

Dorset branch secretary for Unison Pamela Jefferies said that her union would support Ad Lib’s calls to keep staff in their jobs and libraries open.

She said: “We would certainly support any campaign to save our libraries and save our members’ jobs.”

Mrs Jefferies said that any cuts to the library service were unwelcome, even if the libraries were to stay open, and the campaign message needed to go to central Government as it was funding cuts from the Government that put the council in its current situation.

She said: “Really the reason libraries are having to close is because of dreadful cuts in Government funding.

“I think this should be fed back to Government because it seems all they want to do is decimate our public services.”

The final decision on the libraries will be made at full council on July 21.