Source A: The library with its lights still on

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

At the council meeting, the library was described as “underused”. The word sat neatly in the minutes, as if a quiet room were an empty one. On Tuesday afternoons, I had watched the tables fill with children waiting for help with their reading, and older residents unfolding letters they did not know how to answer. Perhaps those visits did not fit the council’s column headed “value”.

The proposal was to remove the staffed library and install a row of self-service terminals in the supermarket entrance. The report called this “bringing the service closer to residents”. Closer, certainly: close enough to buy bread, but not close enough to ask a librarian which book might make a reluctant reader stay for another chapter. The phrase sounded generous until you noticed who would no longer be there.

I do not blame the staff at the meeting. They had been given a budget and a set of figures, and there is no point pretending that public money grows on trees. But a table can count visits; it cannot record the moment a child stops hiding behind a coat sleeve and reads a sentence aloud. The council had measured the room and missed what happened inside it.

At the end of the report, one sentence promised that “no resident will lose access to information”. It was printed beneath a photograph of a smiling woman using a screen. I wondered whether she had come to borrow a mystery novel, fill in a form, or simply talk to someone who knew her name. The picture answered none of these questions. It only showed us what the council hoped we would see.

The library’s lights are still on while the consultation continues. From the pavement, the building looks unchanged. Inside, the staff are packing books into boxes. A service can remain visible on a map while quietly disappearing from people’s lives.