BOOK lovers in Oxfordshire are turning to electronic tomes more and more, according to latest figures from our libraries.

As the country marks National Libraries Day today the statistics have sparked debate between the county’s literary heavyweights.

Northern Lights author Philip Pullman said “cold hard screens” of e-books will never replace well-thumbed volumes passed down the generations.

But children’s illustrator Korky Paul said anything that gets children reading is good.

It is forecast 33,084 e-books will be taken out in the county this financial year compared to 23,671 in 2014/15. By comparison the total number of books borrowed from county libraries has dropped by 17 per cent since 2010/11 from 4,189,869 to 3,491,194 in 2014/15.

Mr Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials has sold more than 4,375,000 copies and is also available as an e-book, but he said they would never compare to the “real thing”.

He said: “The actual engagement with a book is a physical thing: the feeling of a book is part of the meaning of that book.

“My feeling is that when a child is very young sharing a book with their parents at bedtime, there is much more engagement with a physical book.

“It is that particular battered copy with the bent corners and finger marks – that will never be replaced by a cold, hard screen.”

Korky Paul, who lives in Summertown and illustrated the Winnie the Witch children’s books, said he had no problem with e-books, and said people needed to get used to the new way of reading or “sink”.

He said: “Young kids don’t mind reading in a different way: we have to change with the times. Modern technology has enhanced the quality of artwork in books, it’s wonderful what we can do with typesetting and scanning and reproducing images.”

But both authors agreed that libraries were a valuable community asset in their own right.

Mr Pullman, who lives in Cumnor, said: “It is deplorable that any libraries have closed.

“A library is a place where a young parent can take their child for a story; it is a place to read the paper or a magazine, or meet people to talk about books.”

Membership of Oxfordshire’s 43 public libraries fell by 3.3 per cent from 239,879 in April 2011 to 231,850 in April this year. The county library service started offering e-books in March 2012.

Friends of Kennington Library chairwoman Sylvia Vetta, who helped save her library from closure, said she was just glad children were reading.

She said: “I prefer physical books – I think they are almost a work of art in their own right, but to me it is good just that children are reading.”

County councillor Lorraine Lindsay-Gale stressed the downward trend in book borrowing was not peculiar to Oxfordshire.

She said: “An increasing proportion of our work is with groups and individuals who do not have to be library members to benefit from our services.

“The figures therefore do not reflect our involvement with these groups.”

ON THE RISE:

Number of e-books borrowed:
* 2012-2013: 7,708
* 2013-2014: 17,547
* 2014-2015: 23,671
* April 2015-Nov 23: 22,056

LIBRARY FINES:

Fines issued:
* 2012/13 £409,483.24
* 2013/14 £373,246.12
* 2014/15 £317,822.18

Fines paid
* 2012/13 £163,730
* 2013/14 £154,550
* 2014/15 £146,003