Sir - County councillor Don Seale (Letters, March 9) sees the future of the central library and its allied services through the smoke of his authority's battle to prevent Oxford city becoming a unitary authority.

But what matters is his plan to reduce the size of the library (a slightly reduced footprint' is Mr Seale's coy phrase).

He also ignores the future of Oxfordshire Studies (formerly the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies) which is housed in the council's Westgate building adjacent to the library.

To this understaffed service come 25,000 visitors a year to explore their family, town, village and street histories. The numbers of visitors and enquirers are increasing (20 per cent up last year on the year before).

Yet the service cannot afford properly to conserve its outstanding collection of historic photographs and the cataloguing of material is eight person-years behind hand, because Mr Seale and his colleagues (past and present) have starved it of funds.

Now Oxfordshire County Council plans to sell the north end of the site inhabited by the central library and Oxfordshire Studies to the Westgate developer for retail use.

The county Sites and Monuments Record (on which is entered every known archaeological and historical site from Palaeolithic times to the Second World War) will be moved to Speedwell House, several streets away, although this and Oxfordshire Studies are clearly allied services.

Yet Mr Seale brazenly claims that the council aims to integrate the various services on offer' (my emphasis). Oxfordshire Studies will somehow be shoe-horned into the reduced library space, and in this, Oxfordshire's millennium year, those who seek individual, local and national identities in the county's history will get a worse deal than ever.

Needless to say, Mr Seale has not consulted them about any of this.

Chris Hall, Chairman, Oxfordshire Local History Association, Turville