Sir – In a letter to your paper (February 24) Mr Feasey referred to councillor Mitchell’s rejection of the option to keep all libraries open for shorter hours being based on ‘clear professional advice that (this) would damage the whole service long term’.

I do not think that the majority of senior professionals in the library service share this view and councillor Mitchell himself will remember that an across-the-board cut in opening hours of 15 per cent was one of the options adopted by the county council in order to avoid the closure of 15 libraries in the face of the deep cuts experienced in 1997-8. In the intervening 13 years, no ‘damage’ has been done, in fact the opposite has happened. Improved financial circumstances and many other factors have enabled the service to achieve improved performance and deliver better services from its unreduced network of libraries.

Taking the key measurement of issues of books per head of population, Oxfordshire’s performance improved from being 33rd out of the 34 English county library authorities to sixth. What will cause real damage in both the short and the long term will be the irrevocable closure of half of the county’s libraries.

Rex Harris, Retired librarian, Oxford