UK/England: branch libraries in outlying suburbs and small towns/out of town estates are closing as a result of changes in the local authority funding formula d

UK/England: branch libraries in outlying suburbs and small towns/out of town estates are closing as a result of changes in the local authority funding formula devised by the national government. The larger cities have a central library with a full range of services. In the UK there is the inter-library loan service. As the name suggests, I can track down a reference to a book, then I can request the book via the inter-library loan service, where it is delivered to my local library. I can then borrow the book or consult it on the premises (depends on cost/rarity of the book). Most public libraries will charge a fee, usually a few pounds. The COPAC library catalogue tells me which university libraries contain copies of the book I want to read which can speed up the inter-library loan turn around (usually 3 weeks). https://copac.jisc.ac.uk/ https://copac.jisc.ac.uk/ To me this management of information that has not yet been digitised and that is not widely disseminated is very valuable now and again. Discovery and search made more efficient by free use of (expensively gathered) metadata on a public database.