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Anger Mounts Over British Library FeesLibrary users in the United Kingdom have formed a "campaign group" to fight a plan to charge researchers at the new British Library in London a £300 annual fee. On August 28, some 150 protesters presented a 6,000-signature petition to the library's Strategic Review Committee. Thousands of e-mails and phone calls from protesters have been logged. Novelists David Lodge, Doris Lessing, Fay Weldon, and Peter Ackroyd are among those speaking out against the charges, and picketers have been demonstrating regularly outside the library. Former deputy Labour leader Lord Hattersley called the fees "simply scandalous" and observed that if the government could afford the "preposterous and absurd" Millennium Dome arena, then it could find the relatively "small amount of money" needed to fully fund the library, Associated Newspapers Ltd. reported August 21. The £250-million library, which was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth June 25, says its £80-million annual funding is £8 million short of what is necessary. Posted September 7, 1998. |
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