The culture minister Margaret Hodge's suggestion that libraries should start selling books as well as lending them has been greeted with outrage by embattled booksellers.
Speaking yesterday at the public library authorities conference in Bristol, Hodge outlined the terms of a consultation process due to begin later this year, saying that with less than 40% of the UK's population using libraries she was "all in favour of pushing our thinking to the boundaries, and testing ideas to destruction".
Highlighting the "worrying statistics" that books borrowed have fallen by 41% over the last ten years, and that there have been 63 library closures since Labour came to power in 1997, Hodge said yesterday that the challenge for libraries was "all about getting whatever the library equivalent might be for 'bums on seats'". "If we make our service popular; if we ensure it is well and widely used, it will be much more difficult to chop it when times are tough," she said.
Hodge also told librarians to consider how private giving to libraries could complement public sector funding, harking back to Scottish American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who supported libraries in the UK and the US in the 19th and early 20th century.
With library tickets issued to every newborn baby, home delivery internet lending services and loyalty cards also on the table she suggested that librarians should forge links with the internet retailer Amazon.
"Yes, I am thinking about how LoveFilm or Amazon work. What is it about their way of doing things that generates such popularity, wide usage, such customer delight and satisfaction?" she asked senior librarians. "How about a tie-in with Amazon: You've borrowed the book, now send a brand new copy to a friend."
But the chief executive of the Booksellers Association, Tim Godfray, said today that he was "very concerned" about her proposals. "We will be making representations to the returned minister of culture," said Godfray, who is writing today to protest to Hodge about the plans.
The library campaigner and former managing director of Waterstone's Tim Coates also rejected Hodges' suggestion, saying that "in no way should a library try to turn itself into a bookshop". Fellow campaigner and former director of Faber Desmond Clarke agreed. "It was an idea which came up 25-30 years ago and failed dismally," he said. "Why would anyone visit a library and want to buy a book when they could get it for free?"
Coates admitted there were ways in which libraries could consider selling books, but only on a small scale – for example to children learning to read – and never when there is a bookshop nearby. "If it's an extension of the function of the library, and is carefully thought out and not attempting to be a bookshop at all, there are ways in which it could be done," he said. With falling DVD rentals leaving a hole in library balance sheets he could understand "why people would want to do it," he continued. Figures may be falling across the library sector, but the minister "has to take some sort of responsibility for that".