Wellington College school library

I can't walk past a bookshop without going in for a browse, but my principal addiction is second hand bookshops.  I can happily spend hours roaming narrow corridors of bookshelves and pulling the odd volume out, here and there, because either the title or the binding hits some inner cord and causes my hand to shoot out and size its spine.  Now I am not against the wonder of the electronic book readers such as Kindle, and if I was a squaddie in Afghanistan I would have one in my Bergen, but I think those, like the headmaster of Wellington College, who think the days of the printed book are numbered and is thus planning throw out 80%  of the books and re order the Library to be 'relevant to the electronic age' or some such rubbish -are wrong.

I just don't think people will 'browse' an electronic library like they browse a normal bookshop or library.  and it is by 'browsing' that you suddenly come across a new author or new subject which catches your imagination or interest and opens up, over time, a whole new world.  For an educational establishment  to cull  it's library so ferociously is not only therefore criminal, it is far worse, it is gross stupidity.