£1,600 library fine...

It has travelled with a naval commander to Hong Kong and Australia, but this week a rare library book has found itself back home in Wallington thirty years on. A 1928 volume of Samuel Pepys' Diary, part of a set worth an estimated £200, was taken out in 1981 by former Royal Australian Navy Commander Ron Robb to help his daughter with a school project. Yet shortly afterwards he returned back home from his posting in London, and did not rediscover the book until recently, when he was in the process of moving house.

Although, at the current rate Mr. Robb would face an overdue fine of more than £1,600, local Councillor Graham Tope has waived it and is just pleased to have the book returned, 'We've had the odd overdue library book, but 30 years must be a record..it's great that this valuable book has been returned to complete the set, particularly as they have been part of the library for so long'. The book is now back with the other volumes of the edition in Wallington Library's Mallison Room.

Libraries in literature...

Some are tucked away in the cobbled streets of villages, others stand as magnificent structures in grand public squares, and some even take to the road, traversing the English countryside. Libraries exist in every community, but they also exist in many of the fictional works they stock. Here is a quiz on their place in literature

On this day...

American expatriate Sylvia Beach opened her bookshop-library Shakespeare & Co. in 1919. Located in Paris, the store soon became known for being one the centres for Anglo-American literary culture, and indeed not only were the great books of the age located within its walls, but the writers themselves often could be found there. James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald often visited, and Hemingway actually made a reference to SHakespeare & Co. in his novel 'The Moveable Feast'.

Beach also became renowned for stocking controversial works. Titles such as 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and 'Ulysses', banned in many countries across the world, could always be bought or borrowed for Beach's store. Although Paris was reduced to only 25,000 citizens, Beach kept the store going through the early years of World War One, until it was shut in 1941, supposedly because to refused to give a German officer her last copy of 'Finnegan's Wake'. Today it exists as 'Le Mistral', with the ethos of being 'a socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore'.

On this day...

The Bodleian Library at Oxford University was officially re-opnened in 1602. One of the oldest libraries in Europe, the late 16th century had seen it enter a period of decline, resulting in both furniture and books being sold off. It was not until the appearance of wealthy retired diplomat Thomas Bodley, with the promise to 'take the charge and cost...to reduce it again to his former use' that the institution began to get back on its feet.

The library's collection rapidly expanded, encompassing the varied interests of its benefactor, and sourcing manuscripts from the likes of Turkey and China. Following an agreement signed with the Stationer's Company in 1610 to obtain a free copy of every book published, the building was expanded twice in the next thirty years. It was this agreement that led the Bodleian to become one of Britain's six legal deposit libraries and so contain over 80 miles worth of material.

We will not be shushed...

Forget the RMT picket lines, the BA demonstrations, and South African football steward boycotts. New York's public chose a more refined literary manner in which to protest against cost cutting measures, by staging a 24 hour 'read-in' in the steps of Brooklyn public library. From the romantics to the radicals to the rude, (readings of erotica were restricted to the hours of midnight to 7am), volunteers took it in 15 minute shifts to read aloud to passersby from 5pm on Saturday to 5pm on Sunday - an event attended by more than 1,200 people. The 'We Will Not be Shushed' campaign is demonstrating against proposed funding cuts, that would lead to the closure of 40 of the city's libraries, and hopes that the weekend's event, will show that, 'library services are essential to the social, cultural and educational fabric in New York City'.

Libraries part of cost-cutting venture...

'Libraries are hugely important in the national psyche'. So says a report into public sector reform. Yet, 'there is a problem with libraries, that they are not very much used and very expensive to run'. Their solution to such an issue, in a cost cutting venture thinly veiled by suppositions to improve such institutions, is to let libraries be run by locla community volunteers. However, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, never short of a contentious word, believes the move will 'harm the most disadvantaged', adding, 'we ought to be able to accept that libraries are very important pieces of machinery for delivering to human beings what they need – information, pleasure, instruction, enlightenment, new direction in life'. Dismissing the report's suggestions as 'outlandish', Motion believes that it is a time for 'big thinking, not big mistakes'.