Sir – As one who was brought up in a home with relatively few books, but a good library, in a small Devon town, my heart goes out to those in Oxford (and in the county) who are likely to miss out as our libraries close.

If this is absolutely necessary for the sake of our national deficit (and I remain to be convinced that it is), I suppose we must grin and bear it, because I can’t see how a team of volunteers is going to manage to take over without considerable professional training and a decent budget to buy new books.

But isn’t it ironic? Here we are in the bookish Oxford — the home of the Bodleian Library which collects every book there is (it’s admittedly not a lending library), the biggest UK publishing centre outside London, and the home of Blackwell’s Bookshop — yet we can’t afford libraries for our suburban residents!

Someone will doubtless tell me that my catalogue of Oxford’s bookishness is irrelevant to the argument, but is it — if Oxford is ever to feel like a joined-up community in Dave’s ‘Big Society’?

Don Manley, Oxford