I have been following events in the London Borough of Barnet with some interest. I worked there, from 1978 to 1986, in my first jobs in libraries. To my horror, it has now become a locus classicus, a horrible example for the whole nation of what is in store for libraries, and all our public services. I worked in a well-staffed and stocked service, though we had to defend staffing and stock levels against both the council and national government cuts. Now they propose seven professional librarians for the whole borough. When I worked there we had more than that in the Hendon library alone.
If you want to follow every twist and turn of the Barnet story, Mrs Angry (a former Barnet library worker) documents it admirably in her Broken Barnet blog. And I recently came upon this splendid animation, which says it all :