The abolition of the reference section at Hove's Carnegie Library for a simple system of warehousing on two floors - one fiction, one non-fiction - can be put in place, suggests a wish to socially engineer a different form of usage which has not been spelt out to its users.

It has been called a "future model", as some sort of one-size-fits-all attempt to give all printed matter equal weight and value.

It is said this is how it is done at the new Jubilee Library. Is it?

Even the Jubilee Library gives extra value to some books - fiction or non-fiction - and keeps them in a hard-to-access locked room.

At Sussex University, you will find both fiction and non-fiction together but separated into three distinct borrowing categories and housed in three separate areas of short loan (two to three days), long loan (several weeks) or reserve (just a few hours). And some books are reference only.

Has the system which is to be imposed on Hove's readers and borrowers got a worked-out, explicable purpose?

It seems aimed at teating books in a way which is not necessarily for the public's benefit.

-V Paynter, Hove