Libraries may no longer have a crime fiction section but they have created a mystery.

Last November, there was alarm when a culture committee report about libraries included, almost as an aside, two bizarre phrases.

There would be, apparently, "changes to the way the community library network functions" and, what's more, "a transformation in the way library staff work".

This sounded ominously like closure and redundancies, and steps were taken to fathom the meaning. It emerged at last week's culture committee meeting the upshot of these phrases is, after a survey, libraries will attempt to engage in varieties of "outreach". How this will be funded is a crucial and unexplained issue.

Also overlooked was the fact the library service has fewer than two books per resident.

This is lamentable. The more books, the more borrowing. Word spreads there is a good read to be had at libraries. Every survey has shown a desire for more books and better opening hours.

Curiously, the report states in 2003 the Audit Commission recommended each library form a reader group to comment on it.

The report says "the response was very poor in those libraries where we tried to set the groups up".

Which libraries were chosen for this? How were the potential groups publicised?

Certainly, in Hove, nobody can recall any such possibility in 2003 and there was no mention of it in Brighton and Hove City Council's newspaper City News.

There was, however, as I recall, a great deal of interest that same year when thousands of readers campaigned with posters, letters, and words on hundreds of streets to prevent Hove's Carnegie Library from being closed down.

That has certainly shown it would be very foolish to try to close any of the branch libraries.

-Christopher Hawtree, Hove