The biggest music and drama lending library in the UK faces closure because of government spending cuts, prompting a wave of protest from arts organisations.
Expert librarians whose skill has been treasured for decades by choirs, dramatic societies and researchers face the loss of a centralised system in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, which makes loans from an unrivalled lending collection of 500,000 music scores and 90,000 playscripts.
"It is extraordinary what they can produce. I've had someone on the phone today who had tried all over the place for an obscure piece of music by Parry and they came up with the goods," said Robin Osterley, chief executive of Making Music, the national federation of music societies. "The rule among choirs all over the country is try your local library first, then Wakefield. It will be devastating if that ceases to be the case."
The library's breadth and richness of material stems from almost a century of keen collecting by the old West Riding county council, culminating in the 30-year service of its legendary last chief education officer, Sir Alec Clegg. Famous for promoting the "education of the spirit" alongside high academic results, he promoted the arts including music and drama and made sure that they were well-resourced.
The library survived the council's abolition in the 1974 local government reforms and has since been run by a consortium of 12 Yorkshire councils. Running costs have been relatively modest – the largest of the councils, Leeds, pays £20,000 a year – but the archive's home in Wakefield has structural problems and no alternative has been found.
Other services that share the space are moving to a new library but the sheer size of the music and drama collection means it cannot join them. Kate Holliday, the manager of the Yorkshire Libraries and Information Council, which runs the service, said: "It takes up 600 square metres and we just haven't got the room. If someone could come up with a large and affordable building for us, no one would be happier than we would be."
The council has been accused by library users, however, of seeing closure or dispersal of the collection as another of the economies that all local authorities are having to make. The 12 councils' representatives meet on Thursday but circulated news of the threat only 10 days ago, on 20 October, leaving just a fortnight for protests and consultation.
"We have used what time we've had well, though," said Harry Witham, a former regional secretary of Making Music who sings with St Peter's Choir in Leeds. "I know they have already heard from 600 choirs, let alone all the individuals and the users who borrow the playscripts. They have everything in there from early English music to the late 20th century, not to mention hundreds of copies of partworks for singers. We can't let that go."
The council says that use has also declined, reducing income to the point where covering the shortfall is straining local authorities' resources and good will. But the choirs and dramatic societies argue that an increase in loan fees two years ago has been working through the system, and rises in their own subscriptions will restore loan demand.
The National Operatic and Dramatic Association (Noda) has joined in protests about the threat to the loan of playscripts from pre-Shakespeare to post-Beckett. Holliday said: "We do understand the concerns, both about possible closure or a splitting-up of the collection so that inquirers would not know which council to approach. We'll be looking at all the possibilities on Thursday and the many representations which have come in."
Reg Vinnicombe, the north-east regional councillor for Noda, said: "You can't work out demand from just one year. Dramatic societies may not have borrowed scripts in the last six months but the pattern changes all the time. You can't just take a snapshot. Our greatest concern is that the library stays in one place and isn't fragmented."
