Sir – North Leigh Library is yet another victim of the senseless and long drawn-out round of library cuts (Gazette, January 23).

The original assessment of library services across the county was biased in favour of the larger town libraries, where communities have easy access to multiple facilities not available in the villages.

The process is based on unrealistic expectation for dozens of reliable volunteers to materialise.

Who will train these people? What will it cost? Will there be a paid manager to co-ordinate them all? Who will keep the service going when volunteers fail to turn up?

Professional staff are being treated cavalierly and unfairly – all in the name of saving money. How much will it actually save?

We need answers to the following: Exactly how much will staff cuts save? What has been the cost of installing the self-service machinery in our libraries? What will be the cost of training volunteers? What will be the cost of the management appointed to support the new community library system? Will all this disruption really save money?

A reply trotted out to our concerns is that no libraries will actually close.

That is great but all this looks suspiciously like the beginning of the slippery slope.

Heather Shute, The Sands, Milton-under-Wychwood