Writers bemoan British Library’s ‘social club’

A number of high profile writers and academics, among them Lady Antonia Fraser, have attacked the British Library's decision to throw open its doors to undergraduates, claiming that they are using the resource not for study but as a convenient social club and are preventing professional writers from doing any proper work there.

Lady Antonia (pictured) said: "I had to queue for 20 minutes to get in, in freezing weather. Then I queued to leave my coat for 20 minutes [at the compulsory check-in]. Then half an hour to get my books and another 15 minutes to get my coat. I'm told it's due to students having access now. Why can't they go to their university libraries?"

The historian, who is married to Sir Harold Pinter, claimed in the Times that many of the undergraduates only came to the library to relax, meet and text friends and play around on laptops. "It's become a social gathering," she added.

Award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin is equally indignant. "It's full of what seem to be schoolgirls giggling. I heard one saying, 'I've got to write about Islam. Can I have your notes?' It's what you expect to hear in a school."

Of the long queues she said: "It is absurd. It's access gone mad. Access has many good points, but making the British Library, which was for specialist readers, into something for general readers seems to me terrible."

Although there are 1,480 seats in the library, many leading writers are being forced to perch on a windowsills while students flirt with one another at the desks. The historian Tristram Hunt said that it was a scandal. "Students come in to revise rather than to use the books," he said. "It’s a 'groovy place' to meet for a frappuccino. It's noisy and it's undermining both the British Library’s function, as books take longer to get, and the scholarly atmosphere."

The British Library, however, do not see a problem. Perhaps this might have something to with the fact the library's directors received performance bonuses depending on the number of visits.