As a boy, growing up in post-war Rochdale, the public library was for me a treasure trove of excitement and imagination.

I devoured books in much the same way that children today devour television, DVDs and computer games. But I don't subscribe to the hard-line view that the latter are intrinsically bad. Like any activity, provided it does not preclude additional elements of physical activity and social interaction, then anything that stimulates the brain or the imagination or has the potential to offer insights into other peoples' lives and other ways of thinking can only be beneficial.

I came from a generation that did not buy books but used public libraries.

That has changed to a certain extent, but not as much as some may think, and the public library remains an invaluable resource for all of us.

The first thing I do whenever, as at the moment, I am working away from home is to sign up as a visitor at the local public library.

The research resources are unparalleled even by the Internet, which can frequently offer only a time consuming trawl through irrelevant dross of variable reliability. But even for that erratic etheric tool, the public libraries are my first port of call to collect emails and send these articles to the Bucks Free Press.

It is therefore with a leaden heart that I view the closure of any library, so the news that we may lose as many as eight libraries in Bucks is very depressing.

I spent a very pleasant morning in Micklefield recently to help publicise a new drop-in facility for local residents. I saw how welcome and necessary that opportunity was for the local community.

To learn a very short time later that the nearby local library is on the closure list was doubly depressing.

It is hard to imagine that all of the Micklefield residents who used their library will be willing or able to brave the London Road trip into the library in the town centre.

Indeed, had there been no library in Micklefield, I find it easier to imagine the logic of an initiative to open one there in order to provide a focal point and resource for that particular community than I do the current and depressingly familiar evidence of a culture of making us all travel further and further afield for resources we had hitherto taken for granted.

Extend it and improve it rather than remove it.