Bobby Pickering

Last month's full-throttle attack on the current management of the British Library by the historian Tristram Hunt ( Scholarly Squeeze , 29 May 2006) is a piece of elitist nonsense.

In the columns of the supposedly left-leaning Guardian , Hunt attacked ceo Lynne Brindley's stewardship of the library as "steadily dismantling a world-class cultural institution under the wholly disingenuous banner of access and inclusion".

What was his beef? That Brindley was overseeing a revolution that allowed " the undergraduate masses" through the doors of the once mighty fortress. Now, " proper researchers" (as Hunt regards himself) have to put up with mobile phones ringing, chatter and – horror of horrors – not being able to find seats because the place has become so popular.

Hunt implies, but offers no proof, that there is internal dissent. "The management has publicly refused to concede there is a problem. But their internal documents say otherwise" he declares. But what evidence does he have? He offers nothing.

I'd have no doubt that there are whisperers and subversive elements within the BL who would like to frustrate the changes being implemented. But those internal dissidents have never declared their opposition publicly.

Anyone who ever tried to negotiate a "pass" into the BL in former decades will know what a bureaucratic nightmare it was. Brindley's reforms have breathed new life into this once hide-bound, inward-looking institution.

She is now leading the way in the UK by consulting BL users over the way forward in content strategy in a digital age – see Tracey Caldwell's feature this month.

Brindley's modernization crusade has seen such things as wi-fi connections, online access, and exhibitions and café areas that attract tourists, businesspeople and young people. A wonderful mix of library users, not just a brigade of toffee-nosed arrogant "intellectuals".

How many libraries are putting themselves in the service of the economic ambitions of a nation, not just its cultural and academic pretensions?

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