BACK in January you carried two related pieces of sad news: first the announcement of the death of the much-lamented Dr Ian Dewhirst; secondly the dismal statement that Bradford Council has plans to reorganise Keighley Library, in other words to transform it into something that isn’t a library, instead a ‘hub’.

I dislike the word hub intensely. It usually means some form of cheaper consolidation of existing resources, with the promise of delivering more for less money.

I am suspicious of Maggie Pedley’s speculation that “hopefully the feel of the library won’t be any different...”

Not very reassuring, is it?

Also, she may claim to take “responsibility” for the short notice given for a public meeting to discuss the matter.

However, she knows as well as we do that this is standard practice – it reduces the time any opposition might muster.

Your editorial of that time raised the question as to what kind of memorial for Dr Dewhirst would do justice to his memory.

Whatever form this eventually takes, he will not be forgotten.

So many of us knew him as the always helpful, never aloof librarian in the reference section upstairs.

May I add a suggestion to those proposed?

Why not make Keighley’s finest building, the library itself, a kind of memorial to him?

He may well have been a reluctant user of the computer, but I am sure he understood its potential for increasing access to information.

I would guess that the guiding principle of his life was to make education available to as many people as possible, not just to those who can afford it.

I am sure he would have approved of the idea of an up-to-date library, as a centre of teaching as well as learning.

The staff there have already demonstrated what they can do in this respect.

They understand his idea that history is not just a matter of details from the past; it is also about how these have a bearing on the present (and the future).

The educational ‘hub’ I suggest could be of benefit to the whole surrounding area, not just to Keighley itself.

If you stand facing that beautiful building, you will notice to the lower right – in gilded lettering – a dedication to one of Dr Dewhirst’s educationalist predecessors, Sir Swire Smith.

Surely, the least we could do would be to honour him similarly on an adjacent stone.

Ian Dewhirst helped continue a tradition of education for the many that was a strong feature of Keighley’s development.

Now we create a field where Swire Smith’s institute once stood, and we build new houses on the fields on the hills around. And still we suffer Bradford’s miserable deliberations about what to do with the first Carnegie library in the country (another of Swire Smith’s achievements).

Writing of the driving force behind Keighley’s first Mechanics’ Institute, John Farish, Ian Dewhirst quoted his obituarist – that he “unhappily left no records of himself, except those that are engraven on the minds and lives of his numerous pupils and friends”.

I hope that whatever kind of memorial is deemed appropriate, it should include a private archive of his own, unpublished writings.

Of course, a library would be the only appropriate place to house such a thing.

I know from listening to some of his public talks that he believed profoundly that the writings of ordinary people are a very important component of the general historical record.

CHRISTOPHER ACKROYD Bethel Street, East Morton

* E-mail your letters to alistair.shand@keighleynews.co.uk