“Good news is starting to be increasingly mixed among the bad for Britain’s 4,000 free public libraries,” says John Ezard. In a report for The Guardian, he notes that “Book borrowing fell by a further 5% last year, maintaining a disturbing 20-year trend . . . But for the first time in their long decline there was hard evidence that libraries are winning back popularity with the public.” More people than previously seem to be visiting libraries, he explains: “An extra 4% of people walked through their doors in 2003-04, giving them a total of 337 million visits.” The head of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Mark Wood, says, “This is an astonishing turnabout.” So what accounts for it? It’s largely due to “the internet terminals now in almost every library,” says Ezard.