An 'essential service' that is hub of village.

"IT does actually take away from the heart of the village," said Michael Fagan, chair of the Save The Moy Library Committee.

"It's one vital amenity within a rural village like Moy. Once the library goes it's very unlikely and very difficult to get that back again."

The Co Tyrone village has a sizeable eastern European community who use the library to not only improve their English, but also to contact home, and schoolchildren rely on the library resources as the local primary school is too small to have one of its own.

"The library is a much-needed facility in the Moy village, the nearest library to us would be Armagh or Dungannon, roughly five-plus miles away," said Mr Fagan. "So that's obviously beyond the library's recommendation that a facility should be within two miles of 85% of the population. They would argue they could provide a mobile facility, but that doesn't provide the same service."

He said the cuts would hit already disadvantaged people the hardest -- those who cannot afford to buy books, the elderly or disabled who cannot afford or have no access to transport, and children and immigrants who rely on the services to educate themselves. To fight the closure the village has set up a committee -- which includes a number of schoolchildren who want to see their library remain open.

Mr Fagan said the children were "actually ahead of us", as they had already sent letters to their local councillors and library board.

"Some of them wouldn't have internet access at home so they would rely on the library to have access to the internet, to carry out homework which is part of the curriculum," he said.

"For young children like that it wouldn't be feasible or realistic to expect them to travel alone (to another library).

"They would be too young, so not only would the children have to travel, but also a guardian or parent and that just adds to the inconvenience, but that's probably too mild a word."

He said if the Moy library closes the villagers will be discouraged from using libraries altogether.

"There's no guarantee that if they improve the facility at Armagh or Dungannon that they would increase the overall usage of the library, because the people in between those places would probably use the library less," he said.

"Certainly, if they want more people to use libraries I think they have got to be prepared to invest in the current infrastructure, rather than trying to take that away.

"It seems to be a very short-sighted approach to cut into what is really an educationally essential service. Long-term there's going to be a serious downside to that."