The UK Landscape Institute announced today that it has decided to sack its archivist (and four others), close the LI library archive and seek ‘a new home for the collections’. What a terrible shame. The old idea was that when you have only one loaf of bread left in the world you should sell half of it and buy a book. Or, if one is not quite so hard hit by the credit crunch, one should follow the Chinese proverb: ‘When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other’.

One really wonders why a professional institute should employ 26 staff and yet can’t maintain a library or publish any useful policies to support its members. Whose interests are being served?