Unnecessary?

I foolishly have two jobs! My evening job is to keep a local library open until 10pm, which is a good thing for the students of the college as that means that they can come and study right up until bedtime!! ;-)

However, having been here for nearly two years, I can say with some certainty that most students of this particular college do not study much after 7pm!! Which leaves me and a fellow library colleague on our own quite a lot, especially now that the end of term is approaching and levels of activity are beginning to wind down.

I was originally appointed to do this particular job of keeping the library open - they got given pots of money in order to extend the library opening hours - and I can say that it is a waste of money! Not because I spend all my time blogging, but because it is a service that is not required by those who are deemed to need it.

At the end of July I am actually leaving because I can't hack the long hours anymore and would rather appreciate getting my evenings back even if it means losing lovely extra lolly I get each month! So, I no longer care whether or not the library stays open until 10pm, but I am pretty confident that with two years worth of horrible looking statistics....they wont open quite so long when the new academic year starts up again in September.

It does make me wonder though...how many services are established or extended because the powers that be have decided that someone else needs it? By the same token, how many services are cut because they are thought unnecessary or too expensive for what is being provided? This is a research topic that could easily fill a few books, so I think that I will stop there and let you all ponder on the topic! ;-)