A BESTSELLING Accrington author has slammed facilities at libraries in Lancashire as ‘failing the children of today’.

Jeanette Winterson, who wrote Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, said she was shocked that on a recent visit to Accrington library many books had been replaced with DVDs.

Last year a restructure of the library’s services by Lancashire County Council saw the reference book section removed and replaced with an online database.

Speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival Ms Winterson, who grew up in Accrington, said that as a young girl she would escape to the town’s library where she would work her way through the classics.

She said: “I would start at A and read Jane Austen and move to B and read the Brontës and go on from there.

“But on a recent visit DVDs had replaced many of the books. I am concerned about the formative reading experiences of children with little other access to books than through a library.

"What worries me is that a load of rubbish has been talked about digitisation as being the new Gutenberg, but the fact is that Gutenberg led to books being put in shelves, and digitisation is taking books off shelves.

"If you start taking books off shelves then you are only going to find what you are looking for, which does not help those who do not know what they are looking for."

She also spoke of her concern for the future of libraries themselves, as the new government looks to make cuts in spending across the board.

Lancashire County Council said the most popular books remained at Accrington while some ‘important materials’ would be kept as county-wide loans available on request.

It described the changes at Accrington as 'modernising services', but Hyndburn Council leader Coun Peter Britcliffe criticised the move.

Coun Britcliffe said Accrington Library should be treated as a central one.

“Many people feel that a library without a reference section is a sandwich without a filling,” he said.