ONE of the many editors for whom I have had the pleasure - and pain - of working insisted he was never happier than when he knew his paper might cause someone, ideally a politician, to choke over his breakfast kedgeree.

I would like to think that was the response yesterday in East Renfrewshire when councillors and officials in that verdant bailiwick woke to find themselves on this newspaper's front page.

The headline really said it all: "Pupils to help run libraries as full-time staff face axe". The gist of the story was that faced with budgetary cuts ER council is considering dispensing with full-time professional librarians in schools and in future, it seems, will allow teenagers to run them. Today we further report it is also seeking volunteers to staff public libraries, as if they were charity shops. That anyone even with a pea-sized brain thinks this a good idea is surely cause for them to have their heads examined.

Unsurprisingly, the news of this appalling, short-sighted and, frankly, cretinous plan brought forth a cataract of condemnation. As a spokeswoman for the Society of Authors said: "We are all for getting pupils in the libraries, but not at the expense of properly qualified librarians." Librarians, of course, have long known what it feels like to be undervalued and unappreciated. Though countless of them in schools and elsewhere are at least as highly academically qualified as other staff, they seem always to be under threat.

Why this is so, I find inexplicable. Many moons ago, I crossed the great divide from librarianship to journalism, there was an undercurrent of stupefaction detectable in numerous of my new workmates. On the few occasions they ventured into a library it was usually in search of cliches with which to embellish their prose. They had seen Ronnie Corbett in Sorry! and thought librarians spent their careers doling out Mills & Boons, telling people to shush and ushering incontinent tramps from the premises. The struggle to have librarianship recognised as a legitimate profession has been long and tortuous. There was no point, in telling folk that in previous existences Mao Tse-Tung and Casanova, Golda Meir and J. Edgar Hoover had been librarians. They might acknowledge libraries were repositories of knowledge but found it difficult to imagine librarians - so under-stated, so accommodating - as their gatekeepers. To them, librarians were chiefly concerned with recreational reading. In fact, as any enlightened person knows, a library ought to be at the heart of any organisation. A school without a library and a librarian is a travesty. You might as well have a circus without acrobats.

But this latest assault will not surprise my erstwhile colleagues, all of whom are doubtless aware of the philistinism and ignorance that resides in many powerful quarters. Much the same pertained in the 19th century. Then, Andrew Carnegie, who knew personally the worth of a library, had to dangle carrots in front of the noses of municipal donkeys before they would take the bait and commit to the building of libraries which, in turn, have proved priceless and peerless in helping those with scant access to books and information to educate themselves.

That's what the best libraries do. Drop into one any day of the week and you will find it throbbing. At a dinner recently, I eavesdropped on people talking with spine-tingling pride of their local library and how the thought of it closing or having its hours curtailed made them sick with anger. I visit one of several libraries every week and find them more popular then ever. Edinburgh's Central Library, where I worked for a number of years, is one of the capital's great resources. All ages and nationalities use it from the moment it opens until its doors close. You may not be able to put a monetary value on that but the benefit to society surely speaks for itself.

No doubt East Renfrewshire's lieges have their reasons for drawing up such crass proposals. It does, however, smack of panic and shortsightedness. This at a time, too, when we have no justification for feeling complacent over literacy rates. Were any children of mine to be enrolled at one of the affected schools I would be considering my options. Whatever next, head guys and gals as headteachers?