"That's A Lot Of Lost Books!"

Sam Gardiner MLA, the Ulster Unionist Assembly Member for Upper Bann, has revealed that the Southern Education and Library Board has lost Library Books worth more than £120,000 in the last three years.

"Book loses for the SELB total £120,536 in the three years from 2005-2008. The comparable figure for Belfast is £75,335 which is nearly 40% lower."

"While some Board areas are worse than SELB - the WELB for example is the worst in Northern Ireland with a total three year loss of over £147,000 - this level of loss is far too high to be acceptable. Across the whole of Northern Ireland it is over £566,000. That amounts to a great deal of money and would make a big difference to some school budgets."

"I will be writing to the five Education and Library Boards to ask what book recovery methods they have in place and what preventative measure they have adopted to prevent book theft."

"The losses do not stop there. They also include what are listed as "other items" which I assume means periodicals, tapes and CD's."

"Ways must be found to minimise these losses and a closer inspection of these figures might reveal if there are black spots which need to be targeted and specific types of books which go missing."

The Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure: The information you have requested is detailed in the table within the attached Annex.

BOOK LOSSES IN THE EDUCATION AND LIBRARY BOARDS FOR THE YEARS 2005/2006, 2006/2007, 2007/2008