UK libraries' plight brought into focus by animation students

The shameful plight of Britain's public libraries has been brought into focus by a short film created by two animation students from Kingston University. Joe Sparrow and Grethe Bentsen made the film – Ex Libris (which means 'out of books' in Latin) – for their final year project, and it was picked up by Channel 4 for their nightly series of short films that precede the channel's music programmes and documentaries between 11pm and midnight. The film, which was shot in two of the university's libraries, shows a variety of mythical creatures entering the real world from the pages of a discarded book. These cardboard monsters were created by Grethe and then animated by Joe.