I recently went to London to be measured for a new suit. My librarian salary doesn’t quite run to Savile Row but I have a very nice tailor in the city all the same.

Taking my inside leg measurement, my tailor complains about the pressures of his trade. During a global financial crisis, many people don’t choose luxury goods. The Internet and the high street offer stiff competition.

To Savile Row tailors, however, the money still flies in. They don’t even fear the Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store that opened on the Row earlier this year. Savile Row customers are loyal and abundant and they’re not put off by high prices.

It’s fashionable for libraries to emulate business and to learn from our friends in the retail sector. We think of readers as customers. We worry about competition, revenue and brand-awareness. It is partly a response to a perceived rise in leisure industries, and partly due to those institutes upon whose funding we depend: local councils, universities and the health service understandably demand quantitative results to justify library expenditure, and this means we have to come up with ways to increase issue figures and library traffic.

And so we assemble marketing strategies: we adopt canny new corporate identities, stock popular leisure materials, install plasma screens with rolling news to signify how on the ball we are, lease space to coffee shops and launch viral marketing campaigns with YouTube and Twitter and Facebook. They are all reasonable ideas and part of a natural reaction: to adapt or risk extinction.

The tailors of Savile Row, however, do not do this. Ever stubborn, they adhere to tradition. They don’t dabble with the Internet. They don’t try to move with the times. They never advertise. Ever. They simply tailor. They offer an unparalleled service based upon timelessness, quality and expertise. What it all boils down to is: they play to their strengths.

I worry that the adoption of retail models by libraries is harming our reputation. By emulating those we perceive as competitors – retailers, cinemas, television, the web – we risk entering their domain too completely. If they truly are our competitors, we cannot fight them on their turf: they are experts at marketing, adept at providing cutting-edge products and inescapably appealing to the young. Better instead, I argue, to draw a neat but clear line between libraries and retail. We need to play to our strengths: excellent book stock, knowledgeable librarians and an environment conducive to learning.

Computers, the Internet, audio-visual materials and modern leisure stock all have a place in libraries. Contemporary forms of information retrieval are wonderful things and libraries need them. What we don’t need, however, are the noise, the Playstations, the corporate identity and the gradual elimination of the word ‘library’. Libraries have hundreds of years – thousands even – of gathering a reputation as impartial, horizon-expanding embassies of knowledge. That’s one hell of an asset.

When I hear library managers boast of their new coffee shop or podcast download station, I think of a BBC comedy series called Monkeydust (available to borrow in your public library) in which the Fire Brigade is rebranded as ‘Icarus’ and focuses on selling burgers because that’s what’s fashionable and lucrative. Meanwhile, presumably, London incinerates around them.

A SWOT analysis hangs over our heads. The threats column is filled with retail outlets and search engines. That much is real. The threats exist. A mistake has been made, however, in perceiving these threats as models for opportunities. We don’t need to be like HMV. The best possible outcome of competing in this way is turning the library system into another HMV: something the world doesn’t need.

The tailors of Savile Row understand that they cannot compete with vendors of cheap suits by making cheaper suits. The cheap suit market it catered for by experts. Savile Row caters for something else, and the result is lucrative. Similarly, the demand for cheap music and exciting retail space is catered for. Less catered for are quiet, elegant study spaces with expert human help and great access to quality information. Let’s focus on those things.

If it takes a retail model for us to compete with other industries and to satisfy our financiers, I propose we look to those fusty but fabulously successful tailors of Savile Row. The key is to play to our strengths.