A "carnival of resistance" to library closures will take place on 5 February 2011, with over forty library "read-ins" scheduled in a coordinated protest over the threatened closures.

Local events are being organised from Hounslow, Brixton and Lewisham, to Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Doncaster and Oxfordshire, with many writers – including Philip Pullman, Mary Hoffman, Malcolm Rose and Carole Matthews – due to take part.

Author Alan Gibbons, who has been a leading voice in the library protests, said the read-ins were a "carnival of resistance to closures", and that the government was "feeling the heat", with even former Tory lead Iain Duncan Smith's think tank, the Centre for Social Justice, voicing concerns that badly planned cuts could lead to services being sacrificed unnecessarily.

Gibbons promised a celebration of reading complete with balloons, storytelling and music. "The public love and celebrate their libraries," he said. "Isn't it time the government turned its back on its destructive and disproportionate closure programme and did the same?"

Meanwhile campaigners on the Isle of Wight – the hardest hit of any area, with nine out of 11 branch libraries due for closure – have echoed the eye-catching Stony Stratford protest which led members to empty library shelves by simultaneously taking out their full allowance of loans.

On Saturday, protesters emptied the crime fiction section of the island's biggest library, the Lord Louis library in Newport.

Geoff Mason of the IOW Stop the Cuts Alliance explained that protesters had "targeted the biggest library on the island, replicating what would happen if all the other libraries were closed and everyone had to go there to get out their books. And we targeted the crime fiction section on the basis that closing our library is a cultural crime." The crime shelves were emptied by 1.30pm, he continued. "Library staff were very supportive."

According to Mason, other campaign groups are now considering similar action.

There are currently almost 450 libraries and mobile libraries threatened with closure as a result of local authority budget cuts, according to the Public Libraries News website.

Campaigners have demanded a public inquiry on the closures, and threatened to set up their own if they get no satisfaction from culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.