A passionate speech delivered by author Philip Pullman to two or three hundred people at an Oxfordshire library campaigners' meeting earlier this month has become a viral sensation through the influence of social networking.

The speech, posted online and read some 20,000 times in two days, has been tweeted and retweeted, and hailed as a classic piece of oratory. It has already been translated into French, with the heading "Laissez nos bibliothèques en paix!" Novelist Joanne Harris (@joannechocolat) called Pullman "awesome", asking "Can we make him Minister for Education please?", while actor Samuel West (@exitthelemming) said he had made "One of the great speeches". Many ordinary tweeters echoed their sentiments, with a comment from @jamesswyer typical: "Wow. Philip Pullman's rallying cry to save libraries leaves a lump in the throat," he wrote.