Archive for November, 2013

Future of libraries: keeping the service alive – Guardian.

The Guardian held one of its online debates on libraries today. The discussion between several library experts (managers, campaigners, councillors) and anyone contributing online. Around 200 comments were made so it’s a little condfusing: I’ve endeavoured to summarise below, although doubtless I have missed some things which some would consider important. Main threads and arguments.

• Are libraries declining due to technological change? Libraries are still needed, in some ways more than ever: internet/online access essential and libraries provide the access and skills to those without either or both. Seven million have never used the internet. Wikipedia etc don’t cover all information and are prone to deletion, accidental or otherwise and is also not entirely trustworthy anyway.  Libraries provide quiet study spaces.  Children need the books and everyone needs serendipity that bookshelves allow.  Bookstock is declining due to budget cuts.  It’s not black and white – books and e-books will co-exist. Books are still in demand with 244 million loans in England 2011/12,
• Joined up thinking required between school and public libraries (But … safeguarding issues) sharing resources e.g. Tri-borough, co-locations. Essex sharing buildings with parish and district councils.  Children’s services a natural to co-locate with.  But … need to be sensitive to needs of library to avoid them being sidelined in co-located buildings.
• Governance e.g. industrial and provident societies, private companies, social enterprise solutions? Conflict of interest over profit in private companies, but some social enterprises have been successful and/or hopeful.
• Volunteers: they need start up grants and council support , Fresh Horizons in Huddersfield and Alt Valley Community Trust doing well, adding value (if additional/complementary) But … questions over sustainability, is it a destructive trend? Need to have at least one professional/paid member of staff with skills.  Australia doesn’t have money volunteers because of worries of public liability insurance. Exploitation of the volunteer also a worry
• Libraries are more than books: Idea stores (issues up 20% over ten years, staff appointed for enthusiasm for books), Edinburgh’s digital strategy lauded.  Provide welcoming space/social centres, play sessions, reading groups, job-seeking, music, films, local and family history, coffee (but make it good), e-books (should be done nationally and not by authorities), online catalogues (should be better), self-service (but not liked) and for using technology/online, wifi, Need 24/7 access. iPad access in Brent.  Public health via the Reading Agency.
• Improve what we already have: don’t reinvent.
• Campaigning: strength of local campaigns suggest a national one would not be lacking in support.  Need to stress the economic benefits of libraries.
• No national steer or strategy for libraries unlike NZ or Eire.  But … deliberate to run it down?
• Prioritising big libraries (esp. Birmingham) over smaller ones.  Great library But … at the cost of running down smaller branches where people cannot afford to get to Central. Less small libraries, improve the surviving? But … being local is a strength. Need to improve the small ones.
• Austerity/cuts. Hollowing out of services.  Councils see libraries as easy target and see it as retreating not reinventing But … ideological and no real reason to cut.
• Outreach e.g. Brent with 130 locations being served inc. cafes and hospitals.

Changes

• Denbighshire – New Library Plus in Prestatyn: co-location with health/social care/college/schools. £1m council funding inc. £300k from Welsh Government.
• Plymouth – Libraries in total open for 11 hours longer, with more straightforward times.

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Editorial

More details are gradually being revealed about possible budget cuts to Nottinghamshire libraries.  Around 28 libraries are being considered for transferring to volunteers or other outsourcing, making it one of the most wide-ranging cuts so far seen. Interestingly, the council is explicitly pointing to the claimed success of Buckinghamshire’s volunteer libraries as the reason for their move, which will fuel the fears of many paid librarians that volunteers beget more volunteers.  On the other hand, one comment on the article acidly notes that just because both counties end in “hamshire” they may not be quite the same.

Votes for the CILIP council elections have been counted and it looks like those associated with the campaign against the organisation’s renaming and in favour of more strident campaigning against the library cuts have benefitted the most.  On the other hand, Karen McFarlane (a senior GCHQ manager who is contractually not allowed to speak against the government) has also been elected.  Oh to be a fly on the wall at some of the meetings soon to be held in CILIP HQ …

Changes

• Nottinghamshire – Burton Joyce Library had eight to ten volunteers along paid staff: was cut from 31 hours per week to 15.5 in April 2011, partially restored to 24 hours a week due to volunteers.  28 libraries under threat (Annesley Woodhouse, Balmoral, Bilsthorpe, Blidworth, Burton Joyce, Carlton Hill, Carlton-in-Lindrick, Clipstone, Collingham, Edgewood, Farnsfield, Gedling, Gotham, Huthwaite, Inham-Nook, Jacksdale, Ladybrook, Langold, Lowdham, Misterton, Rainworth, Selston, Skegby, Sutton Bonington, Sutton-on-Trent, Toton, Tuxford and Woodthorpe.).

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Speak Up for Libraries

All of the main (non-political) national leaders of public libraries were together for the Speak Up For Libraries conference on Saturday.  The main messages I took away from the conference (and from a busy last week where I was in a meeting with the SCL and another one with the  APPG as well) were:

• Things are going to get worse for libraries funding next year. The funding for local authorities is being cut more and most of the easy (and many not so easy) cuts have already been made.  If the austerity programme stays as it, this could be a permanent state of affairs until there is very very little left of local government outside of the “hard” statutory provision (and libraries are “soft” statutory the conference heard yesterday, from Yinnon Ezra of the DCMS).
• The main national bodies are working as well as they can together, within the limits of their own roles.  The SCL is moving forward with national offers and training, Arts Council England is funding as much as it can, CILIP is recovering from its rebranding failure and moving on.  They all have less money than before and are trying their best … which normally means sharing what they have, in terms of expertise and funding … it’s best practice and working together.
• Even Yinnon Ezra has said he is working.  Having said that, the DCMS is laughably non-interventionist: Yinnon said they don’t even “bother much” with consultations. Chats and sharing best practice is as bad as it gets with the deep library cutters.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it fails.  
  
• That the strong feeling from ACE, SCL, DCMS and CILIP is that campaigning can work – and is sometimes the only hope – but that positive campaigning (on what a great impact libraries have) is better than negative (such as questioning the competence of the council).
• It’s all about the money … but if you market and place yourself well enough in an organisation then the money can come to you.
• Alan Gibbons and Phil Bradley have now been joined as library heroes by Steve Davies.

The relevant links are:

• Video of opening speech by Steve Davies.
• Text of opening speech by Steve Davies (via Alan Gibbons).
• Workshop notes (from the one I attended – Ed.)
• Panel discussion (afternoon session).
• Closing speech by Alan Gibbons.
• Loads of photographs of the event (by Trevor Craig).
• Reflections on the conference by Trevor Craig.

Changes

• Cornwall – £1.3m cut: libraries being reviewed. More co-locations and cuts in hours expected.  Some closures possible. Camelford Library to be reopen as joint library/one stop shop from 3rd December. 
• Havering – Refurbishment at Collier Row Library.
• Herefordshire – All libraries but Hereford Central may become volunteer-run or outsourced over three years or close [No change to figure under threat yet as only broad figures known]: £700k cut 2014/15,  £70k grant won Lottery to commemorate First World War in libraries. 
• Lincolnshire  1.78m (A cut of £250k less than originally proposed from £6.086m budget) – Horncastle and Woodhall Spa would be retained by council; Wragby Library may be run by volunteers; Coningsby/Tattershall library to be replaced by a mobile. Council extends deadline for volunteers to express an interest in running libraries until end of January 2014. cut of c. 102 posts (35.5 full-time equivalent),

Ideas

• Putting a secret puzzle into the fabric of the building – Liverpool
• Over 50 days with services from all over the are in the library – Torbay.

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Changes

• North Tyneside – Undertaking not to close libraries.

Ideas

• Suffolk – An author as “patron”
• Westminster – Twinning with French library authority to exchange 200 books per year.

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Editorial

The Summer Reading Challenge – this year’s theme was “Creepy House” – was up 9% on last year, which is utterly fantasticd. In other news, Bridgend and Hertfordshire get new (co-located libraries), three libraries turn to volunteers in Leeds and Southend, one closes and Wrexham may cut hours by a quarter. Oh, and Terry Deary gets all controversial again,

Changes

• Bridgend – New Bridgend Library opens in Recreation Centre.  Part of scheme to move libraries into leisure centres (already in place at Garw and Ogmore) in partnership with Halo Leisure.
• Hertfordshire – Borehamwood Library opens: co-location with museum, youth service and community centre.
• Leeds – Rawdon Library taken over by volunteers.
• Sefton – Churchtown Library closes.
• Southend – Leigh and Kent Elms to be volunteer assisted.
• Wrexham – All libraries to have opening hours cut by 26%, with volunteer libraries to be considered. Fate of the three libraries under threat to be decided in January.

Ideas

• Mugs given to first fifty people entering new library.

On the radar

• Moray – next week – Protests ahead of council meeting.
• London – April 2014 – Library for Life for Londoners will be holding a forum “for all London’s users”.
• Oxfordshire – Voluntary redundancies expected.

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