Cons

 ”.. an exploitation of the volunteer and a deprival of someone’s livelihood.” Official Trafford Council policy on replacing paid staff with volunteers.  Trafford was considering replacing the staff of two libraries with volunteers at the time, 1st February, 2012. 

“UNISON believes that public library services should be sufficiently resourced and professionally staffed. Volunteers may have a role to play, but they should not be used as replacements for employed, paid, trained staff in the public library service. In the current economic climate, employers may try to do exactly that. We must be clear that the way to deliver high quality and fully accountable public library services, is to employ professional staff, pay them properly, and make sure they are trained and developed.

Many library authorities already use volunteers alongside paid staff. It is vital that we make sure that relations between paid staff and volunteers at a local level are constructive, with everyone understanding everyone else’s role, ensuring that staff and volunteers can work together effectively.

We do not believe that local authorities should use volunteers as a cost-cutting exercise or to make up for the loss of staff through cuts and redundancies. Volunteers should only be used in a limited number of circumstances to complement the work of paid staff. We would view a scenario where volunteers are used for job substitution, either outright or to cover for staff absence, very seriously.” Unison position on library volunteers, 2013.

• Loss of professional librarian skills. The trading director of Oxfam, David McCullough, argues that volunteers are the wrong approach for public libraries.  He says that volunteers should be additional and complementary to a well-run and well-funded public library service. “Axing staff in public libraries and replacing them with volunteers is not the right approach to government cuts” (Express).

“When an authority refuses to pay its library staff, and lays down the Sophie’s choice that either they work for free or the service is shut down, the real baddies of the piece are, of course, the authority. But knowing that doesn’t help us any. We still have to choose between descending into charity or watching as a community suffers. At least as things currently lie, I believe the only responsible action is the latter. I believe this in part because I suspect the voluntary model to be ultimately unsustainable, but principally because I believe we have a collective responsibility to our trade on a broader level. The communities we serve can only prosper if we can afford to serve them.”  Are you experienced? Volunteer now! - Succentorship Without Sneers.”

• It may be illegal to lend books from a volunteer-run library.  The Public Lending Right registrar, Dr Jim Parker, has questioned whether public lending right extends to branches which are not part of the statutory council-run service.  Many volunteer-run libraries are part of this service but a significant number are not.  This (as of July 2012) has not been contested in court so the situation is, in the final analysis, still unclear.
• At least some leaders of existing community libraries both defend public libraries and see community libraries as unworkable except in wealthy areas.  It has been noted that, as of February 2012, 64 out of 77 known volunteer-run libraries were in rural or small town settings.  The difficulty of attracting volunteers in Doncaster has been noted. The New Local Government Network report “Realising Community Wealth” suggests that willingness to volunteer is geographically variable, with some prosperous areas unreceptive too.

“The government has failed to recognise the correlation between volunteering rates and deprivation, which means wealthy areas are better placed to flourish under the ‘big society’ because they already have higher levels of social engagement. This divide between rich and poor areas could be exacerbated by local authority spending cuts”. The Guardian

“Most people who depend upon libraries would say ‘I don’t want it to be a lottery depending on whether people are willing to volunteer to keep them open.’” (Ed Balls).

“The model that we have followed in Chalfont St Giles is not universally applicable. Our library is small with light to moderate use. Buckinghamshire is a relatively affluent county with a sufficient pool of people with the time and skills to operate the local library. Trying to follow the same model in a busy town library in a deprived area would I think not succeed.”  (Tony Hoare).

“An inability to come forward to volunteer to run the library service for him is not a sign of a lack of interest in or need for a library – it is a sign that communities do not have the strength, level of education, experience, time and power to do so” (Save Doncaster Libraries).

“IF the Walcot Library is “a flagship community library” (SA, October 1), then God help the other local libraries when the council starts making cuts! It has no real library staff, is now shut on Saturdays and is no longer available for the local schools to use, because there’s no room available since the charity shop moved in. It is now, in fact, a charity shop with some stacks of books as a sort of afterthought. Comparison of library usage between the years 2008/9 and 2009/10 shows the figures for Walcot have gone down dramatically.” Sherry Waldon, Swindon Advertiser.

• Even in wealthy areas, volunteer-run libraries find it difficult to pay for big expenses such as maintenance.  In one of the most successful and publicised branches, Little Chalfont, rotten timbers held up the roof until it was managed to obtain funding from a bank charity fund for its repair.
• Where paid workers have gone, it may be because the council feels that volunteers can replace them – effectively meaning the volunteers are inadvertently causing people to lose their jobs.  This can be particularly painful for library staff when users they know or, even worse, ex-colleagues volunteer to do the jobs that they need for free.  This is explicitly the case in Trafford which caused the Express to write this article on “Fighting the big uncaring society”.  See also this viewpoint from library workers in Somerset who are facing replacement by volunteers.  Of course, it’s not just libraries where this is happening, this article shows that replacement of staff by volunteers is also being used in the museum sector.

“Using volunteers to fill in key roles risks undermining some of the fundamental things that attract people to volunteering. If a volunteer is carrying a role so vital that the organisation would suffer if they did not come in, then there is no room for any flexibility around what they do, and when they do it. We risk a situation where we are, essentially, emotionally blackmailing people to carry on offering time. Job substitution is also problematic on a practical level.” The economic downturn and the spectre of job substitution – Association of Volunteer Managers.

“The librarian is an active intermediary between users and resources. Professional and continuing education of the librarian is indispensable to ensure adequate services.” UNESCO Public Library Manifesto.