E-Lending: A modest proposal

There’s four, not just one, tough nuts to crack, with free e-lending. The four are the Treasury (who will have to pay for it, one way or another, in a time of dramatic cuts in public spending), the Publishers (who are paranoid about losing sales) and  Libraries (who don’t have any money and who fear being made redundant, often literally, by the new technology). The fourth problem, easily forgotten, are the public themselves who need to be able to use the service.

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ACE, in a hole?

Some more information and views on Arts Council England today. It has already been news this week that Arts Council England is reducing its staffing by 21%, more than one-fifth, due to a cut in Government funding.  A whopping 117.5 full-time equivalent staff, from an old total of 559.5, will go. The details of the restructure are public but they are annoyingly vague about how it will affect libraries, beyond saying that the sector will be just one of 13 national disciplines.  That’s just 1 in 13, less than 8% of the whole.  Which makes libraries seem pretty insignificant.

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Inquiry into Library Closures to be published on Tuesday

Big news today is that the much-delayed publication of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee Inquiry into Library Closures will at last occur on Tuesday.  Since the Inquiry finished sitting, there has been a change of Culture Secretary and one of the most high-profile MPs on the Committee, Louise Mensch, has decided to leave parliament.  Presumably, therefor, the only reason the Committee felt the need to publish the results now is that, if they wait any longer, none of the relevant people would still be involved.  We will see if its conclusions have been worth waiting for (and the general atmosphere is, shall we say, pessimistic on this one) next week.

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One in five in ACE to go.

Arts Council England have announced that one in five of their staff will be made redundant.  I know that few library campaigners will shed a tear over this.  However, for me, I will for two reasons.  One is that they’re human beings too, trying their best under difficult circumstances.  The other is that this is going to greatly reduce the number of people looking after libraries, on top of the already great reductions caused in the recent move from the defunct MLA to ACE only a few months ago.  One can therefore take as one will the protestations from ACE that their service will not be worse, just different.

My thanks to Gary Archer, who sent me links to a couple of interesting articles to sending and receiving texts in libraries (like this).  So, it’s possible.  The reason it is not done so much is answered by another commenter, Alan Wylie, who points out that the money is barely there for the basic IT service, let alone option extras.  How Libraries are going to cope with the big increase in usage caused by the Government’s Digital by Default strategy next year is anyone’s guess.  Good news, though, from Harrow, who promise to fix/replace all their many broken library computers by April next year.

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Why libraries are missing out by not texting, Harrow’s broken PCs and no new Barnet library.

I was talking to a teenager today who could not communicate with me by “normal” means.  Pretty normal for a teenager you may think … but this is not what I mean.  This teenager is a very intelligent chap and wanted to contact the library – he had a few ideas about how we could improve things – but had failed.  This was despite him (a) knowing where we were, (b) our opening hours, (c) our phone number and (d) our email address but none of that was of use to him.  You see, he simply uses forms of messaging many public libraries, at least at branch level, doesn’t.  He texts, he facebooks, he tweets.  Some public library branches do all of these, most don’t do all.  Public libraries can, and should be, masters of information technology and communication and, as it was brought home to me today, we sometimes fall behind that ideal.

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Lobby for school libraries

  • Campaigners lobby for school libraries – BookSeller.  “A group of close to 150 campaigners is to lobby parliament for school libraries to be made statutory, with authors Chris Priestley and Philip Ardagh among those taking part today.”

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A whole pile of useful stuff: Prometheus articles debate public libraries

The little-known (to me, at least) periodical Prometheus has published some incredibly useful articles on the current debate about public libraries.  Starting from the wonderful Philip Pullman speech on Oxfordshire public libraries, it then has articles looking at all sides of the debate.  So there is an article showing that libraries benefit their local communities by 3.5 times their cost.  Another article by Desmond Clarke suggests cutting library authorities by a third, another that social justice is a vital and under-respected aspect of public libraries and also a satirical one at the end that may get some wry smiles from those who have seen the facts at the base of it in harsh practice. A trade unionist view on the neoliberalist attack on public libraries by the Coalition and others is also well worth a read.

The two stand-out articles for me, though, are from people normally victimised by library campaigners.  One of these, Darren Taylor from Eco Computers who has taken over a few Lewisham Libraries, will do a lot to improve his image amongst the readers of these pages.  He comes across as a deep believer in the wonder of public libraries and, if half of what is said is true (and he has had vocal detractors who, I am sure, will deny the facts in the article as soon as they read them) then he is doing great things.  The second article is from the much more hated, by campaigners at least, US company LSSI who pull no punches in attacking “passive” UK public library management and suggest that staff rest on their laurels.  It’s a point of view that is unlikely to win them many converts amongst library staff but, then, it is councillors, not staff, that they need to convince.

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A Barking library policy and more …

It’s been a few days since the last Public Libraries News update – real-life can get in the way sometimes – so there’s a lot of news in today’s post. The things that stick out to me are:

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E-lending, Amazon & VAT, library nurses

The title of this post says it all…

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Nurses, cleaners, librarians

News

“Yesterday, I marched with fellow library campaigners from Voices For The Library on the TUC March in London. We carried the Speak up for Libraries banner and met along the way campaigners from Brent S.O.S., SLAM and Lambeth as well as numerous other Library staff and supporters. The amount of support that we got for our message was amazing, with people clapping, taking photos and generally welcoming us.  Our main aim was to publicise the SUFL campaign and conference on 10/11/12, we handed out loads of leaflets and even got a mention on the march for libraries and library cuts, so a very successful and enjoyable day. So let’s use the Speak up for Libraries Conference on 10/11/12 to build on this, to come together to discuss a positive way forward and a plan of action!” Alan Wylie, Stop the Privatisation of Public Libraries.

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