Comments on: “Community libraries: Learning from experience” – The most important libraries report of the year examined and summarised, with initial reactions.

By: dave peddie

dave peddie — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 16:27:46 +0000

In essence then, there is suddenly a £30 million fund available to put people out of work and replace them by volunteers. Well let’s see how the service is operating in 2 year’s time when the volunteers get bored and find other things they want to do with their free time.

Anyone who has worked for any period of time in the voluntary sector (I have) will probably tell you that organising volunteers is a thankless task, that turnover can be considerable and that to maintain, in every aspect, a previous funded service on volunteers will require a pool of volunteers three or four times greater than the personnel they are replacing. Good luck with that then!

By: Andrew Preston

Andrew Preston — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 16:15:28 +0000

In reply to Lee Godfrey. Given the total refusal of the government to commission any kind of public enquiry in any of the cases mentioned, do you really think that they would include mention of the court cases in their report? I live in Somerset. The sheer scale of what the County Council spent on trying to railroad it's plans through is almost unbelievable.

By: Lee Godfrey

Lee Godfrey — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:15:20 +0000

I agree with Johanna. The councils that have had their volunteer library plans scrutinised most have been Gloucestershire, Somerset and Surrey. In each case the plans have come up short. Hundreds of hours have been spent scrutinising the volunteer library model in these cases, not to mention days of argument in the High Court, and yet none of these cases or evidence has been used to inform this report.

How can this report be described as comprehensive or well informed?

By: johanna Anderson

johanna Anderson — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 00:59:58 +0000

In reply to Andrew Preston. Quite! ACE are a government funded agency which have influence (although that is debatable) on future public library policy. If they are going to write reports that will influence library policy they must surely have a duty to do a robustly researched report that has the best interests of the library service, and the public who are funding it, at it's core. To do anything other, as it has done, it inexcusable and irresponsible. Given their remit they should have access to all the resources needed to do this and provide a balanced view. The WI on the other hand are a non-partisan charity representing their members who are public library users and volunteers. They are users that will be impacted by library policies drawn up based on an extremely poorly researched report, written by a government agency. The library users they are representing are not able to influence policy because their views are inconvenient to the government funding the agency and so they do not have a voice in the report. WI are filling this big hole. Kudos to them. I expect them to represent the view of their members which is exactly what they did.

By: johanna Anderson

johanna Anderson — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 00:22:06 +0000

In reply to Really?.

Um, Yes Really?, really! it is very poorly researched.
Your views of the WI report does not excuse this piece of guff produced by ACE. ACE, who now have libraries as part of their remit! The WI spoke to, reported on and represented their members, members who have been working in these libraries. The WI do not have cynical political motives nor are they being led by the nose by politicians. Unlike ACE. With all due respect to the WI, I struggle to understand how you could possibly justify a shoddy report written by a government agency, responsible for a service, just because you think a report written by a charity is worse.
Come on now!

By: Andrew Preston

Andrew Preston — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:39:50 +0000

In reply to Really?.

From ‘The Bookseller’ a few hours ago..

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/ace-report-wi-attacks-while-vaizey-defends.html

The Comment…..

Hmmmm…

On one side, a report from the charred remains of the Arts Council – funded by government, cut to shreds and already having decided it doesn’t need even one full-time post to cover libraries.
Despite repeated requests, it has so far declined to include library users and activists in any of its research into the future of public libraries.
It says ‘community libraries’ (ie, run on the cheap) are a great thing.

On the other side, Women’s Institute members who actually run these same libraries – backbone of community life, universally respected and decidedly nobody’s fools.
They say this model is probably ‘unsustainable’.
They have already published a report to say so:
http://www.thewi.org.uk/news-and-events/volunteers-cannot-continue-being-used-a...

Now, which one am I going to believe????

By: Really?

Really? — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 20:34:46 +0000

In reply to Johanna Anderson. Poorly researched? You should see the WI "report" if you want biased, poorly evidenced assertions!

By: Andrew Preston

Andrew Preston — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:30:34 +0000

In reply to Johanna Anderson. Spot on.

By: Christopher Pipe

Christopher Pipe — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:43:27 +0000

The rise and fall of (decision-makers’ perceptions of) libraries
1 A philanthropist, or an enlightened landowner or employer, or a clergyman or scholar, or a council of worthies, decides it would benefit a local community if they had access to books and other sources of wider knowledge. With the growth of local councils representing their local communities, government, responsibility for the library is taken over by the council, who pay for it by raising a local rate.
2 The councillors clearly cannot run the library from day to day by themselves, so they appoint a paid librarian to do so. Expenditure is approved by a committee of the council.
3 Over the years, successive librarians became better educated and more expert at managing their libraries in ways that will promote wider learning by members of their community. Librarians in many places share ideas and devise ways of training new generations of librarians who will be able to build on the accumulated experience and wisdom of their elders, whilst developing new services and using new technologies and the latest audiovisual media. The library “profession” has been born.
4 Writers, scholars and entrepreneurs unite in their praise for libraries and librarians that have helped them to start and progress in their studies and their businesses. Ordinary people with no pretensions to either scholarship or current business success give moving testimony to the part libraries and librarians play in making their lives worth living.
5 A new generation of politicians and civil servants come to office. They claim libraries are a matter of “culture”, of “the arts”, implicitly removing them from the realm of education, individual learning and business enterprise. They announce (as though it were a new idea) that libraries should involve the “community”, as though public libraries had not always been for the community and run with local involvement and paid for by the community through their rates. They say libraries should use new technology, as though librarians had not been using new technology before most of today’s politicians were in nappies. Finally, they say libraries must be “sustainable”, as though they were money-making businesses which must somehow be made to work without either expertise or paid employees.
6 Tell me, ministers – tell me, councillors – tell me, distant advisers: were your predecessors wrong to think it more efficient to employ dedicated librarians than to ask good-natured volunteers to keep the room tidy? Were politicians in the cash-strapped 1940s and 1950s wrong to invest in new branches, new outreach, new staff, new buildings sited where they could easily be reached by children and young people and the working population and the elderly, few of whom had cars or money to spare? Were librarians in the 1960s and 1970s wrong to take advantage of new media and accept responsibility for local history collections that would give their local communities sense of identity, a pride in their heritage and an understanding of their own history? And do you think any one of them would have understood why you have to destroy the service they built, or would have had any inkling of what you mean by libraries being “sustainable”? Tell me, Arts Council – tell me, Local Government Association – tell me, Secretaries of State: what gives you the right to “guide” local authorities, to tell librarians their services must “evolve” and become “more imaginative”? Who is lacking in imagination here if it is not our government and its advisers? What right have you to tell councils, libraries and local people to work together when you are undermining the very existence of libraries, the self-determination of councils and the hope of the people?

By: Johanna Anderson

Johanna Anderson — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:57:38 +0000

Interesting that they didn’t use Gloucestershire County Council, Somerset or Surrey as case studies… on how to not do it isn’t it…..very strange. And neglectful.