https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/2015/03/ed-vaizey-there-appear-to-be-no-grounds-on-which-he-would-intervene-in-libraries.html What's happening to your library? Thu, 12 Mar 2015 21:41:29 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/2015/03/ed-vaizey-there-appear-to-be-no-grounds-on-which-he-would-intervene-in-libraries.html#comment-6679 Wed, 11 Mar 2015 08:58:54 +0000 http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/?p=8885#comment-6679 Evidently the Minister, Ed Vaizey, and Secretary of State, Sajid Javid, endorse and encourage a view in Sheffield City Council and elsewhere that the provision of accessible public libraries is an inefficient use of municipal resources – an official stance that would seem to conflict with the spirt, if not the substance, of their statutory duties under the 1964 Act. But as they have recourse, without any personal cost to themselves, to lawyers in Whitehall who can write clever letters explaining why no such duty is incumbent upon them, they get away with wriggling out of every formal complaint that is submitted to them. How convenient – and how shameful.

]]> https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/2015/03/ed-vaizey-there-appear-to-be-no-grounds-on-which-he-would-intervene-in-libraries.html#comment-6677 Tue, 10 Mar 2015 22:04:12 +0000 http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/?p=8885#comment-6677 New section on school libraries is a fantastic idea. So many of us work with our local public libraries on collaborative projects, we encourage our students to visit their local library to explore a wider range of resources for both recreational reading and study, and we also use the libraries ourselves, for many reasons … despite working in an environment where we are surrounded by books and other reading material. Working together and supporting each other makes us stronger and our voices louder, it creates benefits for both parties and brings added value to our services. Sadly, the situation within school libraries is much the same as that within public libraries … closures, cuts, professional staff replaced by volunteers … and we have no statutory guidelines to fall back on (even if they do seem to be totally ineffectual). What is interesting is the number of parents I meet that profess their shock on discovering that many schools don’t have libraries; to them a library should be an integral part of a school, so much so that I don’t think they even check to see if their child’s school has one.

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