Ian Anstice

News

“New powers that benefit communities now that the ‘right to bid’ provisions contained within the localism act are in force (more on all the rights on the My Community Rights website). They enable communities to nominate ‘assets of community value’ in their local area – land and buildings which provide a social benefit. The local authority is required to formally and publicly list these properties. If one of these properties subsequently comes up for sale, the local community will be able to ask for a ‘moratorium’ – a pause – of up to six months to raise the funds to bid to buy it. The list of properties could include an eclectic range of sites – the recreation ground; the last pub in the village; the library; or, even, the local theatre.” New Start

More >

News

• Dobrovolníci v knihovnách – Informace pro knihovny (Czech Republic). The page is on how volunteers can be used in Czech libraries and their pros & cons.  It looks like (via Google Translate) that the Czechs are seeing it as entirely supplementary to paid staff and that replacement is not being considered. More >

News

• A Londres, des squatteurs rouvrent les portes d’une bibliotheque condamnee– Le Monde / M Blogs (France).  Reports on squatters taking over Friern Barnet Library and on the current parlous state of English public libraries.

More >

The next phase of the Envisioning the library of the future consultation from Arts Council England has been launched. This stage looks at how people use libraries and what they want from them.  Unfortunately, it’s only available online which necessarily skews the results somewhat.  More worryingly, it’s almost impossible to spot on the Arts Council England website – in fact, I could not find it on there earlier and had to resort to using the direct link provided. In order to rectify this, albeit it in a tiny way, there is now an easy link to it on the Public Libraries News sidebar.  Assuming the reader can find the questionnaire, and have not been put off by the registration process (which is easy enough for experts but will doubtless turn away one or two less confident souls), the questions asked are:

More >

Ed Vaizey will announce a review of library e-book lending tomorrow (Wednesday).  He has cross party support and, indeed, his shadow Dan Jarvis, claims it was his idea in the first place.

It’s clear that something needs to be done on this subject: some authorities have e-book lending while others don’t; Authors, unlike with printed books, don’t gain any money at all from e-book lending; the biggest e-book player, Amazon, doesn’t allow e-book lending at all, perhaps because of its own future plans.  The difficulty for the Government is making sure that all sides win, or at least don’t lose.  Libraries need e-books so as not to be increasingly irrelevant but, at the same time, a way needs to be found to ensure the buildings continue to be used.  Authors need to be paid.  Publishers worry that, faced with free borrowing, people won’t bother purchasing at all.

It’s a situation that requires the wisdom of Solomon and, possibly, the future of libraries depends on it.  But, at least, the subject is being addressed now and, for that, Ed gets a rare thumbs up from myself, even though he can’t resist putting the boot into library campaigners when he appeared on TV…

More >