Ian Anstice
Public librarian since 1994, user of public libraries since my first memories ... and a keen advocate of public libraries and chronicler of the UK public libraries scene. Library manager since 1998, winner of Information Professional of the Year 2011 and Winsford Customer Service "Oscar" 2012 and 2014, honorary CILIP fellow 2015, CILIP Wales Library Champion of the Year 2016.
Homepage: https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com
Posts by Ian Anstice
One of our favourite things
May 12th
Editorial
The full scale of the proposed cuts to Herefordshire Libraries are becoming clearer, with the petition against the closures of all but one of them coming up time and time again with testimonies of how important the local branches still are. There is also some anger at the LGA forgetting that libraries are statutory in their desire to stress how many will close if there continue to be cuts to council budgets.
Set against such cuts, it’s going to be tough for the new Arts Council England (half-time) libraries director, Brian Ashley, to accentuate the positive but it is clear that this is what he plans to do. I know what he means, to a point: there are indeed many great things happening in libraries, every day, and this needs to be emphasised, No-one, after all, wants to be associated with a declining service, employees and users alike. However, balancing the news of the biggest cuts to library services in history with good news is going to be a challenge for Brian and he will need all the help he can get. As such, I’ll start him off with this song below (sent to me very kindly today) which lists many good things about libraries while at the same time not failing to mention the bad. Sing it to the tune of “These are a few of my favourite things” by the way:
“Fear of change”: William Sieghart interviewed
May 9th
Interview
William Sieghart, leader of the panel of experts who recently produced “An Independent Review of E-lending in Public Libraries in England”, National Poetry Day founder and the brains behind Poetry on Prescription, kindly agreed to do a brief interview for Public Libraries News, which is printed below. Mr Sieghart will be touring libraries in Kent and Westminster promoting his poetry anthology, Winning Words: Inspiring Poems for Everyday Life. More details of the tour can be found here.
Bad news in Herefordshire, good news elsewhere. Questions in Manchester and Isle of Wight
May 8th
There’s a mixture of good and bad news today. The good news are refurbishments in East Sussex, North Tyneside and Windsor and Maidenhead. These range from nearly finished projects to plans still on the drawing board but they all show a faith in the future or libraries. Bad news comes from Herefordshire, where council papers, suggest that spending on Culture (including libraries) will be nearly halved over three years with cuts and transfers to volunteers proposed.
Bad news also from Manchester which further confirms closures of six libraries, with £87k to be spent per year to aid volunteers to run alternatives. Campaigners have noted that all of these closures are all in deprived areas, which raises certain legal concerns, as the quote below demonstrates:
Library Campaign’s call to action on volunteer libraries: “Let’s get real”
May 6th
Laura Swaffield from the Library Campaign has rightly pointed out to me that I missed out her report a few days ago. The Campaign’s statement is, belatedly, below: More >
One volunteer library, many questions: Walcot Library and matters arising
May 5th
The article below appears by willing permission of The Library Campaign magazine. It will appear in the next issue, along with one from Jim Brooks of the award-winning volunteer Little Chalfont Community Library. The article is written by Trevor Craig and Shirley Burnham.
Outsourcing, food banks, late fees and 3-D printing (sort of)
May 2nd
Ealing and Harrow libraries look set to be outsourced to Laing. Meanwhile, there’s food collections in Wigan libraries for local food banks and there are also two unrelated articles about non-payment of late fees in Camden and Essex. More internationally, there’s a great defence of public libraries in New Zealand (under very hostile questioning) and the Australian library association want to hear your views on the future of libraries. Right, after all of that, here’s a treat … a not entirely serious suggestion for 3-D printers being the saviour of libraries in a somewhat unorthodox way:
Cartoon by Theresa McCracken
What colour is your library?
Apr 29th
Editorial
There’s a fascinating article on what different colours mean in marketing that can be looked at here. Yellow means optimism, blue means trust (IBM) and grey means balance (Wikipedia). I don’t entirely agree with all the samples but it got me thinking – is anyone in your library service aware of the role of colour in marketing? No, didn’t think so. Let’s set our sights a little lower – do you have anyone trained in marketing? No? I mean, this is key stuff: companies go out of business or make big money because of this – and it appears to pass libraries by. This is perhaps understandable in times of cut budgets but it was also of course true in better times as well.
Partly this is because of councils controlling marketing, publicity and social media. Partly, though, it is also because librarians confuse marketing with publicity and think that anyone can do it who (God help me) has Microsoft Publisher on their computers. If your library service has gone past this stage then, congratulations, nominate them for an Award. If not then have a read of this book and get it sorted.
Definition of a philistine
Apr 27th
Maria Miller, the minister ultimately responsible for libraries, has made clear that the only thing that matters in the Arts is money. Leaving aside the temptation to suggest that she knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing”, this may have some strong implications for libraries, although it is clear that this is the way that the wind has been blowing for quite some while. Stressing the economic value or libraries – rather than any touchy-feely stuff – is clearly the way to go. There are many such arguments that will aid this case and another has appeared with a new report showing that illiteracy costs the UK $127 billion per year.
“A pretty turbulent time”: BBC News covers public and volunteer libraries
Apr 23rd
Editorial
BBC Television News covered volunteer libraries today. This is a transcript of the two minute segment:
Jenny Hill, reporter: In this library, they don’t like silence but they do love their books. Bulkington Library is run by the community. Among the fifty-two volunteers here, we met Mary.
Mary Beaumont, volunteer, Bulkington Community Library: Reading is really important to me. I’ve always liked books. I always think that books take you out of yourself. If you’re having a bit of a bad day, feeling a bit down.
Jenny Hill, reporter: In the story of the British public library, this is a pretty turbulent time. Last year alone, spending cuts forced the closure of some 200. There are at the same time, though, some 170 so-called community run libraries just like this one and they’re staffed by 23,000 volunteers. Some would say it is quite a survival story.
Bulkington, they say, is more than just a library. They host history groups, poetry groups, social groups but they also have to find £7,000 a year just to keep it going.
Darrell Buckley, Chairman, Bulkington Community Library: It is wrong. This should be run by the Council. But, if you have no alternative then you have to make a different arrangement and this is what we have managed to do in Bulkington.
John Dolan, CILIP (a member of the CILIP council and a former library policy advisor at the MLA): What I think is terrible is the way that in some authorities, the library has been dismissed as unimportant. Libraries are being down-sized, they’re being closed, they’re being as here run by volunteers. This is fine in principle if they have the backing of a library service with skilled and trained librarians.
Jenny Hill, reporter: It’s feared that hundreds of public libraries still face closure and it is predicted that they will be replaced by hundreds of volunteer-run services. In the meantime, the monster masterclass continues. There are more than 13,000 books here but somehow the top title usually involves a dinosaur.
Volunteers fight to save libraries, BBC. Transcript of 2 minute news segment.
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