Ian Anstice

Editorial

The latest council to announce large-scale cuts to its library service is Barnsley, where eight out of 17 branches will either be closed or farmed out to volunteers or other organisations.  Cuts north of the border appear to be increasing, although met with massive protest, with Midlothian looking to change three branches.  Southend is also cutting provision.  While all this is happening, Ed Vaizey attended a new library opening in North Somerset and had a joke.  His performance is not amusing many people, though, with a whole raft of celebrities questioning the cuts to the Arts and his seeming inability to answer letters – a trait well known to library campaigners, who well remember similar behaviour over the last couple of years.

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Editorial

To no-one’s surprise the Secretary of State responsible for libraries, Maria Miller, has finally announced that her decision over the cuts to Lewisham’s library service is to do nothing.  Her reasons are in bold below, with my gloss in italics:

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Editorial

More data is coming in on the actual performance of libraries that have been transferred from council control, this time from Lewisham.  The council there stopped running five libraries in June 2011 with three being transferred to non-profit Eco Computer Systems (now Eco Communities), one to the charity Age Exchange and one was saved by volunteers.

Of these, the most expensive was the Age Exchange takeover of Blackheath Library.  The building is now a community centre and a cafe. £500k came from city financiers, £200k from Lewisham council and £30k from the Blackheath Assembly.  It’s transfer saved the council £75k per year.  It’s book issues since takeover are below:

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Editorial

Hard information on the impact of turning a council-run library into a volunteer-run one is hard to come by.  There’s not many examples over two years old, for a start. It was therefore interesting to read this post about a comparatively long running volunteer library in Swindon backed up by some hard figures.   The article – called “We will economise on the beaches” – is worth a read but, if you don’t have the time for that, then the difference in usage figures for Walcot (volunteer-run since 2009) and for its parent authority is probably informative enough:

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Editorial

The Welsh Government has once again highlighted its difference to England with an impressive list of investments in public libraries.  It has announced funding of over £1.5m for libraries.  This is a quarter of the amount Arts Council England has to play with for a population of less than one-seventeenth.  Furthermore, it appears to be for a year, as opposed to the two years of the ACE funding, meaning an investment nearly nine times more substantial per capita than that of England.  Wales has long since held on to public library standards, meaning that its councils are taken to task if they cut libraries, unlike across the border.  All is not well in the principality as campaigners in Newport will attest but this announcement will emphasise the importance of different approaches.  Wales is taking a hands-on role, with supervision and substantial investment. England, under the decidely non-interventionist Ed Vaizey, is far more laissez-faire.  It would be a rare library supporter who would say that the larger nation comes out better in such a comparison.

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