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 >

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

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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.

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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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Bury have announced that they are cutting £570k from the libraries budget, leading to buildings moves, less staff and co-locations for four of their libraries.  The council is at conspicuous pains to say that it is not closing any branches.  The previously reported usage figures Brent, also in the news for spending £3,500 for murals for a library they’re about to knock down and controversially redevelop, have been brought into question,  Apparently, a closer look at the statistics provided by a Brent councillor a 12% drop in usage rather than the marginal increase previously suggested.

Two great ideas today are the rather wonderful projections soon to appear on Liverpool Central Library and, as long as one ignores its punny name, the Bicycool Library project.

Finally, we can get a little carried away int his country thinking that we are unfairly done by when it comes to cuts in libraries.  Well, we probably are, but we’re also not alone – Rotterdam lost 19 out of its 25 libraries (perhaps it should twin with Newcastle?) and has a volunteer-run branch.  Mind you, its surviving libraries (including one that is a book-pyramid and the volunteer one which deliberately does not call itself a library in order to not provoke look pretty darn cool.

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