The horror of the Newcastle cuts continues to make the main news splash, with Alan Gibbons and friends showing the power of authors in library campaigning.  The media love celebrities because well-known people sell papers.  I even notice this on Public Libraries News when I put the name of someone famous as the blog title.: one of the most popular posts ever was one on Stephen Fry and another “big seller” was on Zadie Smith.  If you want to harness this power, I’ve done a list of celebrities who have gone on record as supporting libraries here which all are free to use.  Of course, another reason why authors make good coverage is that they’re so good at using words.  Read Philip Pullman on libraries sometime or quotes from the Newcastle protests meeting to see what I mean.

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The delightfully named SCOOP (Standing Committee on Official Publications) has been in touch about a project that aims to retain vital legal records. The Print Still Matters project has the ambition of listing all the holdings of printed Official Publications  within UK Libraries.  This is so that access to these valuable records can be maintained, that one does not have to go to London to get them and that there is some knowledge of how rare particular titles are.

This comes at a critical time as libraries and other stores are faced with cutting costs and moving towards online resources.  In this, there is a danger that some vital printed documents are discarded.  Cut to the quick by this threat to our heritage, I asked a few questions of Peter Chapman, the project co-ordinator, who kindly enlightened me as to what is involved:

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It’s good news that the date of National Libraries Day has finally been formally confirmed.  It gives libraries, and supporters, just enough time to get something prepared. Everyone in libraries should have no problem getting behind the Day.  CILIP and others have gone out of their way to ensure that the Day is not about campaigning and fighting cuts but rather about celebrating these wonderful institutions in our midst.  Campaigners and library users will find no problem in getting on board.  Nor will library staff. Those authorities who are cutting libraries in one way or another  (which is the great majority of them) should not feel threatened by a day promoting their services as, after all, no council has gone on record to say they dislike libraries, it’s just that the money is tight.  Also, as was vividly shown last year, those authorities who do decide not to support the Day (as Kent found out) are likely not to come out of the affair smelling of roses.  For good or ill – definitely to the good in my book – NLD is here to stay and all should get with the programme and make it a tremendous success.  We need a day to celebrate more than ever.  Well, this is the day.  Let’s make it one to remember.

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There’s been a spirited exchange of comments on a post on this blog about who actually is supervising the UK public library service.  The comments were left by myself, the library campaigner Shirley Burnham and an anonymous but obviously very well-informed person using the tag “Revisit History”.  The conversation starts with a statement by “Revisit History”that the claim that the MLA had a superintendent function “is a myth”.  I then point out the quote from the libraries minister, Ed Vaizey, in parliament which says:

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David Fay, City Libraries’ Manager at Newcastle has been in touch with me to say:

“The position in Newcastle is bad but not quite as bad as you seem to think. The proposal is to keep a network of 8 libraries (including the City Library). This still means closing 10 libraries including High Heaton but it does mean that 96% of the population of Newcastle will be within 1.5 miles of a council run service. This core network will be staffed by trained library staff. Any libraries that are threatened with closure that are run in the future by local communities would sit outside of our core network and would be clearly branded as such. Also the article by Tony Durcan asking whether libraries were needed in an age of austerity did, I think, firmly argue that they were needed.”