What are potentially the worst cuts so far to a library service have been announced in Newcastle. Every library in that authority – 17 of them – apart from Newcastle City Library appears to be under threat due to cuts to the library service of £7m.  This is especially galling as Central Library has recently cost £24m to be refurbished, with the now endangered but presumably still shiny High Heaton costing a further £1m.  Even more distressing for those who are now faced with giving up their labour for free in order to keep their library open, is that this was paid for in a £40.2m PFI programme.

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For such a non-entity of a report, the Select Committee report on library closures raised a respectable amount of coverage.  It cannot be because of the report itself – see my post yesterday for why I think this – but because of the importance the public places on libraries.  It’s interesting to see the different viewpoints that people and organisations had on the report.  It’s fair to say that mine was amongst the most negative.  Other people, having expected less, were disappointed less and recognised some positives.

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There’s four, not just one, tough nuts to crack, with free e-lending. The four are the Treasury (who will have to pay for it, one way or another, in a time of dramatic cuts in public spending), the Publishers (who are paranoid about losing sales) and  Libraries (who don’t have any money and who fear being made redundant, often literally, by the new technology). The fourth problem, easily forgotten, are the public themselves who need to be able to use the service.

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Big news today is that the much-delayed publication of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee Inquiry into Library Closures will at last occur on Tuesday.  Since the Inquiry finished sitting, there has been a change of Culture Secretary and one of the most high-profile MPs on the Committee, Louise Mensch, has decided to leave parliament.  Presumably, therefor, the only reason the Committee felt the need to publish the results now is that, if they wait any longer, none of the relevant people would still be involved.  We will see if its conclusions have been worth waiting for (and the general atmosphere is, shall we say, pessimistic on this one) next week.

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I was talking to a teenager today who could not communicate with me by “normal” means.  Pretty normal for a teenager you may think … but this is not what I mean.  This teenager is a very intelligent chap and wanted to contact the library – he had a few ideas about how we could improve things – but had failed.  This was despite him (a) knowing where we were, (b) our opening hours, (c) our phone number and (d) our email address but none of that was of use to him.  You see, he simply uses forms of messaging many public libraries, at least at branch level, doesn’t.  He texts, he facebooks, he tweets.  Some public library branches do all of these, most don’t do all.  Public libraries can, and should be, masters of information technology and communication and, as it was brought home to me today, we sometimes fall behind that ideal.

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