Editorial

Two big stories in libraries this week for me. The first was the announcement that Bristol had been contacted by the artist Banksy to ask if he could help in some way after the council there announced they were cutting the budget and possibly closing 17 out of 27 branches. Just recently, after a storm(zy) of protest, the mayor u-turned and gave a reprieve until 2020. On closer inspection, it looks like Banksy hasn’t actually given any money to Bristol. Observers have also pointed out that he couldn’t legally pay for public libraries anyway (that statutory thing I think) and, moreover, depending on the whim of local rich people to fund what is a much-needed public service is no way for a civilized and wealthy country to behave. Indeed, my twitter feed was, and is, full of people saying this.

So let’s have a look at the big picture. Well, public libraries are perhaps the most famous beneficiaries of philanthropy ever. Mr Carnegie’s donations are still around in many beautiful buildings and the work of the Carnegie UK Trust. More recently, the Wolfson Foundation provided a lot of the original money for the People’s Network, and – perhaps less known – the lucky librarians of Hull have received £4 million in the last six years due to the nice James Reckitt Library Trust. On a smaller scale, Rochdale has a literature festival due at least in part to the good wishes of a couple who fell in love in the libraries there.  But, look, Carnegie is so well known because he gave $350 million. That’s easily over £6 billion in today’s money or perhaps seven times the total British public library annual budget. And all of the others have very definitely provided things additional to the core service. And libraries are for life, not just for Christmas.  Just like in the case of volunteering, relying on the whims of nice rich people is no way to run a library service. Unless a new billionaire comes along of course or you’re willing to spend a lot on long-term assistance for one authority.

Perhaps someone can hassle Bill and Melinda Gates to look to the UK. But I doubt very much that there’s any chance  ultra-capitalist Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon has done so much to destroy libraries and bookstores while paying a pittance to his warehouse human drones and avoiding tax, will much help. Perhaps, rather, we should look to, oh I don’t know, our taxes to cover such a service. Just don’t expect many billionaires to think similarly. My view, as stated in this Big Issue article, is “go  big or don’t make the offer”.

Secondly, it’s CILIP Conference week and there was big speech about how the US does its campaigning. Looks like it made quite an impact. Have a look below. And there’s a nice piece about the People’s Network in there as well.

Changes by local authority

• East Lothian – Opening hours at Port Seton Library restored after protest.
• Norfolk – £200k (40%) cut to mobile library budget: one day “pop ups” trialled, surviving mobiles will stay longer at more popular stops.
• North Yorkshire – Filey Library refurbished.
• Nottinghamshire – Ruddington, Mansfield Woodhouse and Ravenshead Libraries refurbished.
• West Dunbartonshire – Opening hours reduced from now in order to save money to spend on refurbishments.

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Editorial

A very interesting experiment has taken in place in York. The library trust there, Explore, launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for its summer reading challenge. At the end of the two month campaigning time, the service had reached its goal and raised very slightly more than its £11,117 target. On the face of it, this shows the success of the campaign and, I am sure, would encourage many others to think about going down the same route next year, even for something as fundamental as the main annual promotional push. However, crowd-funders allow one to look at who is donating unless they specifically ask to be anonymous so we can see where the money came from. Which is what I did:

• £7350 – the vast bulk was one anonymous donation Friday before Monday deadline. I understand it was not from the council.
• £2850 – 3 library friends group donations. This money would presumably have gone to the library service in any case for other projects.
• £315 – 3 York Council employees (inc. £300 from the officer in charge of outsourcing: he clearly believes in what he’s doing).
• £291 – 23 named donations, of which a quick google search comes up with no York Explore or council connections.
• £290 – 13 anonymous donations, untraceable.
• £239 – 8 York Explore employee donations inc. £160 from three very senior posts.
• £50 – 1 donation from local children’s activity magazine
• £20 – 1 donation from York bookshop

It’s clear from this that there’s no large number of small donors out there who funded the campaign, with the number of total donations being only 50 in total. Moreover, just 4 donations accounting for 10/11ths and one alone accounting for three quarters. Without that one big donation and, discounting the friends groups funding which would have gone to the library service anyway, the total amount raised would have been £1205, barely one-tenth of the total, with half of that coming from York Explore or council employees. So, the message if one digs deeper, for library services wanting to go down this route is that funding is not guaranteed and will come from a relatively small number of people.

Let’s be clear on this. I’m not attacking York Explore for trying crowdfunding. They’re actually doing well compared with many library services, having closed no libraries and this new library of theirs at Burnholme looks rather nice. No rather I see this as a test to see if there is widespread public support for this sort of funding in the ever harder financial environment that library services find themselves in. With budgets constantly being cut, it was only a matter of time before someone tried this and, in many ways, others will benefit from this experiment if it is learnt from. No, what I want to do is for the right lessons to be learnt. From my analysis, it’s clear that crowdfunding is not an easy answer and will result in small numbers of funders. It’s also rather high risk, which is what was discovered in an earlier experiment in Dundee, where a crowdfunder for £948k for a library expansion raised just £200 from a grand total of four donors. So, if you’re looking for non-traditional funding possibilities for what the public sees as fairly core services, it may be one should look elsewhere.

However, if anyone knows who donated that £7k, do let me now … I have a proposal for funding a news website on public libraries I’d like to talk to them about.

Changes

• West Dunbartonshire – One Stop Shop opened at Alexandria Library.

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Changes by local authority

• Leicester – Rushey Mead Library may close: move to leisure centre co-location considered.
• Lincolnshire – New volunteer library opens in Allington.  Donington volunteer library to have extra room.

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Editorial

To many of us not in the highest tiers of public  library management, the two day long SCL seminar, held this week in Warwick, maintains only a slight fascination, if we are aware of it at all. But the programme shows as well as anything what things chief librarians are interested in and the trends to watch. This year, also, will see the official launch of the new SCL logo and name, and it’ll be fascinating to see what reaction there is to that. Here are the things I’ve gleaned from the programme;

– The progress of the  Libraries Opportunities for Everyone Fund (LOFIE) programmes are, quite rightly being shared. There seems to be more sharing of the results of innovation than before, generally, in libraries, which is good.

– It looks like the libraries minister Michael Ellis is actually physically turning up. His presence has hardly been noticed in the sector since his appointment, apart from one phoned-in script-reading video message at a volunteer library seminar a month or two ago. I reckon it’s 50:50 if he’ll cancel, though (and not just because his train will probably be late).

– The digital side is being emphasised, although the benefits of reading (not “books”) is featured in some sessions.

– EU libraries are mentioned. The loss of EU membership is going to have an impact on public libraries but, as with everything else about the issue, exactly how is unclear.

– Volunteer (“community managed”) libraries get a session, although considering how big a part of the sector they are now (over 500 branches) this is hardly surprising. Similarly, the same can be said about staffless libraries, whose presence is increasingly being felt.

– Health and wellbeing is big. Very big. Huge.

But, really, do have a read for yourself, especially if you want to get a view for what’s big and trending with chief librarians at the moment.

Changes

• Barnet – Wimbletech withdraw from leasing space in libraries for businesses.
• Rochdale – Audiobooks to be loaned free to all.

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Editorial

You know how it is. Some other place, shinier and bigger than yours, wins an award. That’s how it goes. Well, I’ve seen a fair few libraries and there’s some brilliant ones out there who have never had recognition, and some are small and far from shiny. They just do brilliant work, over and above what is needed, every day , meeting the needs of their communities and going the extra mile. Some are pretty darn imaginative about it too. So it’s great to see the relaunch of the Library of the Year award into something more inclusive and open. Any size library can apply and any number can do so from any one library service. So ignore that inner voice that says your library is not as good as that big one you’ve heard about. Concentrate on the brilliance of yours and apply. it’s only 300 words and getting a great mix of libraries, large and small, old as well as new, in the final ten will done wonders to help show the variety of the great things libraries do. Apply before 15th June.

Changes

• Bath and North East Somerset – Midsomer Norton refurbished, now co-located with One Stop Shop.
• East Sussex – Langney Library closed: to be volunteer.

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