Tag Archives: Libraries

The Library Crisis: On pole dancing and washing-up fairies

14 Wednesday May 2014

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Just what is a library? In my previous job in a school, teaching staff were forever introducing visitors to the library saying “Oh but of course it’s so much more than a library… it has laptop computers” – as if libraries and technology were matter and anti-matter, and only by some precarious accident of the space-time continuum could technology co-exist with print books in the same room.

To me, a library is both physical and virtual. It is a portal to information in all its forms. A physical space to house material for education and leisure, complimented by its cyberspace twin, so that people can access the library from wherever they are. So my library, with its physical collection and virtual services, was exactly what a library should be.

But those that make the decisions on funding have some pretty strange ideas. The main one being that community libraries will perform better than Council-run libraries because they’ll open up to new uses – such as pole dancing classes. An article in the Third Sector cites the case of a London library now run by volunteers, which offers “dancing, healthy eating picnics and film nights”. Usage has since apparently increased, so the community-led library is hailed as a success. Now I have nothing against these activities and libraries have always let out rooms or space for community activities. But let’s get one thing very clear – these activities have nothing to do with what a library is. When a library is used for these activities, it is no longer a library, it is…..wait for it… A ROOM. Having a room is great for a community but it is NO measure of how good the library is. So this argument just doesn’t hold water.

The article also comments that “one volunteer spotted a regular visitor during the winter whose feet were blue with cold. She befriended him, found out that he had been living in a shed for 12 years and helped him to get rehoused. “Things like that would not have happened if it was run by the council,” says Dunbar.”

Really? I take great exception to this. Library staff have always helped people in need in ways not part of their job description – we see the homeless, the mentally ill, the refugees and asylum seekers, the lonely and the poor, and we step in. In my role in a school, I saw far more than the teachers ever saw – bullying, abuse, self-harm… and reported child protection issues on a regular basis. Students would come to me for advice on support on issues that were happening in their lives, and being able to help them was the most important thing I did. The same goes for public libraries – we are often the face of officialdom that people feel most comfortable with, and to whom they go for help.

Of course volunteers can do an excellent job. I’ve been a volunteer myself within the library service, and have no wish to criticise the valuable contribution they make. However, giving the service over entirely to volunteers isn’t fair and isn’t right. Not only is it doing people out of a job, it is taking advantage of people who care about their communities and exploiting them.

The library service in Leicestershire employs 126 full time equivalent staff. They are supported by 168 volunteers. So your service is already being propped up by unpaid labour – you’re already getting a service that is scraping by and relying on the goodwill of individuals. In the article mentioned above, the volunteer interviewed, Kathy Dunbar, works a staggering 50 hours per week for no pay. This disgusts me – she should be getting paid for the work she is doing. It’s as simple as that. I’m sure she’s an unusual case (I certainly hope so), but the pressure put on volunteers when there are no paid staff will be great. If they don’t work for free, the library will close.

And there are other issues with reliance on volunteers:

  • Quantity. How will a small community recruit and retain enough volunteers to sustain the library long-term?
  • Quality. How will they be trained and do they have the right skills-base and attitude? (I’ll come back to this in my next post…) Who is going to pay for the DRB checks to make sure they’re suitable to have access to children (and what happens when that goes wrong?!)?
  • Equality. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that it is easier to recruit volunteers in wealthier areas. What about the deprived areas, who need their libraries the most? Will they lose their access to a library? How will the principle of a library – fair and equitable access for all – be maintained in the future? I can wish all I want for a washing-up fairy, but I know it’s only the posh houses at the other end of the village that can afford one…
  • Cost. volunteers aren’t free. That’s another myth alongside my washing-up fairy. There is a cost in training them, and oh, there’s that pesky DRB check again…
  • Consistency. You can make paid staff do things they don’t to do because they have a job description and a contract and have regular appraisals, with a disciplinary system if they muck up. You can’t make a volunteer do anything. If you ask a volunteer to do children’s storytime and they’re too shy, they can refuse. If you ask them to assist the elderly gentlemen with body odour and fascist views they can tell you to sod off. If they don’t want to work one particular day because the sun is shining and they’d rather be elsewhere, there’s nothing you can do about it. Staff have rules and regulations and a code of conduct they must follow. Volunteers, at the end of the day, don’t.

So it’s just not that simple. Volunteers in libraries work best when they work alongside trained professionals. When you take the professionals away, the foundations will become weaker and the library service will eventually fall.

And that’s the master plan.

In my next post I’ll be scratching at the seedy underbelly of life in a library and the thorny issues of prejudice and discrimination.

SOS: Leicestershire Libraries Under Threat

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

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Leicestershire County Council have announced their plans to reduce the opening hours of 16 larger libraries and have the remaining 36 libraries run by volunteers. There is a consultation at www.leics.gov.uk – if you’re local, please take a few minutes to give your view.

This is essentially the death blow to the library service in Leicestershire.

There are 33 executives that make up the senior management at Leicestershire County Council. Their combined pay totals £3060,00.00.

If the maximum salary was capped at £75K there would be in excess of £585,00.00 back in the budget to provide essential services to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people.

The saving estimated from cutting 36 libraries and reducing the opening hours of the remaining 16 is just £800,00.00. Far, far less than the pay of the top 33 people. Is this fair?

When the Council previously consulted on cuts, they asked people to decide which essential services they would prioritise and which they would cut. There was no option to “Reduce executive pay”.

Several years ago I met with David Parsons, then Leader of the County Council (now disgraced over expenses irregularities, and currently standing for UKIP), to discuss cuts to library services. He told me that in a time of austerity we must all make difficult choices and hard sacrifices. Then he left – in his chauffeur-driven Jaguar.

Now Richard Blunt, cabinet member for libraries, says: “We are going to have to do things differently, in the face of £110 million savings across the council.”

I agree absolutely – let the highest paid make a sacrifice for a change, rather than the poorly paid library staff who will lose their jobs, and the most vulnerable members of our communities who need the support of libraries the most.

Even if you don’t use your local public library, please participate in the consultation, and please share this post – we have to fight to save our services. There is an e-petition you can sign too (you will have to register before you can sign.)

In case you’re wondering why the Council’s proposals, in particular staffing libraries with volunteers only, are making me so angry, I’ll be blogging over the coming weeks about the fight to save Leicestershire Libraries and explaining why I think the Council’s plans are fatally flawed. Watch this space.

Rant! The (mis)information age

31 Monday Mar 2014

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Yet again, I’m stunned by the crass ignorance of our leaders.

Moves are afoot to ban prisoners from receiving books from outside the prison – meaning that prisoners who are attempting to rehabilitate themselves through education will no longer be able to do so. Prisons are currently required by law to have libraries but the provision varies wildly in quality. Reading – both for courses and qualifications but also for leisure – is the best way to expand the mind and to give people the opportunity to reflect on their lives and to envision alternatives. Every librarian will tell you that reading changes lives, and never is this more true than in a prison. Denying prisoners this right is denying them the chance to change, and benefits no one, least of all society at large. I’ve met plenty of people who proudly state that discovering books and libraries literally saved their lives, pushing them onto a different path – including ex-offenders who I’ve mentored through work experience in the library with the Leicestershire Cares charity.  Authors have spoken out this week against the proposals and there is a petition to sign at change.org – plus a great article by former prisoners in The Independent.

But who cares about prisoners?

Of course this is all part of the Government’s wider agenda to disenfranchise the most vulnerable members of our society.

Never has the assault on libraries been so vicious. School libraries are not a legal requirement (unlike prison libraries) so there is no obligation on schools to teach the critical life skill of information literacy or promote reading for pleasure, other than the occasional half-arsed government dictat which leaves libraries out of the equation when they are best placed to deliver this.  And despite all the empirical evidence from the OECD and other international research organisations that boldly states that access to a good quality school library not only improves examination results, but also children’s life chances. (Don’t get me started!).

But who cares about children?

Public libraries, which are a statutory requirement, are being deliberately set up to fail, so when the government finally decides to repeal the 1964 Public Libraries Act, no one will care enough to protest any more, since the quality will be so dire they will no longer be valued. Volunteers are important, but they are NO substitute for highly trained professional staff who adhere to a code of professional ethics and have such a wide knowledge-base. Libraries are not simply rooms full of books – they are access to information, with people on hand who know how to access, interpret, synthesise and communicate that information. They are an absolute lifeline to the poorest sections of our communities, providing the education that the education system doesn’t have time or will to do. And with the simultaneous threats to voluntary organisations such as the Citizens’ Advice Bureaux, they have never been more important.

But who cares about poor or uneducated people?

I’m sick of hearing that everything is on the internet and free. This is simply WRONG. Ask a librarian why. It’s also a myth promulgated by those in power to further disenfranchise you without you realising it. The internet is basically full of people who think they’re experts spouting off – the cult of the amateur, white noise that passes for content. There is good solid information out there, but it’s drowned in dross. A librarian can help you sift through it – but when we’re gone, you’re on your own. Good luck with that, really.

Good quality, reliable, accurate information is not, by and large, free. A couple of years ago there was an article in The Guardian about the future of University libraries, in which a student was interviewed and proudly declaimed that libraries were obsolete, as he got all the information he needed for his degree for free from the internet, naming several sources. These sources were all a) provided by the University Library and b) VERY, VERY expensive. Once he was out of University, he would find that he would no longer be able to access this information. Lots of professionals I speak to bemoan the fact that they can’t get access to the research and information they need to be able to do their jobs properly.

But who cares about students?

Librarians do. And libraries provide. They are an essential part of our society and encapsulate the utopian dream that no human being is worthless or without hope. That we all have the right to learn and grow and develop and experience a multitude of worlds and realities through reading. That we are all, essentially, equal.

And that is simply revolutionary.

It’s what those in power want to take away from you.

Even if you don’t use a library yourself, support them anyway. Because when they’re gone, some essential part of ourselves is gone – our society will be a different shape, and it won’t be good.