Tag Archives: Public libraries

Letter to the Mercury

17 Friday Oct 2014

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The Leicester Mercury have posted my email to the members of the Council’s Scrutiny Committee on their website, which I thought I’d also share here:

Re: The Scrutiny meeting on proposals for the library service, 15th October

I am very concerned that the remit of this meeting was to discuss the 16 libraries remaining open and how to manage the handing over of the remainder to communities.

My understanding of a consultation is that it seeks ideas and feedback and incorporates these into policies and plans.

This has not been the case with the consultation on libraries – and the agenda of this scrutiny meeting suggests that the consultation has indeed always been a “done deal”.

The consultation presented communities with inaccurate statistical data reflecting the use of libraries – the evidence was fundamentally flawed.

The consultation presented only one option – for communities to take over the running of libraries, or face losing them – which is blackmail. There are no true choices being presented here – this was no consultation.

The consultation, supposedly based on an earlier survey about which services should bear the brunt of cuts, told communities at the public meetings that libraries were at the bottom of the pile – this was not true, as your own analysis of the survey results proved, with a significant number of people defending the vital importance of their library service.

And now the scrutiny committee is looking at the one proposal put forward by the Council – not the ideas suggested by the people.

Remember that the High Court ruled in favour of local campaigners in Lincolnshire, against the County Council.

Yet this is still the tip of the iceberg for all our public services are under threat.

And let’s not forget – the Council has £97 million in reserve, has made staff redundant then re-employed them, and the expenses of councillors are questionable.

There is an obligation to protect vulnerable people, which is why the Council is required to perform Equality Impact Assessments for every proposed cut. Yet every cut will hit the most vulnerable. What sleight of hand will the Council use to get these cuts through?

The structure of local government should be reviewed for efficiency, to reduce duplication; do we need district councils in their current form? We don’t need Mayors or dignitaries. We don’t need executives with chauffeur-driven Jaguars. We don’t need heads of department on pay comparable to the private sector. Our overhaul of services must include an overhaul of the political infrastructure. There is much money to be saved here.

Councillors have blamed the Government for these draconian cuts and this is true. But while the Government pursue their agenda to dismantle or privatise every public service, they are cleverly pitting the people against their own Councils. And while we fight for individual public services, we don’t see the whole picture, and we don’t apportion blame in the right place. If all our Councils were to stand up to Government, the people would support them. We are all concerned, frightened, in despair. We should all work together and act together to oppose all these cuts – in that way we can make a difference.

I appeal to the Council to be honest with the people of Leicestershire, and rather than try to enlist us to run essential services, to ask us to support the Council in standing up to central Government, to protect the needs of the many rather than the interests of the privileged few.

 

 

The Library Crisis: Down the rabbit hole and round the bend…

13 Friday Jun 2014

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Firstly, might I apologise to anyone who’s already a library volunteer. You do a great job in supporting the library service – and I’m saying that from experience. This post is in no way aimed at you. I don’t believe that having volunteers in libraries is a “bad thing” per se, but I’m pointing to the potential dangers of relying solely on volunteers and removing the core paid staff.

Secondly, the scenario in this post, whilst not an exaggeration as such, combines real events. All the above characters / situations are true and from my own experience, although names have been changed! And they didn’t all happen on the same day!

But let’s look at that concept of working in a library as a “nice little job” again, and leaving aside the awkwardness of a member of staff who is about to lose their job to a volunteer, pretend that this staff member is giving the volunteer a “handover” tour.

“Welcome to the library. Firstly I’ll show you the machinery you’ll be operating. This is the self-issue machine. It does breaks down regularly and you’ll have to fix it, plus the photocopier, and these are the computer terminals. How good are you with IT? Never mind, you can always try switching it on and off again if you don’t know how to fix a browser incompatibility. These are the library’s databases – are you good at searching for obscure information on different platforms? Do you know what to do if it crashes? ….. Oh well.

“Of course the main joy of the job is the people. Here are some of our regulars. Don’t mind Mr Trenchcoat there, he’s pleasant enough but if you do catch him masturbating in a corner,  it is best to confront him directly. And if any of our male customers do access porn on the internet or start chatting up 10-year-olds on Facebook, do call the police. Of course we get all age ranges in here sharing the space so you will have to be vigilant. We’ve got a hotline to Social Services if any pre-school children turn up on their own – lots of parents like to use us a free crèche while they go to work – and also there are a few children we think are being neglected, so keep a log and do report it if you see anything suspicious. Have you had any training in child protection?Some of the older children can be very difficult – have you had any training in behaviour management? We do get vandalism I’m afraid and they can be very intimidating. Some of the teenage boys are very big and scary but the girls…. Oh well.

“Oh that’s Mrs Smith, lovely lady but she will insist on tipp-exing all the rude words out of the novels! Watch her like a hawk. And Stan, he’s homeless so he comes in here to keep warm, bless him. He’s normally fine but try not to breathe too deeply if he’s close by. And then there are the groups we get who are learning IT skills and family history…. The life skills group are okay but occasionally they’ll be someone who flies off the handle and causes a disturbance. Have you had any experience in working with people with learning disabilities? Oh, that chap over there…. Always asking for inter-library loans of disturbing material which he will insist on talking about very loudly. How assertive are you, would you say? On a scale of one to ten? The cutbacks to welfare advice services mean we’re the only port of call left for some people so they can get rather upset and aggressive. We’re the public face of the government really!

“Watch out for dirty nappies left on the floor after children’s story time. And needles round the bins at the back of the car park. Be very careful and don’t pick anything up outside. Now, Mr Sutton is a bit of a worrying character. Don’t make eye contact or he’ll never leave you alone. Followed me home once, I had to call the police. Be very careful not to give anyone personal details about yourself, and wear trousers or long skirts, as some of our gentlemen do like to lie on the floor and look up your skirt from behind the shelves. Now, have you got your panic button? You must wear that at all times. You can lock yourself in the office if you need to, it has a phone line. Try not to be in the building on your own, libraries are a magnet for some strange people…. But we’re open to all, without prejudice. Don’t worry, they don’t all come in at once!”

Still want to volunteer?

That doesn’t paint a very attractive picture of a public library I know, and you’re probably thinking that it doesn’t bear much resemblance to your last visit to a public library, but that’s the point. These things are largely invisible to library users because the trained library assistants and librarians are so adept at dealing with them and take it all in their stride. Every member of library staff I know has hundreds of tales of strange or difficult – even downright dangerous – customers. I know library staff who have been stalked, even threatened with knives. But like any workface dealing with the frontline of the great British public, we do keep calm and carry on, because we have a fundamental belief in the social value of what we do.

So besides the fact that working in a library ain’t necessarily “a nice little job”, what else?

Libraries are underpinned by an ethical framework which espouses freedom of information and access for all. They are anti-censorship, and the materials in any one library have been selected to provide a well-balanced collection representing the requirements of the whole community. However, the moment you take away the librarians and the library assistants, you open the door to partisan interest. There are a lot of people out there who would love to get their propaganda into public libraries. Racist, sexist, and homophobic material, material that preaches religious intolerance, information that misinforms and tries to provoke mistrust and hatred amongst communities. Don’t underestimate how much of this is out there and how quickly it will penetrate our libraries if we let it. Library staff are bound by rules of professional conduct and a code of ethics – volunteers are not, and may deliberately or accidentally seed into collections material that is offensive, illegal or misguided.

So, how would you feel if your library did not stock books reflecting gay issues because the nice lady that runs it thinks that homosexuality is a sin?

What do you think about your leafy rural library refusing access to the children of the Travellers that have camped just up the road?

Do you want BNP meetings in your library? The volunteer may be a member and happily use the library as a political hub.

How will you ensure that every type of person can use the library space simultaneously and peaceably? What happens if the retired folk of your village don’t like letting the teenagers in?

Do you believe in equality and access for all?

I once had an argument with a Headteacher because her school library only reflected white culture, to which she responded disparagingly “well, we don’t have any of those children here” in a tone that expressed exactly her opinion of ethnic minorities. In other schools I’ve encountered similar prejudice against other minority groups.

The public library should be a service accessible to all.

There is also the problem of unbalancing a collection by only buying material that represents one point of view or one lifestyle. Not everyone wants to read aga-sagas – I’ve encountered school libraries where they are the only fiction stock (so no wonder the teens weren’t reading).

The council say they will give support for the book stock for five years. After that, it will be donations, and as any librarian knows, they can seriously affect the quality of your collection. Community-led libraries may well become glorified charity shops.

So I am concerned that libraries run by volunteers will a) be potentially scary for the volunteers and b) lead to a huge disparity in access for all. Volunteers can help libraries survive and thrive – but not without the underpinning expertise and guidance of professionally trained staff bound to uphold the ethical principles upon which the library service was built.

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.

The Library Crisis: Of unicorns, mermaids and librarians…

09 Friday May 2014

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This is the first of a series of posts on why I take issue with Leicestershire County Council’s (and the Government’s) agenda to have libraries run by volunteers.

So, what’s my problem? Isn’t it a good way to ensure that our public library service survives? Surely, it’s a nice, easy little job that volunteers will love to do…

Point One: the staff

That phrase “nice little job” has haunted me my entire professional life.But just as not everyone that works in a hospital is a doctor, and not everyone that works in a school is a teacher, not everyone that works in a library is a librarian.

To become a librarian you need to have a degree in Information and Library Science (ILS), preferably at postgraduate level with a first degree in a specialist subject. So if you want to be a law librarian, you’ll have a law degree as well as your ILS degree, and if you want to be a medical librarian, you’ll have a medical degree. (Interestingly, when I was applying to be a librarian back in the 1990s, I had to get much higher grades than my friends who were applying to be teachers.) Traditionally you’ll also then become Chartered (like an accountant or surveyor) which, in grandiose terms, is a licence to practice your profession given by the Queen, but on a more prosaic level, means that you’ve gained enough experience and demonstrated enough commitment to continuous professional development that your peers (in the form of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) judge you to be good at your job.

A degree in Library and Information Science will teach you how to interrogate, retrieve, organise, interpret, synthesize, and evaluate information of any type in any format, and crucially, how to make it accessible to other people, as well as teach them these vital information literacy skills. As we’re in the Information Age and the range of formats that information comes in are now wider than ever, a librarian’s knowledge-base needs to be wider than ever – they are becoming more highly-skilled as the internet advances, not less.

We’re certainly not an anachronism.

An ILS degree also teaches you the intricacy of copyright and data protection law, database design and management, organisation management (libraries are managed the same as any other organisation so we need those skills too!), marketing, teaching (librarians also teach so we cover the same content as a PGCE)…. And before I start bandying about words like informatics and metadata and content management systems, let’s just say that we know a lot about a lot of things.

So the librarians in a library aren’t generally stamping your books out, or showing you where the books on local history are. These are library assistants, how make sure that the day-to-day running of the services go smoothly. The librarians will be the ones managing the service at a local and national level, answering complex information enquiries, and ensuring that the resources you might want to use (both print and digital) are available for you to use. We’ll be negotiating access to electronic information with content aggregators so people can use it (not all information is free nor is it all the internet – another myth!).

The key thing to remember about a professionally qualified librarian, is that we’re not in it for self-promotion or money – none of us are rich! – we gain our skills so that we can help others.

And because it costs a bit more to employ a librarian than a library assistant, there aren’t many librarians left in the public library service. The service has already been eroded over the last twenty years by a vicious culling of librarians (but badgers are cuter so they get more press!). The ones that are left are running ragged trying to provide a seamless service for members of the public. In the sixteen years that I have been involved with Leicestershire public libraries, there has been a “restructure” almost every year. In each of those restructures, librarians were deleted by the Cybermen (sorry, Council), so the number has dwindled year on year.

It’s been a time of austerity for us for about twenty years.

So when the Council withdraw their support for community-led libraries after five years, which is their plan, those community libraries will have no access to professionally qualified staff. And when a few community-led libraries do “okay”, they’ll be cited by politicians as proof that the idea works, and the remaining libraries and librarians will be under threat too. I think everyone in our society deserves the service of professional library staff supported by well-trained assistants. And these people deserve to be paid for the work they do in supporting and empowering their communities.

In the meantime I think it’s unfair and disingenuous to expect the surviving Librarians to support the community-led libraries, when their workload will already be excessive. Would you expect any other profession to train and support their unpaid replacements? Would we tolerate this if it were teachers, police officers, judges, vets, solicitors, etc?

Love Your Librarian. We are the defenders of your right to information. That’s why the powers-that-be don’t want us around. We are the superheroes!

But as long as someone stamps the books… Oh, but that’s all automated now so we don’t need library assistants either…

The library assistant is generally an intelligent, inquisitive, organised and public-spirited soul. They work very hard for low rates of pay, which is why cutting their jobs from the smaller branch libraries is so sickening. But they’ve absorbed information from the librarians, had a lot of training, and are knowledgeable about their branch, dedicated to providing a service to the public.

Don’t ever forget that the volunteers are replacing paid staff – people will have lost their jobs in your local library. It wasn’t library staff that caused the recession, so why should they suffer?

And mmm…. it’s odd and disturbing, but I can’t help but notice that there is also a gender issue hidden in the Council agenda. The majority of library staff are female, working part-time, and for low rates of pay. Why is always the women who lose their jobs first? Why is it women who do proportionately more volunteering? There’s so many issues there….

Next time I’ll look at what a library actually is, and what a community-led library might be. Just what is a library volunteer and what might they be expected to do? I’ll also be looking at issues of ethics and equality, the legal background.