Canada beware, the 'red menace' is no longer under our bed!

I worked for Hackney Libraries between 1991 and 2002, 11 very turbulent years which saw at least 4 restructurings, at least 4 Heads of Service, a year long strike and the closure of 7 of the 14 libraries. There was always a feeling amongst the library staff there that we where being used as guinea pigs in a number of management style experiments, one of them conducted by John Pateman.
John along with Naila and Shiraz Duranni set up a 'Black and Ethnic Minority Stock Group' which according to this abstract from the 'Library Review' sought;

"to involve black staff, at all levels in the library service, in the selection of stock for the black community. As a first step, 25 per cent of the stock fund was allocated to the purchase of black stock. This helped to make up for historical underfunding and was part of a longer term strategy to match library resources to the community profile. The BSG was a successful experiment in staff empowerment and led to the selection of stock which was relevant to the black community."

I'm not going to spend time analysing the success or failure of this initiative but i will say this, I agree that at the time BEM workers in Hackney where vastly underrepresented in key positions and the decision making process and the needs of BEM users weren't being fully met but many of us had concerns about the kind of stock being bought and whether our BEM users actually wanted or needed it? John was also heavily involved in the Cuba Solidarity movement and we sent box after box of discarded books there.

What i can remember from this time is that the libraries were very poorly managed and although not entirely John's fault he was the Head of Service!

From Hackney John then moved to Merton where he caused controversy by allegedly advertising for new staff through the pages of the 'Morning Star', see a very interesting discussion on 'Coates Watch' relating to this;
http://coateswatch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/tim-warns-of-red-menance.html
It's worth pointing out for reasons of balance that during his time at Merton they won an award for their services to Refugees and Asylum Seekers.

From Merton he moved to Lincolnshire and again steered them towards another award relating to combating social exclusion and furthering equalities.

And now he's fled the sinking ship and moved to Canada to take up the post of Chief Librarian for Thunder Bay Public Library where he has already stirred things up;

"The bay city’s new chief librarian, John Pateman, says that before accepting the position he did his homework and “sensed that (Thunder Bay) was a well-resourced system that was already involved in marketing itself.”
See, right there, there is the problem. While Francis sits and does nothing but thinks he can dash into action in 2018 and put the city on the map, Thunder Bay under the internship of Timm seems to be out there marketing itself and look at the results, it ends up with a forward thinking world class chief librarian or one from a world class city."


Wonder what they'll say when he starts boxing books up for Cuba?


 

C.L.R. James Library

I worked for Hackney Libraries from the early 90's to early 2000's, for 11 years to be exact. In this time i witnessed the service drop from 14 to 7 libraries, the arrival and departure of 5 Heads of Service and as many restructurings, the closure of the old and better Central Library and the opening of a new one that didn't work, the downgrading of staff, pay and terms and conditions, the loss of specialist staff, the destruction and selling off of numerous reserve stocks and special collections, a strike that lasted a year and generally the hollowing out and running down of the service!
Since i left about 8/9 years ago things have gone from bad to worse, not just because of my departure, with 25% of the workforce made redundant, the recruitment of a 'volunteer co-ordinator' and the service in disarray, so has the opening of a new library in the area been a positive development?

The new C.L.R. James Library was opened this year, it replaced a library of the same name that was demolished roughly in the same location in Dalston Lane.


It cost 4.4m to build and is part of the wider regeneration/gentrification of the area.

It's housed in a very modern, shiny, glass, and nondescript kind of building, a bit like the majority of new libraries built in the last ten years, but at least it has the word 'library' on the front which is a bonus nowadays!

As you enter the front doors, on the ground floor, straight in front of you is the 'quick picks' area staffed by a single person with a couple of self-service kiosks and to the right a cafe. It does seem a bit of a strange to put a collection of 'quick picks', whatever that means, downstairs away from the main area, wouldn't it be better to draw people into browse the full collection, or are people really that busy? Maybe someone can explain this concept to me?

On the 1st floor there is the main adult lending area, the children's library and a 'teen section'. In the main adult area the shelves where not only half full with new shiny books but where untidy, which usually implies short-staffing or bad management or both! I have heard from very good sources that new books from the other libraries were removed from their shelves and shipped over for the opening of the new one to make it look better! There where two staff and two self-service kiosks in this area and one member of staff and two kiosks in the children's library, which also had half empty and untidy book shelves! This floor was surprisingly empty of users for 3pm in the afternoon during a school holiday period!

On the 2nd floor there is a study area, which was quite busy and a smallish 'quick reference' section, this area as far as i could see was unstaffed. The Local History Archives is also housed on this floor but i didn't venture in!

The old C.L.R. James Library was lively and had lots of community spirit, the new one lacks atmosphere and is sterile, a great shame!