A false economy!

18.5 professional Librarian posts lost in Barnet, no specialist Reference Librarians in Havering and Enfield Libraries and this is only the tip of the iceberg, an article recently published in the Richmond and Twickenham Times highlights the concerns;

"Mr Hancock wrote: “More than 10 library staff took voluntary redundancy and a wholesale turnaround of staff ensued."
“I hate to think of all the experience built up over a number of years that the library has lost, not to mention the local contacts and community involved that has been curtailed.”

According the latest figures an estimated 2159 library posts have been lost this financial year but many more Librarians have been downgraded due to service restructurings and many library staff have been pushed from pillar to post in forced moves. All this upheaval has a negative effect on staff morale and motivation and will surely ultimately lead to a poorer service. And cutting opening hours only adds fuel to the fire as a recent post on the 'We Heart Libraries' site shows.

As Julia Donaldson pointed out in her recent 'open letter' to the new Culture Secretary Maria Miller "cutting libraries is a false economy"

 

Unstaffed Libraries (a contradiction in terms?)

Some time ago there was a request on Lis Pub Libs for information on 'self-service without staff' and this got me wondering "how many authorities have libraries that operate like this"?
Depressingly it seems that there are quite a few, but as usual with these kind of set-ups things are never straight forward with a trend towards shared services and co-location.

In a recent story, from March, Hertfordshire piloted a scheme in their Radlett branch where the Library would open on a self-serve basis every Monday morning, this would be done in conjunction with the space being used by a community group. In June, they decided to widen the service to three points, one in partnership with a local school and the other in a one-stop shop!
In Swindon, the Old Town Library, is only staffed for certain hours during the day and the same for Sutton Libraries.

This concept is very popular in Denmark
"In Denmark, staff-less public libraries have appeared recently in many local communities. The first was established in Jutland already in 2004; however, it was first in the last two years, 2010 and 2011, that it became a trend through the establishment of more than 80 staff-less or open libraries in Denmark in 2012 the number has, furthermore, risen to 104"
in Taiwan
"The first "staff-less" library located at a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station opened yesterday evening, offering about 15,000 books targeted at teenagers and MRT commuters.
The "Ximen Open Book Smart Library" at the Ximen MRT station is the nation's second staff-less library; the Taipei Public Library had set up a pilot library in Neihu's Carrefour store in July last year."
and in the US
"So, how to expand library service on a tight budget? Some libraries have tried vending machines (such as the Go Library/Library-a-Go-Go) or kiosks. The King County Library System (KCLS), WA,just opened an unstaffed 300-square-foot Library Express @ Redmond Ridge, in partnership with the Redmond Ridge Residential Owners Association."

I was going to put forward my own arguments against this worrying development but i think I'll just let 'We Heart Libraries' do it for me in their excellent submission on the issue to Hertfordshire CC.