Volunteers standing down and a Literary Map of Dundee.

Yesterday a story appeared in the 'Lincolnshire Echo' about volunteers at Alford Library having enough of struggling to run a library, for just over a year, standing down, a worrying blow to Lincolnshires' plans. Apparently they've been cast adrift by the council;

"The volunteers set-up to support the community by giving them another day of opening alongside the other days that the library opened under professional staff."
"Since the decision to completely change the way Lincolnshire libraries are to be run, by threatening closure, if volunteers did not take over the day to day running and funding, the group have noticed the support they used to get has effectively gone."

And as the Councillor quoted in the article puts it;

"It highlights to me the sustainability issue of volunteers and also how much you can push them before they say enough is enough"

Campaigners, users, staff and unions have been stressing the point of sustainability from the offset, it's not just about keeping the building occupied and opening the doors it's far far more than than that; there's the small matter of providing a 'comprehensive and efficient' service even though the majority of volunteer libraries are now outside of the statutory remit.
Campaigners don't vilify people for trying to keep their local libraries open, however misguided and naive it might seem at times, they vilify the government's agenda to shrink the state through the implementation of its 'Localism' agenda. It's all very sad and ultimately destructive.

And now for some good news!

Those clever people at Dundee Central Library have created a literary map of the city.

"The 15-mile, 48-stop route takes in Broughty Ferry as well as the city centre and the west and east ends and will chronicle Dundee’s literary past and present.
Stops on the trail will have walkers thinking about Frankenstein author Mary Shelly, crime writer Agatha Christie and children’s favourite Jacqueline Wilson.
There’s even a stop dedicated to notoriously bad poet William McGonagall."

This excellent idea reminded me off something a friend of mine developed a while back in Edinburgh;
http://dontprivatiselibraries.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/walking-media-libraries-in-wester-hailes.html
 





 

Dawn of the Unread, Merrick Cockell, Franchising libraries & Sieghart's message to the LGA.

Some stories that have recently caught my eye;

Dawn of the Unread

I was recently contacted by James Walker from 'Dawn of the Unread' who asked if I could help publicise the project and of course as it's a wonderful and creative idea I, and Voices for the Library, agreed.

see; http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/2014/06/dawn-of-the-unread/


Merrick Cockell

Sir Merrick Cockell, who served as Leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea for 13 years and chaired London Councils for four, will be from July 2014 taking over as the Executive Chair, and Chair of the Board, of Cratus Communications. He's obviously delighted by this and by the appointment onto his board of Tim Grier, Nine years as Managing Director of John Laing Integrated Services. As you may remember JLIS ran Hounslow Libraries and then won the contract for Croydon, Harrow and Ealing libraries which they then very quickly sold on to Carillion.

“I am delighted to be joining Cratus at such an exciting time in their development. Having observed their work with John Laing pioneering contracted-out library services, I know that they are one of the few companies that truly understand how local government works. They know that elected members need to lead the revolution in local public services that is happening across the country and that the public and private sectors need to better understand and learn from each others’ strengths.”

Exciting times ahead then!!

(Thanks to me old mucker Ian Anstice for alerting me to this)


Franchising

I recently picked up from a Barnet source that they are considering 'franchising' their libraries and have got the idea from Lambeth and Staffordshire! Now this is the first time I've heard this term used in relation to public libraries and can only guess that it's another example of neo-liberal library speak and really means privatisation and/or the handing over of libraries to community groups, Social Enterprises etc. I asked campaigners in Lambeth and they hadn't heard of it and as for Staffordshire well as far as I can see they've just cut and volunteered like nearly everyone else!!

If anyone does know what the hell this is or has any info then please let me know.




William Sieghart's message to the LGA

The current edition of the LGA's 'First' magazine has a guest feature by William Sieghart, Chair of the panel commissioned by the Departments for Communities and Local Government and Culture, Media and Sport to produce an independent report on England's public library service.
It's worth reading as it gives a clear idea as to the direction that William and the panel think that public libraries should be moving and that is towards collocation, shared services and a more strategic national approach in relation to digital services and membership. I have serious reservations about collocation and shared services but depending on the detail could be persuaded on the national part.
And as for libraries in pubs, I wrote something about this last year;
http://dontprivatiselibraries.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/a-pint-and-book-please.html


I've met with William and have given oral evidence to his panel and although I can't yet discuss the detail I can say that he's very keen on what he/they see as 'pragmatic' solutions!
 

The SCL and volunteer-led libraries.

Today the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) published a speech given by their incoming President Ciara Eastell on her/their future priorities.

In the pre-release they say;

"She emphasised the enormous role that libraries play as enablers for local people and communities, laid plans to create a Learning Offer to expand on SCL’s current 4 Universal Offers, reaffirmed SCL’s commitment to strengthen libraries’ digital capacity and vowed to help libraries boost advocacy efforts locally and nationally in the run up to the 2015 elections. SCL will also develop more learning resources for library staff, especially in the areas of digital leadership."

and in the speech itself she talks more about the Universal Offers, developing a digital strategy, boosting advocacy efforts leading up to the 2015 elections, supporting staff & workforce development and about libraries and library staff being "key enablers for local people and local communities".

all of this is to be applauded, welcomed and supported but on page 3 of the speech she/they drop the following bombshell;

"I would like us to explore how we might develop resources and a framework to

support community-led libraries, recognising that there is a real practical need in

many of our organisations to have resources that will help to grow and develop

sustainable services."


Let me just remind you, before I say anything more on this, that the SCL is a membership organisation made up of the Heads of public library services, services that are publicly funded and are a statutory requirement under the 1964 Act. It's also worth pointing out at this point that many or the majority of volunteer-led libraries are now positioned outside that statutory remit. So why you may well ask is an organisation that should be fully supporting statutory library services proposing to use part of it's scarce resources to support what many see as book exchanges/internet cafes/community centres?
Existing volunteer-led libraries and the communities forced to consider this option already have a extremely well funded (£6m+) advice and support network provided by the Communities Knowledge Hub Libraries (CKHL), an offshoot of Locality, and Jim Brooks from Little Chalfont Community Library who receives funding to advise others on this from the DCMS, or so I've been told?

And how do the SCL intend to ensure that the initiatives and crucial roles they've outlined for public libraries are firstly taken up by volunteer-led libraries and secondly delivered in a 'comprehensive and efficient' manner? Sustainability and viability are the crux of the issue here, but it seems that not only have the SCL decided to give up any resemblance of a fight to fully protect the profession and service but have also come to the conclusion that volunteer-led libraries are a viable and sustainable option. What evidence have they based this upon?

It comes across to me as a very contradictory and muddled message but as I'll probably be told by it's supporters "a realistic and pragmatic one"!

But I'm not a great believer in the stance taken by many in my profession and also by some campaigners that "anything is better than nothing' and that's it's better to hand libraries over to volunteers in the hope that some day a Utopian government will be elected which will then fully re-instate the professional service. This is just politically naive. Every party (except for TUSC and the Greens maybe?) has adopted the neo-liberal agenda and every library handed to volunteers and taken out of the statutory service is another notch in the bedpost of Localism and another step towards shrinking the state and dismantling the public sector.

Now more than ever communities need a professionally run and publicly funded and managed service and it's my view that we should be debunking the austerity myth and fighting tooth and nail to keep every library publicly funded and properly resourced and to keep every one of those libraries staffed by paid & trained/qualified library workers. This is not about vilifying volunteers its about vilifying the governments agenda. Not to do this, in my opinion, is a betrayal of our users/members/borrowers/readers, the wider communities we serve and our ethos.



 

Volunteer limitations!

Angela Montague, a member of the Save Lincolnshire Libraries Campaign, has very kindly brought to my attention the following report about a 'Portas Pilot' in Market Rasen that she was involved with. The part of the report relating to volunteers could raise concerns with those planning to take on the running of local libraries and other such initiatives;


"At every stage in our journey
we have underestimated
the time, resourcing and
administration requirements
of what is required to
maintain this initiative."

'Volunteering has been

our Achilles heel.'

"Our volunteer board is exhausted - the
responsibility and physical demands of
delivery, combined with pressure for
transparency and inclusion have taken their
toll. Additionally, initiatives that we hoped
would be run by additional volunteers
have met with patchy support and have
necessitated much more management than
we anticipated. Our fall back position has
been employed management resource. Our
experience has been that pilots may take
many months to generate revenues that
see them attaining a sustainable financial
position. Portas funds gave us the backing to
implement our ideas - but not all can or will
be taken forward beyond the pilot period."

 

Croydon, 'Jack and Jills' and stamping books or selling stamps with books?

I've been busy, what with visit a to Croydon Central Library, meeting William Sieghart, helping to draft the Speak up for Libraries Manifesto, writing my own submission to the Sieghart Inquiry and helping to draft one for Voices for the Library I haven't had much time to blog.

So here's some stories that have caught my eye;

First the good news - It looks as if Labour have wrestled back control of Croydon Council from the Conservatives which could mean, if they keep their promise, that the libraries contract could be reviewed and the service brought back in-house? This couldn't happen soon enough in my opinion, Croydon Libraries are a mess as i saw for myself when i recently visited the Central Library with Elizabeth Ash of the Save Croydon Libraries Campaign, i will be blogging in detail about my visit soon.


I spotted an interesting article on the Guardian site a few days ago which highlighted some of the potential risks of shared services and collocation and that is asking public service staff to multi-task and become "Jack and Jills of all trades". Although the article specifically used library staff as an example the concerns raised about 'deprofessionalisation' and 'skills training' are cross-sectoral.
"It is good that public service workers are being granted greater flexibility. But there are two main limitations to this move to greater genericism. The first is that multi-tasking in an era of cost cutting can look a lot like deprofessionalisation."
"A second limitation is that skills training continues to be sectoral, failing to catch up with the move to genericism."
With a concerted push towards 'hubs' library staff will be under greater pressure to adopt the 'one-stop-shop' approach and this could if not managed properly and without sufficient negotiation and joined-up thinking lead to the erosion of professional skills and a dilution of the core library offer.

Leading on from this I also spotted a story about Stradbroke Library in Suffolk hosting a post office, what worried me about this was the claim that the library service would be running the post office service. Not only does this raise the same concerns outlined in the 'Jack and Jills' Guardian article but if it's true does it mean that library workers will be doing work that should be done by post office workers? (if I'm wrong on this then please let me know) Shouldn't we in these times of an outright attack on public services and jobs be supporting fellow workers and union members, what ever happened to solidarity?

 

GLL and the most visited library in London?

Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL), the ‘charitable social enterprise’ that runs both Greenwich and Wandsworth Libraries recently issued the following statement;

“Less than two years after taking on the contract to manage libraries within the Royal Borough of Greenwich, charitable Social Enterprise GLL is celebrating the fact that Woolwich is home to the most visited library in the Capital, according to the latest statistics from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA).

Woolwich library recorded nearly 900,000 visits during the 2012-13 period, a 56% increase on the previous year and more than any other London library, while stock issues (the number of books lent) were up by 5%.  On the busiest days over 3,000 customers pass through its doors making Woolwich one of the most popular lending libraries in the UK”

The thing they didn't mention was that the library is in the same building (opened July 2011) as a council service centre, the place where Greenwich residents go to pay their council tax, parking fines etc. But we’ll come to that point later.

I recently popped into the “most visited library in the Capital” and these are my observations;

Off main square, new shiny glass fronted building housing library and service centre. Next door to a large Tesco’s.

Large open plan area, bright but strange retro feel with blacks, greys and reds. Lots of seats, sofas and tables, people lounging/sleeping. 60+ public pc’s plus IT training suite plus laptop points. Busy, lots of people studying.

Very small ref collection with some very out of date editions (1992, 1995 etc.) Adult fiction and non-fiction full of new books, shelves unusually tidy! Many empty or half-empty shelves, hardly anyone browsing or reading books. Small dvd collection.

Small ‘teen zone’ and a community languages sections.

Busy, noisy and lively U5’s session taking place (good to see). Lack of quiet study space, only in bookable rooms?

Coffee and food vending machines and other merchandise to buy. 3 self-serve kiosks, 2 out of order and council services kiosk switched off.

4 staff visible, 1 on junior desk, 1 on enquiries desk, 1 on PC booking desk and 1 shelving. Staff dressed similarly, uniform?

Only open till 7pm 2 days a week and not open Sundays.

Get the feeling popularity due to location and collocation with service centre, do footfall figures include those for service centre? Also emphasis on IT facilities/training, although online resources pretty basic.

Now back to the issue of the footfall figures, I’m in no doubt it’s a popular library and that “On the busiest days over 3,000 customers pass through its doors” and that its popularity is partly to do with its location and collocation but are all of those 3,000 ‘customers’ using the library?

Do GLL include service centre users in their data? If they do then they wouldn’t be the only ones, from the information I’ve been given it’s fairly common.

As you can see from the twitter conversation below they deny it but couldn’t give me details about how they filter the data to exclude other users of the building.

Alan Wylie ‏@wylie_alan Jan 12

At Woolwich Library do you include service centre users in your footfall stats? @GLL_UK 

•

1.

GLL ‏@GLL_UK Jan 13

Thanks for your tweet @wylie_alan  and no, we don't include service centre users in our footfall stats

o

2.

Alan Wylie ‏@wylie_alan Jan 13

@GLL_UK  thanks, interesting, how do you filter the data to exclude those entering the library just to access the service centre?

Public Libraries UK Plc or the ACE/Locality report on 'enterprising libraries'.

I'd just like to start off this post by saying that I'm not an academic so i do not have the ability to analyse a report in a trained and rigorous manner, these are just my initial untrained thoughts.


Recently Locality, the well funded armed wing of the DCLG, published a report entitled 'Enabling Enterprise in Libraries'. The report was commissioned by the Arts Council England (ACE), the underfunded unarmed wing of the DCMS.
 
The report looks at;
 

"if/how income generation might underpin a

step-change or service transformation in tangible locations, against a backdrop of

falling visitor numbers and growing interest in e-lending."
 
not just 'income generation but;
 
"significant
income generation"

In the opening paragraph they say that they are not (yet) looking at income generation as a replacement for core funding but as an add-on to improve services and make them more resilient.

They also say that out of all the people they surveyed the ones most interested in 'signicant income generation' are those from social and community enterprise libraries, i take from this they mean SocEnts, Trusts, Mutuals and the like. Although they do say that a small number of public library authorities have employed specific staff to "facilitate retail trading".

But what about volunteer-led so-called 'libraries', according to the Community Knowledge Hub for Libraries, under a telling section called 'How can a library make money?';

"If you are acting as an entirely independent Community Owned Library then you can largely choose what you charge for with the same kinds of freedom as any other enterprise."

but

"Before deciding what you would like to charge for you should be clear about the purpose of your library so that your pricing policy is not at odds with your Social Objectives e.g. charging for book borrowing when you are seeking to encourage reading among lower income families."

In the 'Enabling Enterprise in Libraries' report itself the issue of 'ethos' also pops up;

"The project seeks to support providers to intensify or widen their area of

operations in an enterprising way -

without losing or compromising their ethos

and core objectives"

So they are obviously very aware that many will see the raising of significant income from retail and commercial activities highly problematic for a statutory public service especially one that has at its core the belief that reading, learning and information should be free at the point of access. But then again the NHS also has this at its core and it hasn't stopped them from privatising and commercialising that beloved institution.

In the summary findings of the report they claim that;

"There is growing acceptance of ‘Enterprising Councils’, and an entrepreneurial culture underpins social and community enterprise libraries, although the same cannot be said of all volunteer-led libraries"

I can't disagree with this statement, over the last two decades, or longer, there has been a movement towards a neoliberal agenda in library policy and management as chronicled by Margaret Greene and David McMenemy in their paper "The emergence and impact of neoliberal ideology on UK public library policy, 1997-2010"

And this movement is being pushed further forward by the growth of alternative models of library service delivery by SocEnts, private companies, trusts, mutuals and independent volunteer-led 'libraries'.

The research is only at the first stages but as the summary findings makes clear ACE sees the development of income generation skills for staff/volunteers as a priority;

"Whilst there are challenges surrounding the capacity and skills of employees/volunteers who might be tasked with the design and delivery of income generating activities, development of the same is cited as a priority for future action in Arts Council England’s response to Envisioning the Library of the Future"

So what can we expect, a rise in charges and fines? Well no as they say they are looking for 'significant income generation' which examples of can be found at; http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/campaigning/increasing-income

So the next time you issue a book to someone, if you ever get the chance due to self-serve, ask them the question "do you want fries with that?", your library buying new books or providing kids events might depend, in the future, on the the answer being "yes and a large coke"!