Alan Gibbons’ Blog

Three Merseyside Lib Dem councillors have resigned and taken seats as independents because they no longer want to be ‘nodding dogs’ for the ConDem coalition.

News for halton councillors resign

Daily Mail

Three Halton Lib Dem councillors quit party in protest over coalition? - 13 hours ago THREE Halton councillors have resigned as Liberal Democrats in protest at the party’s coalition with the Conservatives. Cllrs Bob Bryant, Peter Blackmore … Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News - 106 related articles »

http://www.northwichguardian.co.uk/news/8364506._Friends__rally_to_back_library/

And to prove libraries can work with a little care and attention:

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1315745_library_boom_as_bookworms_help_city_buck_national_trend

Campaign for the Book

September 2^nd, 2010

Do libraries have a future?

When it comes to discussing the future of libraries, there was no ‘silly season’ this year. The media was awash with concern over the future of public libraries. The BBC asked if there was a future for the public library:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tj7rg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/willgompertz/2010/08/what_next_for_the_local_librar.html

Former Waterstone’s executive and library blogger Tim Coates voiced concerns that up to 1,000 libraries could be axed.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/126872-up-to-1000-libraries-under-threat-claims-coates.html

In an important development the Daily Mirror carried the debate:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/08/17/verdict-fears-coalition-plan-to-flog-our-libraries-115875-22492884/

Doncaster campaigner Lauren Smith let rip in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/18/doncasters-library-closures-catastrophe

John Harris stepped up in the same newspaper:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/24/libraries-need-investment-thrive

In the Independent it was author Terence Blacker:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-hands-off-our-public-libraries-2057131.html

Even comic Frank Skinner weighed in, asking whether we needed libraries at all. My reply to his Times column is reproduced at the end of this newsletter.

Concern

The looming spending review is the main cause of all this concern and soul-searching. Suddenly the very existence of the public library service is up for discussion. Culture Minister Ed Vaizey famously announced that he had to refashion the service without any money from Chancellor George Osborne. Government thinking is set out in the new initiative entitled “The Future Libraries Programme.”

These areas were chosen “for their individual strengths, type of project, geographical spread and rural and urban mix.” They would “have the chance to test drive an ambitious change programme” to “achieve cost savings, new partnerships and governance models, and to take advantage of digital opportunities.”

Suddenly the talk is of resiting libraries into shops and even pubs, sharing back office functions and using volunteers. Worryingly one of the authorities piloting the scheme Lewisham is proposing to close five of its libraries. Around the country book funds are being cut and root and branch reviews are being to look at library provision. The mood music is ominous. No wonder Tim Coates, who is chair of Libraries for Life for Londoners, expressed: “frustration and profound disappointment.” He argued: “What is needed is for each project to be interrogated against the basic requirements: when will the book stock improve? When will the opening hours increase? When will budgets be presented clearly so that economies can be made from those activities which do not affect the quality of service?”

No wonder campaigners in Lewisham and Doncaster were organising petitioning and Read Ins during the summer to warn the public of threatened closures, while Unison members in Southampton took strike action. Elsewhere the news is bad. Birmingham is building a new city centre library, but cutting its book fund and looking for cuts in its branch network. Gloucester too is taking a scalpel to the book fund and looking at branches.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/127525-up-to-40-libraries-affected-in-birmingham-review.html

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/birmingham-news/2010/09/02/40-birmingham-community-libraries-face-uncertain-future-97319-27183959/

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/news/Fear-county-libraries-close/article-2570425-detail/article.html

Comprehensive and efficient

The public library service is popular. There were 342 million visits at the last count. But neglect, poor leadership at local and national level and ill-judged decisions over opening hours, book fund and staffing have led to a fall in use. Library campaigners have long argued that the answer is to ask the public what kind of service they want and draw up a programme to make libraries much more user-friendly, to bring the weaker libraries up to the level of the best. The Future Libraries Programme is adopting another approach, based on fragmentation, volunteers and diversification. Interestingly the idea of a Libraries Development Board has been shelved.

With literacy levels as poor as they are in the UK it is disturbing that libraries are in such peril.

School libraries commission

School libraries are facing very similar challenges. For that reason I recorded the following for Teachers TV:

http://www.teachers.tv/news/70181

The School Libraries Commission, sponsored jointly by the National Literacy Trust and the soon to be disbanded Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, is set to report on September 15^th. I will carry a full report then.

Reply to Frank Skinner

Dear Editor,

I usually enjoy Frank Skinner’s acerbic and iconoclastic views, but on libraries he is way off the mark.?Despite a decline in use, the public library remains a very popular institution with over 342 million visits last year. Where there has been a decline it is not because people have stopped reading. Reading remains the most popular leisure activity in the UK. It is generally because councils have failed in their statutory obligation to provide a “comprehensive and efficient” service. Many branch libraries have truncated and illogical opening hours, poor stock and tired buildings. Unsurprisingly the libraries that buck the trend have fresh stock, renovated buildings, properly supported staff and longer opening hours!?Children’s borrowing, as Frank says, is very healthy. This is not because children are dragooned. Indeed, the practice of teachers taking their classes to the library has fallen off in recent years. It is quite simply because there is a golden age of children’s literature and librarians arrange fun events to introduce children to it.?The modern library, where it is properly run, thrives and includes good ICT provision and other services. It serves the less well off, the young and the old disproportionately. Around the country there are cost effective examples of good libraries. We should learn how they do it and make the rest follow suit, not instigate a new round of cuts in hours, staff and book budgets that caused the current decline in the first place.

Yours faithfully,

Alan Gibbons

A hot autumn?

In short, it has been a busy summer. It could be a hot autumn of resisting cuts.

Alan Gibbons

www.alangibbons.net

aagibbons@blueyonder.co.uk

LIBRARY NEWS: Reading Agency statement
In the shadow of looming spending cuts and the debate over the plight of the library service, The Reading Agency has released a statement which attempts to reinforce the value of the service in the mind of any would-be decision maker.

The statement uses the rises in children’s borrowing and the success story of the Summer Reading Challenge as examples (among others) of where the service is really working for the public, finishing by stating that the nation’s “literacy skills deficit” is too large to afford undercutting libraries’ ability to create readers.

To read the statement in full, click here.

You can read an extract of my Booked Up title The Dying Photo and watch a video clip here:

http://www.bookedup.org.uk/booked-up/books/30316/

There have been a flurry of local newspaper reports promising ‘root and branch reviews’ and ’strategic rethinks’ of community libraries. Some people shook their heads when library blogger Tim Coates raised the spectre of 600-1,000 library closures. The figure is starting to look distinctly possible.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/127525-up-to-40-libraries-affected-in-birmingham-review.html

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/birmingham-news/2010/09/02/40-birmingham-community-libraries-face-uncertain-future-97319-27183959/

Blair’s book is, as might be expected, a mix of fantasy, cynicism and logic-defying chutzpah.

It sustains the ludicrous myth that Blair swept to office because of his youth, talent and popular adoration.

I remember it differently. The Thatcher regime, exhausted after eighteen years, had staggered under the farcical leadership of John Major into grotesque decline. The British people would probably have voted in a terminally ill warthog, so despised was the Conservative Party by then. Blair was the beneficiary of this vacuum.

Now the slightly demented former Labour leader is in retirement looking back at the smoking ruins of his own failed project. So self-deluded is he that he dares lecture a new generation of Labour leaders on his success.

Here are some of his triumphs:

*Iraq

*Afghanistan

*Growing privatisation

*Deregulation in the City

*Sleeze

*The loss of five million Labour votes

*The loss of half Labour’s membership

*The rejuvination of a Blairite Tory Party

With success like that, who needs failure?

Well well, so even arch-Thatcherite Tony Blair understands that the Trident missile system is useless.

In his much-hawked biography, Blair admits Trident is hugely expensive. Its usefulness as a weapon is ‘non existent.’

Illogically, though he can see the ‘common sense and practical argument’ against Trident, he thinks giving it up is ‘too big a downgrading of our status as a nation.’

There you have it, Trident is a waste of money. The only reason to keep it is so the mangy tomcat that is 21st century Britain can big itself up into a show-stopping super-moggy.