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Library campaigners: CIPFA stats 'will get worse'
03.11.11 | Benedicte Page
Library campaigners have called for vision and leadership for the public library service following publication of the latest annual library statistics from The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA).
The figures, released yesterday and covering the year to March 2011, showed overall visitor numbers down 2.3% to 314.5m and book issues down 2.9% to 300.2m. Alan Gibbons of Campaign for the Book said: "Given the unremitting onslaught against our libraries, the disparagement of librarianship as a job, the years of 'woeful' leadership, as the parliamentary committee put it, I am encouraged that it is as robust as it is. There are still over three hundred million visits a year."
He added: "It can be turned round but not by the appalling performance of Mr Hunt and Mr Vaizey. We need a strategic vision. The children's figures give us hope for the future, but we need a sense of where the service is going. It is not coming from the DCMS."
Campaigner Desmond Clarke said his worry was that the pace of decline would accelerate over the next two to three years. He said: “These figures are really for the period before the major cuts started. We have a very serious situation. People within the profession are totally demoralised.” However, he added: “It doesn’t have to be like this. The sector desperately lacks leadership. We need advocacy. Several successful authorities have been bucking the trend - it can be done.”
Tim Coates, chair of London library campaign umbrella group Libraries for Life for Londoners, said: “The absolute nightmare for the library service is that they close it down and don’t actually save any money. That seems to be what is happening - slowly but surely the service is being torn apart - first books, then opening hours, then buildings - and at the end of it all the cost is exactly the same as it was before. The trouble is that those of us who have watched for years how badly the service is managed, would always have predicted this as the result.”
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Well, what a surprise!
Years ago the head of Lewisham's Library Service admitted that after fresh stock, improved shelving and brightening up libraries with use of a few pots of paint etc. visitor/borrowing figures improved! There's a surprise!!!
We have visit/issue figures in Lewisham up to and including January 2011. Attempts to get figures for the rest of this year, including those at the 5 "new" community libraries, have met with prevarication. The story is "when the member of staff concerned has time..." That was weeks and weeks ago. It is, after all, only the click of a few buttons! So, there is another surprise!!
Why would you use a community facility where you cannot go home with a book, no matter how many hours it is open?
The real question is why there is this assault on proper library provision with trained staff? What is it that "they" fear so much about this provision for the public?
Patricia Richardson
The message seems perfectly clear from ministers, Mr Vaizey and Mr Hunt, that the nation's Library Service is unworthy of their attention. It can be assumed that, since leaving Opposition for government, their refusal, now, to show leadership illustrates a desire to remain aloof from the statutory responsibilities they once defended, to the detriment of the nation's literacy, the stability of communities and the common good. If this is not the message they wish to broadcast, the public urges these ministers, or the Prime Minister himself, to contradict it. Further silence from them will only serve to confirm it.
I am getting a little tired of these constant petty digs at Lewisham. The bottom line is this. The government cut the Councils money. The council had to make cuts. The council have made the cuts but still have kept open every library that was originally there through community management. OK, it's not the same service as once was there, but given the scale of the cuts only an idiot or someone in complete denial of the facts would expect that it would be.
What Lewisham have done is to be praised. Those knocking them are living in cloud cuckoo land.
I am not a Lewisham resident, but I have followed the saga of the library service there in great detail over the past 18 months
The behaviour of the council has been utterly disgraceful - at no point has there been a need to destroy the library service in the way that they have, even though they have been obliged to cut costs. Those costs should have been cut anyhow... and even then the library service could have been vastly improved by the methods Patricia Richardson describes in her comment.
Not only has the whole thing been appallingly managed, but the evasion of questions and the avoidance of the truth - which Mrs Richardson also describes - have been nothing less than an abomination. The mayor, cabinet and council of Lewisham should be held up in contempt of democracy and deposed forthwith. That is the stark and unpleasant truth.
The library service has not been destroyed. yes, it's not what it was, but please, take the experience of someone who lives here and has been using the library service for a decade for myself and my kids, it's not been destroyed.
And emotive and exaggerated language along the lines of "disgraceful" and "contempt of democracy" are the rantings of student politician.
And as for "deposing them forthwith" well, that's for us, not for you, because we live here. And you don't.
And if you want to see a council who really treat people with contempt, have a look at these characters. Let's count our lucky stars we don't live there and pity the poor people who do.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/09/hillingdon-council-steven-...
The library service has not been destroyed. yes, it's not what it was, but please, take the experience of someone who lives here and has been using the library service for a decade for myself and my kids, it's not been destroyed.
And emotive and exaggerated language along the lines of "disgraceful" and "contempt of democracy" are the rantings of student politician.
And as for "deposing them forthwith" well, that's for us, not for you, because we live here. And you don't.
And if you want to see a council who really treat people with contempt, have a look at these characters. Let's count our lucky stars we don't live there and pity the poor people who do.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/09/hillingdon-council-steven-...
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