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April 25, 2006
Gloom in our cities
If you think that the library figures for outer London were depressing, there is worse to come. These figures show the change in book lending in the past 5 years in those Metropolitan Councils that are holding elections next week.
Bolton: a fall of 29%
Bury : a fall of 13%
Manchester: a fall of 31%
Oldham : a fall of 29%
Rochdale : a fall of 23%
Salford : a fall of 30%
Tameside : a fall of 20%
Trafford : a fall of 29%
Wigan : a fall of 26%
Knowsley : a fall of 29%
Liverpool : a rise of 1% (but Liverpool produced a fall of 26% last year by closing their libraries in the evening).
St Helens : a fall of 21%
Sefton : a fall of 20%
Wirral : a fall of 19%
Barnsley : a fall of 28%
Doncaster : a fall of 28%
Rotherham : a fall of 30%
Sheffield : a fall of 9%
Gateshead : a fall of 27%
Newcastle : a fall of 28%
North Tyneside : a fall of 31%
South Tyneside : a fall of 32%
Sunderland : a fall of 21%
Birmingham : a fall of 25% (John Dolan worked here)
Coventry : a fall of 23%
Dudley : a fall of 29%
Sandwell : a fall of 19%
Solihull ; a fall of 17%
Walsall : a fall of 26%
Wolverhampton : a fall of 11%
Bradford : a fall of 33%
Calderdale : a fall of 23%
Kirklees : a fall of 27%
Leeds : a fall of 37%
Wakefield : a fall of 28%
If you believe David Lammy when, at the launch of his "Love Libraries" programme, he said that books are at the heart of the library service and 75% people using libraries do so for the books (and there has never been any market research anywhere which would contradict him) then these figures are extremely disappointing.
One thing that is clear - - if book borrowing is going down, and people still want to do it, then the worst thing in the world you can do is to reduce book stocks and concentrate on other things. That, unfortunately is exactly what we have done- and what the MLA are asking us to do even more. It can't be right.
Posted by Tim Coates at April 25, 2006 10:02 AM