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April 24, 2006
The cost of your library service pt 2 : Outer London
There is a message from Maxine to say how much she likes her library service in Kingston. Kingston is an outer London borough and the decline in book lending has been much more dramatic in these than in the centre. In the past 5 years loans have fallen by 26%. In fifteen years there will be no lending libraries at that rate
The change in each borough has been
Barking and Dagenham: a fall of 19%
Barnet : fall of 27%
Bexley : a fall of 31%
Brent: a rise of 2%
Bromley : a fall of 31%
Croydon : a fall of 40%
Ealing : a fall of 20%
Enfield : a fall of 27%
Haringey: a rise of 26%
Harrow : a fall of 18%
Havering : a fall of 22%
Hillingdon : a fall of 20%
Hounslow : a fall of 27%
Kingston : a fall of 22%
Merton : a fall of 49%
Newham : a fall of 23%
Redbridge : a fall of 44%
Richmond: a fall of 6%
Sutton : a fall of 27%
Waltham Forest : a fall of 32%
Figures like that tell a pretty sad story. In Croydon last year the residents paid £6m for their library service and just 2% of that was spent on books. Is it any wonder there is nothing left to borrow? Merton spent 6% and Redbridge spent 7%.
Congratulations again to Diana Edmonds in Haringey.
I would have just one library service for all London, with one catalogue, one membership card so everyone can use all the libraries and one website for the learning centre of the world. That would just need one small well run expert management team.
Why not?
The Department of Libraries and Archives ("Delay") say they can't arrange that because all the boroughs have different systems. Thank goodness these people aren't running the London Underground. Every borough would have a different guage of track.
Posted by Tim Coates at April 24, 2006 8:52 PM
Comments
Hello, this is Maxine again.
Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression in my previous comment. I don't particularly like the library service in Kingston, I meant to say that I live there so Kingston was not covered in your value list.
I think in general that any amount of money spent on books is good value compared with any other amount of money spent on TV.
As for Kingston, the library is nice and the staff are great. But as you point out, it is sad that it is being so cut back -- it has to close on certain days, and the children's library has a poor collection of books (though the librarians do quite a few events to get children interested in reading, with the help of local authors and other enthusiasts).
It would be absolutely great to have one library card for all of London. What a wonderful goal -- there are local politicians doorstepping at the moment as an election is coming up. I usually discuss education provision with them, but inspired by you I will now ask them about unified library cards (and watch the weaseling that always goes on when a voter suggests something that is not on their list of allowable woffle).
When I first moved to London in about 1980 it was pre-Internet and pre-web by a long way. I was disappointed at the time with the fact that I had to have one library card where I worked and another where I lived (even though I lived a lot more centrally then, it was not the same borough as where I worked). These days, it should be possible to use the power of the web to put on pressure for simple but wonderful innovations such as a "single library ID".
Posted by: Maxine Clarke at April 24, 2006 10:12 PM