The Good Library Blog

I am heartened to hear of a successful 'save our library' campaign. Hertfordshire County council are in the process of consulting with our local community of Fleetville in St Albans regarding the closing of our dearly loved, and much needed, one room local library.

Following the last public meeting with the Library service representatives we were subjected to a predictable 'hiding behind conflicting statistics' approach intended to avoid facing up to the fact that closing libraries is a bad thing.

In my capacity in helping to create web resources for educational and library communities I have come to understand that a lateral approach may win the day.

Take the reasons for closure: 'not enough use', refurbishment required, want to use staff else where, dda etc. and turn them on their head.

I.e., we have a very committed community with willingness and skills, let us volunteer to help with the refurbishment, give hours to manning the desk, help in publicising the work of the library and events etc.

Do you or any of your contributors know of examples of such an approach being used elsewhere? It would be fantastic if this type of involvement has happened before and succeeded.That alone could be reason enough for us to convince the council to allow a stay of execuion through a trial implementation.

Our local children, adults and elderly all need our library.

It is bogglingly that politicians can ever have contemplated closing down Hove's Carnegie Library.

This has dominated the life of the current, hung Council. The fact that it is a hung Council gave a chance to save the Library which would not have been possible in the previous New Labour council (whose manifesto did not announce its plan to close down the Library...).

It has been a long and sometimes wearisome business to save the Library, although with a great many jokes, which are essential to any campaign. The essential part of any campaign is not only to know how the Council system works - which Questiosn to ask at which meetings of whom - but also persistence. This, paradoxically enough, is a way of marshalling energies and resources, for it is far better to have a series of events and ideas than to fire off everything at once.

One thing led to another in Hove, the first wave of protests - hundreds of messages to opposition Party leaders - led to the Council forming a "working party" to look into the Library matter. There were suspicions that this was a sop, and so the pressure had to be kept up. This led to the formation of the Friends of Hove Library, to which thousands of people signed up, and then, in the middle of a cold winter, when politicians expect things to go quiet, the Friends produced the first SAVE HOVE LIBRARY posters (A4, landscape). Black on bright yellow is very effective. The first of these went up under cover of darkness in the windows of all the houses surrounding the one where lived the Councillor who wanted to close down the Library. As we surmised, she came out the next (stormy) morning and had a fit, issuing an insulting press release about them. This made it clear that the poster was a success, and so we were encouraged to get up 5000 of them. Politicians were amazed, palpably envious. Stategically positioned - in windows along bus routes - as well as in houses everywhere and in independent shops (chain-store staff speak forlornly of the fact that "company policy" means that they cannot play a part in the community). When the Planning Committee went in a mini-bus on a site visit to look at something else entirely, they were flabbergasted to find almost every house in the vicinity had a poster up.

These posters made it clear how strongly people felt about it all. I gather that the local MP was alarmed.

When we got to 5000 posters, it all had a momentum of its own (the tipping point)- everybody wanted one, and it could easily have got to 20,000 by then, but, at that point, the Council announced that the Library would stay put, and, indeed, it has now been repaired and redecorated, although that took a further two years with much debate about the way in which the place would be organised - whether the Reference Library would be ditched, Biography lost, and so on.

I think all this shows what can be done - along with innumerable letters to the local paper by many people, much badinage. The paper gave it a great deal of coverage, and the campaign also got a piece in The Times, TLS (twice), an appearance across the whole south of England on The Politics Show, and Private Eye's "Library News" appears eager for information about councils' sidelining of libraries and books. The whole place here is talking about it all, the pavements echoing to the many comments, some of them unprintable even on the web. As a result, Hove appears to be a continual foment about everything, its atmosphere one of distrust and sucpicion.

This repair of the Library has been done - in house - for a relatively modest sum. It is amazing to me that politicians do not realize the amount of goodwill that can be won by spending on libraries: books. staff, opening hours. Book readers might not be the most obviously vocal of people - until something like this happens - but they do talk among themselves, and word spreads.

When all this erupted, I had been looking forward to a quiet life, and it has been galling to have to give such time and energy to this - but what else could one do? It has been so profoundly dispirting that precious time had to be given to a matter that should never have been necessary that I have decided - heartbreakingly - not to have children. I simply cannot see a future in which people have to battle and battle for what should simply be a part of civilised life. Looking back, to the evening when seeing the news in the local paper of the plan to close down the Library, I did not then realize that the course of my life would be changed.

Chris - I am sure that Dad is smiling down from Heaven - It looks like the old soldier won the war in the end!