The Good Library Blog

Whilst Perkins is a dear old cat much loved by many library users I think he is too dogmatic [sorry to mention dogs!] to dismiss volunteer run small libraries - they can be a good option. I live in Buckinghamshire and my local library closed by the Council in 2006 is now run by the local community and staffed with volunteers. It is doing well. The ‘Community Library’ offers an integrated service with the Council’s libraries (same library card / interchangeable books etc) but offers significantly longer opening hours and has more and probably better stock than the equivalent Council run library. The local community is now tackling the refurbishment of the library building long neglected by the Council. The Council provided alternative mobile library service is little used. If local communities work in partnership with a Council Library Service then a volunteer run small library can in the right set of circumstances provide an excellent library service for the local community and help a cash strapped Council meet the ‘comprehensive and efficient’ requirement.

Perkins heart bleeds for 'cash strapped' Bucks county council where active membership of the public library service has fallen by 70% in the past ten years and the (gross) budget for the service has remained, more or less, the same at £9m per annum (It was £7.8m in 2002). Why do you pay for a dog and keep barking? You have been duped. You should get the council to do what you have paid them for. They used to run 40 libraries with this money and now they run 32. Ask for a 20% rebate from your council tax.

Broadly I agree with the thrust of your comment. The once fine Bucks Library Service is being steadily destroyed by cuts to the service. The 2005 Bucks Library Strategy felt flawed at the time and feels flawed now. Whilst the public was clear in its rejection of the strategy, the Cabinet just went ahead anyway. Having closed seven libraries in 2006 and reduced opening hours by an average 9% in 2007 the Library Service is budgeting for a further 10% reduction in opening hours this year. Bucks Councillors seem to accept any old policy for libraries.

At the grass roots residents have to deal with the reality. In smaller communities a well supported volunteer run library with decent hours, good books and local control to get things done is better than the alternative currently offered by the Council. Don’t knock it!

Not 'steadily' but 'rapidly' - and it's awful to say it- but the residents are letting them get away with it by supporting them. Perhaps one wouldn't mind except Bucks will be held up as a model in other counties where the people are less able and less willing- and Bing- there will be no library service at all and the councillors will be saying "Well no volunteers came forward- but we did our best" . Sorry- but this is all wrong. No appeasement!

Look over into neighbouring Hillingdon. There the council are refurbishing the small libraries. That's what Bucks CC should be doing. It's easy and obvious. Don't feel sorry for your councillors, they have form.

In December 2008 council officers in Swindon told the Friends of Old Town Library that they must adopt the Dorset model, the Cambridgeshire model or even the Buckinghamshire model, if they wanted to keep their library open. Look at these models! They were undesirable then and even worse now. We were asked to be a silver-haired army of volunteers who would replace library staff. We resisted. LAPs will reduce the status of the community public library to that of the dodo.

No person in authority, no leader of any political party, has properly defended community libraries’ role in supporting literacy, education, community, the elderly and the very young. They should be thoroughly ashamed. Only last week David Cameron used Swindon as his platform to announce that an army of volunteers must take over public services. We are being duped.

Cambridgeshire Libraries set up a number of volunteer-run "access points" to replace libraries operated by trained staff a few years ago. They recently announced that they are now going to slash the funding of the volunteer run "access points".

Shirley, I think you are in danger, like Perkins, of being a little too dogmatic. I too am sceptical about David Cameron’s Big Society – is it just Conservative speak for public service budgets cuts? Unfortunately for your argument the fact is that where I live Community Libraries are supporting literacy, education the Community the elderly and the very young - probably more than the previous County run libraries. The fact is that older residents and children under 11 with their parents are the two largest user groups of the Community Libraries. The fact is the Community Libraries are strongly supported by their local communities. The fact is the Community Libraries outperform the County’s mobile library by miles (measured by loans/visitors etc.) but the cost (per community) is similar. I’m not saying a volunteer run Community Library is THE answer I’m just saying that that if disaster strikes and the Council decides it can no longer fund a traditional Council run static library, a Community Library is an option to be considered. Coming back to Perkins’ headline I think if I go down the road and tell the Community Library volunteers that they are not running a proper library because Perkins says so I think I might get an earful!

Dear Mr Bucks Library User. This isn't about your friends up the road, it's about places where people could not do what they are doing. There is another county council which has exactly the same number of libraries as Bucks, but less than half the budget. I have been able to examine how their money is spent and I can see that they could afford, as Bucks most certainly could, to keep all their libraries open with professional staff. Yet the council is about to make up to one third of them into community run libraries on the grounds that 'Bucks and Cambridgeshire have done it'. In Cambridge the library service hardly exists, nor does it in Bucks, for most people in the county. You may call it dogmatic, but I am really frightened about what is being done.

Dear Mr Bucks Library User. If one has the means and ability to take on a responsibility, say, for an elderly relative, should the example be held up to one's town, the county and beyond to show that the State should no longer have any responsibility for domiciliary care? It would, of course, be a criminal nonsense. I understand the loyalty you feel to your own library and your volunteers, yet you have confirmed that Bucks has failed in its responsibilities and continues to let you down. I have visited Hillingdon whose public libraries are thriving and are absolutely splendid. It's a mystery to me why failing councils are held up as examples to others when a successful one is ignored. The real danger is that because you have sacrificed your time to provide what your council is supposed to provide, your example is being be made use of, quite cynically, in wholly inappropriate ways. Is it not the case that while you and other good souls are beavering away to keep things going at your library, those in authority are, one assumes, still pulling their substantial salaries, bonuses, expenses and generous pensions? There is something rotten going on. I do not blame you for this. Those who should shoulder the blame must be challenged. We can't just say, "I'm all right, Jack" and look the other way. Dogmatic, or what?!

Volunteers can be dedicated, helpful and enthusiastic - and in principle I support the idea of community run organisations -but there are limits to what volunteers can achieve. Particularly when they do not control the cash that underpins the service.

In Cambridgeshire the "access points" and community libraries which replaced libraries with paid staff have now been told that their budgets are to be slashed. This leaves the volunteers with the problem of either finding an alternative source of funding, closing down, or raising the cash themselves. In fact, one Cambridge library access Point already collects a monthly charge for users.

The point is that the volunteers and the readers are already paying their local authority through the rates, for a library service that is supposed to be "efficient and comprehensive, and free at the point of delivery, according to the 1964 Public Libraries Act.

If the volunteer principle is so effective, why do we now have large numbers of salaried councillors making decisions on our behalf, and highly paid managers to run a service that is increasingly dependent on volunteers?

I think the time is coming when communities will need to run their own services, but why if we are running and paying for our own services should we continue to pay our rates to local authorities, or follow the policy dictats of central government which are resulting in the planned decline in our libraries?

I agree with Martyn that there is a limit to what volunteers can be expected to do and run. The Bucks Community Libraries are small (5-10,000 stock of books). They are very small in relation to the totality of the Council’s Library Service but of course they matter a lot to the relevant communities.

A statutory (PLMA 1964) public library can’t charge for borrowing books. An independent library within the statutory framework can seek voluntary donations but it mustn’t be linked in anyway to borrowing which must be freely available. My local library is a registered charity which brings benefits. It can also seek grants. Funds raised directly support and improve the local library. The service offered is focussed on local needs. For example if the community wants different opening hours - you just do it(volunteer resource permitting of course).

It is interesting that one of the best public libraries in London (Upper Norwood) is independent and run by board of local people, not by any local council. In fact the Act provides specifically for such operations (not least because they are very efficient- Upper Norwood certainly is). Nevertheless it is funded by the local councils upon whose boundary it lies, and the staff are paid and very good. There is an agreed management contract as a basis for who is responsible for what. In the end there is a big difference between paid staff who are obliged to the public and volunteers to whom the public is obliged.

Yes - what Perkins says is the conventional wisdom at least per CILIP/Unison etc. However the conventional wisdom can have significant unintended consequences e.g. damage to sustainable communities if you close a static library and sell off the building which is what the Bucks Council Library Service wanted to do. Where I live the Community Library helps village sustainability, strengthens the Community though volunteering and delivers 7-8 times more service (loans) than the mobile. Library opening hours are around 50% longer with the equivalent small Council library (open lunchtimes and all day Saturday). The library has twice as many books as the mobile. What is wrong with designing a library service around what the communities want provided it is value for money? Innovation isn’t a sin!

Underlying this issue is the lack of clarity (pre-Wirral inquiry at least) over ‘comprehensive and efficient’ library provision. Chief Librarians tend to favour fewer bigger libraries coupled with a limited mobile service to fill in. This is efficient in their eyes and easy to run. Residents value localness and this is particularly important for older people and children. I would suggest that putting residents first is not such a bad idea.

Bucks should not have thought about selling the building and they should have opened it 100% longer hours. But you pay them to do that- it shouldn't need volunteers to do it. If you want to run it with volunteers then get the council to give you back the money that you have handed over. In a community of 5,000 that is about £75,000 per annum they owe you. That is what you have paid them. That's what we are saying to you, Mr Bucks library user.

Libraries are one of the only face-to-face services left where kids can come with no appointment and get professional services from someone with a master's degree who assigns no grades, makes no judgments. It's the greatest democratic institution ever created.

Councils are not using volunteers to run libraries, or access points, for philanthropic reasons it is to save money. Library staff are council officers bound by codes of conduct, customer care, equal opps and health and safety policies, we are required and expected to be professional and accountable, are volunteers regulated as vigorously as this? Demand your moneys worth don't get fobbed off!

Alan, it is the Council Officers who provide the mobile library service that is little used. It is Council Officers who want to sell off library buildings.

When consulted in 2005 about the Chief Librarian’s proposal to close 7 libraries and move to mobile provision the affected Bucks residents indicated their views as follows: FOR - 4 letters; AGAINST 1,300+ letters and 7,000 petition signatures. Thus the residents did their bit ‘demanding their money’s worth’. The Chief Librarian made no change to his proposal and the Cabinet duly approved it. Residents felt the mobile service was inadequate and so they took over the library buildings and Community Libraries were born. Residents vote with their feet and mainly use the volunteer run Community Libraries. It is the volunteer Community Libraries who are maintaining the static library presence.

Dear 'buckslibraryuser',

Having worked in public libraries for 20 years I have absolutely no faith in the majority of Chief Librarians, my experience of them in Hackney was one of career obsessed bureaucrats who had lost touch with what their public wanted years ago, a bit like the LLCP! I am saddened that BUCKS have gone down this route and I can see that you put up a good fight.
Good Luck

I cannot speak for the libraries in the rest of the country but the library in which I work (south Manchester), provides so much more than just it's books. In this area, the library is a fundamental part of a community with many half-way houses, homeless shelters, drug and alcohol rehab units, shelters for victims of spousal abuse (I think you get the idea).
To marginalise the quality of the service in areas like this one is to take away from the people who need it most the opportunity for autodidactic education, advice on benefits, immigration and unemployment issues, as well as regular contact with their M.P. and councillors. The library also creates a feeling of community which can be so easily compromised in areas high in street crime and unemployment.
Also, I wonder if Mr Cameron would be prepared to work eight days straight, accept verbal abuse, threats of violence, mop the bathroom, clean-up vomit and eject male-prostitutes from the toilet , all while his union tries to secure him a permanent contract (in keeping with employment law). Admittedly, these are not all daily occurances but things my colegues and I have done. I love my job and know there are much harder ones but I don't think we would see many people do these things cheerfully and for no remuneration.
Something tells me that this policy may be more viable in Oxford or Cambridge and tory la-la-land than for the majority of areas in the country.