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August 29, 2010
Hung up on buildings
It was interesting that Ed Vaizey said "I hope we don't get hung up on buildings" when he talked to the press about public libraries.
Library buildings have been absent from much of the debate about public libraries over the past ten years. Continual attempts to persuade themselves, if not the public, that the public library service now takes place online have pervaded the chat rooms of the library profession. They almost seem to forget that for a library to make a contribution to the local community, it has to have a building and that building has to be agreeable, well-stocked, welcoming and open,
The state of library buildings was absent from the all the DCMS/MLA/Audit Commission inititiatives to create standards and measures for public libraries until the Kaufman Select committee eventually drew attention to the omission. Nothing was said about them in the recent modernisation review. It is hard to understand why: any retailer with 3,000 buildings acquired over a long period, would regard them as a most important asset.
The agenda of 'co-location', which means trying to save money by putting council services into the same building, assumes four things that are rarely analysed: firstly that library buildings are generally expensive; secondly that colocated services will be in cheaper premises; thirdly that the capital costs required to make the move are freely available and fourthly that the resulting library will be as good or better than the old one in terms of its comprehensiveness and efficiency for those using it. All those factors might work in favour of a move, but they equally well might not, and inituitively one is doubtful about all of them without some persuasive evidence.
Many public library buildings are freeholds that were acquired years ago and are very cheap indeed. The property bill for libraries is far less than it would be for any retailer trying to set up the same kind of operation now.
The current argument about whether Hammersmith and Fulham council should close Baron's Court library has made me reflect on a number of these things.
I confess I haven't been in it for four years and I hope it has improved a lot since then because when I went to see it it was truly one of the worst anything I had ever seen-- not just a bad library, but a place from the darker pages of the Inferno. It was filthy, the shelves were empty, the lights were dim and the staff were horrid. I was there just before lunchtime on a wet cold day when the brave residents who had come to use it were turned out on to the streets so that the four members of staff present could have their lunch in peace. It can only have got better since then.
Now those same residents are protesting in large numbers that the council are going to close it. They don't want to be forced to have to journey either to Hammersmith or Kensington to use a local library.
It is a fairly modern building which has been allowed to fall by previous council administrations to ruin. It is perfectly large enough and in an accessible location in a quietly well educated part of London. One would have thought a clever architect and designer could - without excessive expense at all- make it really quite smart and useful. Restoration is probably cheaper than the construction of a new multi purpose building in Hammersmith centre, where one would have thought land was more expensive, too. No one seems to have made estimated and written down figures to be looked at. The assumption that a larger colocated library service is going to be all round better seems to have been made without any detailed thinking at all. It certainly hasn't worked in other places, because normally when it is done, it is done for all the wrong reasons.
'Efficient' - as in 'Comprehensive and efficient' has to mean efficient both for the council and the residents who want to use the service. It is not right, in my view, for councils to argue (as one increasingly hears them do) that 'effiicient' means one large library in the area, because that is cheaper for the council. The calculation of efficiency also has to consider the time and expense and ability of residents to make the journey to such a new place and its usefulness to them when they get there. The money, after all, whether they spend it themselves, or they allow the council to spend it for them, is all theirs. If they currently have a local library to which they can walk it is bound to be less efficient for them to make any kind of longer journey, with buggies and barrows, to a library some distance away unless, on balance the visit is a hugely better experience. That might happen but it is unlikely if what you wanted was a small intimate story time with your friends or just a quiet place you could walk from home to read or do your homework.
I think library buildings are a terribly important part of the debate about how to improve libraries to the point that I have written a book about them! I think we do need to get just a little bit hung up on buildings, just as much as we need to get hung up on books.
The case for closing Barons Court libary has not been made at all. But the case for keeping small community libraries, of the kind which Barons Court ought to be, have been made in abundance in many places, not least Hillingdon, which I hope the councillors of Hammersmith will go and see for themselves.
Posted by Perkins at August 29, 2010 7:46 AM
Comments
Barnet Council to sell off its library buildings and lease them back?
http://tinyurl.com/374v68r
Posted by: Martyn at August 29, 2010 8:40 AM
"Continual attempts to persuade themselves, if not the public, that the public library service now takes place online have pervaded the chat rooms of the library profession."
I really do feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall on this one, but I'll give it a shot.
Where exactly has it been written that the 'public library service now takes place online'? I've not seen it anywhere. What I have seen (as you well know) is discussion around the shift in library use. Let me reinforce the point (for the umpteenth time) and see if you actually post my comment for a change and deal with the issue rather than obfuscate.
Before the growth of the library website, library users had to rely on visits to the library to renew or request books. As you know (and frequently point out) library opening hours are not flexible enough to meet the needs of the users. As people can now renew/reserve online, many have switched to that method rather than visiting the library. This has a clear and obvious impact on visits to the local library. For example, a person that would normally visit a library to make a reservation and then collect it would make two visits to the library. By switching to online reservations they would only visit once. Hence, this would lead to a 50% decline in visits for that one person. Factor in renewals and you can begin to understand why library visits are down 1% year-on-year and website visits up 50% for 2009.
This is not about the website replacing the library, it is about the website providing services that are more convenient for the user. It demonstrates how unhelpful statistics related to library visits are when you put this in context.
Posted by: Ian at September 1, 2010 10:32 PM
Ian, you are most welcome here. Make no mistake, not only is it important that we tackle these issues, but also it is important that somehow we bridge the gulf between what library users say they want and what librarians say they want to do and do do.
In this case my argument would be that opening hours should be longer. You can't borrow a book online. The public want their libraries to be open when they need them. That is where the resources should be spent in preference to most other activities. The website service is an incidental extra, it is not a substitute for being open. Think how John Lewis would approach the same issue. They have do to both. Closing early is never an option. I would have spent money on opening hours rather than a website, if the cost was significant.
Posted by: perkins at September 2, 2010 10:44 PM
Yes, Ian is absolutely right about the downward affect on library visits due to online renewals and reservations i.e. it is just a statistical effect and not a real change in library usage. A good online catalogue and an easy to use web reservation service are essential nowadays. It is also is a useful plus point in making the case for retaining small libraries - since nowadays residents can have easy access locally to their council’s library stock, and possibly beyond, all at the click of a mouse. This seems to me to be great service that is under marketed by libraries.
Posted by: buckslibraryuser at September 3, 2010 11:25 AM
Thank you Tim. I think what is also interesting to note is that not only has there been an increased usage in the website, there has been an increase in book issues. In fact, 2009 saw the first year-on-year increase in book issues. It seems to me that as buckslibraryuser indicates, people are using the online catalogue more to track down books, reserving where appropriate and then picking them up. Before they may have walked in, been unable to find the book they wanted and then walked out again. Now they can save a wasted trip (which may have resulted in them never coming back). It seems obvious to me that the way people use the service is changing. This change needs to be acknowledged and built on.
Posted by: Ian at September 5, 2010 10:30 AM
Ian. Thank you. What is certain is that we don't analyse what is happening in the library service properly in order to be able to manage it. We ought to know what the patterns of use are and how they are changing. Can you imagine a retailer or this size and scale not watching figures every day and week that tell them who is using their service and how it is developing and what they need to do to maintain improvement? We do none of that - and only guess. Whose job is it to manage the service properly?
For example, I am a regular library user- probably 4 or 5 times a week, and out of those, 1 or 2 times I will use a computer, if one is free. But I think I have only used a catalogues once in the last 6 months, and couldn't find the title I was looking for. I rarely use library websites, - I have no idea how typical or untypical that is and I am not aware of any constant monitor which tells us how much use is made of library services. Website use is much easier to record than physical use, but, so far as I know, we don't do it-- do we?
Posted by: perkins at September 5, 2010 11:31 AM