Author: Andrew Coburn

That’s politics… the shadow libraries minister we met and liked, Lillian Greenwood, has been transported to transport. Now, after a nail-bitingly long wait, just as this newsletter was finalised, we have our new minister – Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda MP). 

He will be busy. His remit is: “arts and libraries, creative industries, museums and cultural property, cultural diplomacy and soft power, tourism and heritage”. He was shadow secretary of state for culture in 2015. Otherwise his political career has been in foreign policy committees and as long-standing Leader (or deputy or shadow Leader) of the Commons. 

We are seeking an early meeting.

Lisa Nandy (Wigan MP) is Secretary of State (the 13th in 14 years). So, what about Lisa Nandy? She hasn’t had a culture brief before. She has consistently spoken against starving local councils, with culture especially in mind.

In her first speech to DCMS staff she said: “For too long, for too many people, the story we tell ourselves, about ourselves as a nation, has not reflected them, their communities or their lives… Changing that is the mission of this department. The era of culture wars is over… 

“That is how I intend us to serve our country – celebrating and championing the diversity and rich inheritance of our communities and the people in them.”

There are parallel plans in education to get arts back into the schools curriculum.

Libraries should fit nicely into all this. But is their role as backbone “culture” provision fully understood? We don’t know. 

The other minister is Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley South), who has sport, media, civil society, youth and “ceremonials”. And Baroness Twycross is just Minister for Gambling!

We have covered in the past the appalling damage being done to Ukraine’s libraries. It appears to be a deliberate ploy to destroy not just human lives, but the country’s very identity. 

More than 600 public libraries and 2,000 school libraries have been damaged or destroyed by Russian troops. 

Ukraine librarians have asked Libraries Connected (our library chiefs’ organisation) to help them fund a mobile library to reach communities that have nothing.

LC hopes to raise £10,000 to buy a used vehicle and drive it to Ukraine. Money very well spent, we think. But not yet fully raised!

The appeals runs for eight weeks until 5 June 2024

Donations can be made at https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/mobile-library-to-ukraine

We were alerted to the fact that The Library Campaign reached the ripe old age of 40 on Sunday 4 February. The conference which led to the founding of the campaign was held in Sheffield on Saturday 4 February 1984 and Terry Hanstock, one of the organisers of that conference, wrote to Public Libraries News to highlight the anniversary. Those of us who were around then and are still active in the Campaign thought the conference was on 4 March but would trust the people who actually did the work.

Terry mentions in his email to PLN that Paul Foot made a donation to the organisers, which helped start the Campaign. Our recollection is that what he said on the day was along the lines of ‘I don’t think we should all turn up to a conference and go away thinking it was very interesting and a good day out – something should come from it so I am donating my Public Lending Right payment to help with that.’ It was the first year that authors received PLR payments.

Photo by Robert Anderson on Unsplash

The Library Campaign is seldom super-excited by government reviews of libraries. More money would solve a lot of their problems. However, it’s better that they appear somewhere on the national agenda than not.
Here’s step 1: the new report on libraries (England only though), written by Conservative peer Baroness (Liz) Sanderson. The Library Campaign was closely involved, alongside other national bodies. She accepted many things we said, but alas rejected others, including the need for a national advertising campaign. The report has already been endorsed by government and will form the basis of a national “strategy” this year.
In this political climate, Liz knew better than to ask for proper funding. But her report certainly pinpoints plenty of underlying issues worth getting on with. It’s not too painfully long – 49 pages.
She concludes, to nobody’s surprise, that the core problem is not enough awareness of what libraries do – among central government, local councils, the public and even the library sector itself.

RECOMMENDATIONS
1. The establishment of a national data hub to better evidence the role libraries play in our society
2. A national branding campaign to raise awareness of our libraries
3. The closer involvement of the British Library
4. An expanded library membership
5. A stronger volunteer network
6. The creation of a Libraries Minister and a more joined- up approach within government
7. The establishment of a Libraries Laureate
8. A change to the timing of Libraries Week to better involve politicians nationally and locally

Link to report & government response here and what The Library Campaign said to Sanderson here.

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Libraries Connected East has conducted extensive research that happily reveals that England’s public libraries generate a value of £3.4 billion a year and we at The Library Campaign think that far more people should know about this. On their website Libraries Connected say that:

“Through extensive library visits, user interviews, and statistical analysis, the authors estimated that a branch library typically provides £1 million in value annually. They then extrapolated the findings to all of England’s 3,000 libraries, giving a national total of £3.4 billion. Using Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA) spending data for the year 2021/22, this represents a return on investment of at least six times cost.”

We hope this report is taken seriously by local authorities. Spending on libraries has fallen by 17% in the last year, while in-person visits are rapidly returning to pre-Covid levels. More and more councils are scrapping late return fees, as was reported a few months ago here in The Guardian.

The full report from Libraries Connected can be viewed as a PDF here.

(The picture is of the Millennium Library in Norwich)

One of our gripes is that there are wonderful national “weeks” or “days” where Friends could lay on some exciting events – but details of available resources come out rather late for making plans.

So hooray for British Science Week. It’s 10-19 March in 2023. And the goodies are available now. The only problem is that there is so much to choose from!

There are four activity packs: for early years, primary school age, secondary school age and community use. They have general tips for organising events, discussion suggestions plus ideas for mini-projects, with plenty of graphics to download.

These include a darts game to explore immunotherapy treatments for cancer, how to get DNA from a strawberry, how to research air pollution, an experiment based on planting two pairs of pants, making
a nature mandala… As serious or as wacky as you like! The ideas can be used all year round, of course, but March could be a good time to start.

The project to give England’s libraries a much-needed “digital presence” is gradually making progress. It now has a name – LibraryOn. We hope 2023 will show visible results. And you can get in on the ground floor – if you have photos of your library. The team (at the British Library) wants to stockpile some
“high-quality images to use on the platform that demonstrate what the modern public library does and their impact. For example:

• places where people can work, study and learn
• groups offering support, learning and companionship
• friendly interactions between staff and customers
• storytimes that children and carers enjoy together.”

“If you have pictures that fit the bill, please send them to us, including relevant information such as the name of the library and the setting. If they’re large files, you might want to send them in a zipped folder, use a file-sharing tool like WeTransfer or send us a link to an online photo album.”

“Please ensure you’ve secured all relevant permissions before submitting them, and include photo credits.” Send to: hello@libraryon.org, with the subject line “Library photos”

Late, but not too late? We apologise for being slow to realise that Friends groups can nominate their library services for a prestigious national award! But time is short…
The Libraries Connected Awards were launched last year. Nominations from staff and insiders only. This year, we found the list included “anyone working in or with public libraries, including volunteers and
library partners”. We thought: “Logically, that includes Friends groups.” So we checked. And we were right.
So – if you can get something together by 31 December, please do. The awards are grouped under six categories, to match the six “offers”that libraries make:
• Culture and Creativity
• Health and Wellbeing
• Information and Digital
• Reading
• Children Promise
• Visual and Print Impaired People’s Promise
The website gives loads of advice, including FAQs and even sample entries!