JANUARY 2025   Welcome to our newsletter round up of January’s UK libraries news!  £4000 COMPETITION FOR FRIENDS GROUPS Could your Friends group use a £400 grant? We are celebrating our 40th birthday, and a recent bequest, by setting aside £4,000 to award to 10 groups that have good ideas to share. This might be campaigning and publicity, or it might be the many extra activities you contribute to library services that are not in crisis…In our experience, Friends groups don’t blow their own trumpets enough. We want to encourage you to do so. We are not asking for elaborate presentations – just enough to convey the necessary information. We know how busy you are.To get you thinking, we have come up with 10 categories, including activities/events, fund-raising, publicity, green projects and working with other organisations. To get you thinking, we have come up with 10 categories: fund-raising idea, children’s/youth activity, regular activity programme, creative project, all-day event, green project, publicity campaign, joint library/Friends project, joint project with another local organisation, anti-cuts campaign.Interesting entries, whether they win or not, will go into a database to be shared with others. So your good work will get the publicity it deserves…DEADLINE 23 MARCH. For more details click here.Picture credit -Giorgio Trovato PETERBOROUGH PUZZLE  We continue to wrestle with Peterborough’s mystery plan to close an astonishing seven of its 10 libraries. And pop in two others. Or something.All anyone knows so far is in this tiny extract from a consultation on the overall budget (itself far too hasty – a bare month, over Christmas!): “Reduce the current libraries service from 10 static libraries to 3 static libraries, investing in a modernised Central Library and maintaining two additional core libraries (one in the north and one in the south), whilst supplementing this service with smaller self-service facilities in existing hubs (such as Family Hubs).“This proposal is subject to separate statutory consultation.”Which libraries would close? What are these “additional core libraries”, which only seem to need “maintaining”? What and where will these “self-service facilities” be? Above all, where is the “separate statutory consultation”?We fired off a Freedom of Information request, and await the promised reply with interest. The council is galloping ahead to an overall budget decision on 19 February. Galloping after it is admirable local campaigner Jennie Storey, whom (among others) we are glad to support. BRISTOL SEES SENSE We had been expecting to write an article this month reporting on (and deploring) Bristol City Council’s proposal to close over half of their 27 libraries. However, the Green council has relented. The service budget of £4.7m was under threat of being halved, with consequences for the service which included closures and presumably spending on books etc. In the consultation, councillors opposed to the plan mentioned the inconsistent opening hours and the role of libraries as community assets.However, an updated budget proposal to be presented and discussed formally next month has removed the closure proposals, though no doubt there are other worries hidden in the detail. BUCKS “FLEXES” ITS MUSCLES  Buckinghamshire County Council was one of the first to hand over many of its libraries to volunteers through community groups, way back in 2011. While these are still running, the council also already runs others jointly with such community groups. Now the eight remaining council-run libraries are due to have staff cuts of up to 30%. However, in a plan called “Library Flex” opening hours will be extended – using self-service and volunteers. Aylesbury Library (above) will open seven days a week from 7am to 9pm on weekdays and from 7am to 7pm at weekends, as a pilot. As usual, we ask what happens when a child with no accompanying adult wants to use the library in unstaffed time. It is a statutory responsibility for local authorities to run a public library service. A while back, one – briefly – proposed closing all except its central branch. Buckinghamshire seems to be taking a different path toward trying to fulfil its duty at the least cost. SIMON ARMITAGE ON TOUR Poet Laureate Simon Armitage is continuing his tour of UK libraries. His website explains: ‘Simon Armitage plans to give free readings in libraries across the UK during one week each spring, from the flagship libraries of the big cities to smaller or mobile libraries serving rural areas “… from A to Z, wherever the invitations take me.”  Using the alphabet as a compass, his ten-year journey will involve local communities, poets and high school students along the way and will celebrate the library as one of our great and necessary institutions’.This year’s section is the ‘L to M Libraries Tour’ and he will be doing readings in person at the libraries. We wish Simon well on the next leg of his UK tour. You can also find out more, if your library has missed this opportunity, about when he may pass through again or if a library close to yours will be featured by signing up to his mailing list via [email protected] I SOUGHT THE LAW…Geoff Dron, our much-valued legal adviser, is looking for a replacement. This is a core function for TLC – sending Freedom of Information requests, reminding councils of their statutory responsibilities and generally giving our authoritative backing to local campaigners. It is busy at times, but manageable overall. Often satisfying, always worthwhile and always interesting. You would be working alongside TLC chair Laura Swaffield, who prepares detailed evidence and opinions on quality of library services.Legal experience is a must. Geoff adds: “That person would need to work with me initially and I’d provide appropriate guidance.”If you are at all interested and would like to have a preliminary discussion, contact us at [email protected] FACEBOOKROUND UP  Friends groups across the UK have been busy making sure Lancashire’s Friends of Adlington Library (Chorley) will be celebrating Chinese New Year this February 1st with a special coffee morning. The morning will also include activities for little ones, including making and decorating Chinese hats and other craft tables. Happy New Year! Elsewhere in the County, the Friends of Lancaster Library has been advertising the launch of their new well-being cafe. The venue within the library includes treats to eat and some live piano music. They are using the cafe to launch their Explore Nature group, too. Going by their recent social media posts, this is a very busy Friends group. Friends of Ryde Library on the Isle of Wight shared a photo of their display of books to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Many other libraries Those interested in learning more about poetry and writing will have a chance to attend a series of workshops in February at an event organized by Friends of Batley Library. Poet and author Mohammed Salon will deliver two workshops that explore rhyming poetry and how to be more experimental with different forms of poetry. The workshops are open to both adults and children. Very inspiring! Friends of Burnham Library (Buckinghamshire) posted on Facebook about the library’s “Health Station”, which is free to use, shows a variety of library activities beyond borrowing resources, and shows that libraries really can be a centre for their local communities. They wrote that: “Staff can show you how if you are unsure. All you need is an email address – the machine will send your results after each use (you can come back as many times as you like). Apart from a bit of whirring, the machine is silent – it doesn’t shout your weight out to the whole library!” Friends of Lowestoft Library in East Suffolk AND FINALLY… LIBRARY CAMPAIGN MAGAZINE NO 107 Library Campaign members should have received their print copies of our 36-page magazine this week. It’s the only UK magazine that focuses solely on public libraries.Apart from the details of our competition (above) it also covers what the new Children’s Laureate and the new libraries minister are up to (including a major report on why people use or don’t use libraries), a telling glimpse of the local authority funding jungle and numerous reports and examples that show how very important libraries are. Oh, and an amazing project by a Friends group! Information we can all use. It is on our website here.  Please get in touch with us if your local library is under threat, you have a Friends group that you wish to promote or you would like advice about how to start a Friends group for your local library – currently under threat or not. Feel free to ask any questions about what Friends groups get up to. We have now created an archive of our previous newsletters, which you can view here – check it out if you haven’t already and share the link as it’s also a place for new subscribers to sign up. If you are new to getting our monthly newsletter this is a way to see what we’ve been getting across since we started this newsletter in Autumn 2022. Copyright (C) *2023* *The Library Campaign*. * Registered Charity No: 1102634 * All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe  |
