MAY 2025  Welcome to our newsletter round up of May’s UK libraries news! NOTT SO GOOD The end? The saga of Nottingham’s libraries dates back some years. In 2022 it emerged that grand plans for a new central library had run into problems. The city centre revamp that was supposed to pay its costs was in trouble – Covid, and the vagaries of dealing with developers and big schemes. To help make cuts, four local libraries were to close. A spirited and inventive campaign has kept up ever since, as budgets came and went. Public support has been unvaryingly strong. The four have been threatened throughout – and survived throughout. But no more. This January, the council finally decided to keep three of them “open” by handing them to someone else to run. The meeting was described as “fiery”. Now finally a preferred bidder has been found to run Bamford, Bilborough and Aspley. Radford-Lenton will remain council-run, but reduced to accommodate a “centralised stock hub”. The bidder is Castle Cavendish, a local property group that has funded projects such as sports sessions and employment support. It has never run libraries. Details are still being worked out. Experience shows that arrangements like this often fail to work out, or to last long. Still, without the campaign, these libraries would have been long gone and the buildings lost for ever. It’s a victory of sorts. Let’s see what happens next. MANCHESTER CITY …  It has been good to see Library of the Year newly revived as part of the British Book Awards. It created welcome publicity for the regional finalists – and libraries in general. The final winner is Manchester. Innovative (and decently funded), it’s an obvious choice. But the clincher was last year’s children’s promotion in partnership with the BBC’s Blue Peter. Casting an ironic light on Nottingham’s story of a big central library leading to the loss of four local branches, Manchester council says: “Central Library is an amazing venue in the centre of the city, but of course, not everyone feels confident to visit, or knows that it’s there and completely free.” Cue a city-wide campaign using schools, parks and museums as well as libraries, plus an arts project and a city trail. No quarrel with the results: many visitors who had never or very rarely visited a library before, with an 88% increase compared to a typical Saturday, 60% of them from areas of high deprivation, children’s membership increased by 33% and 12,308 people becoming new library members. And, Manchester adds: “It has also shown other cultural partners in the city that libraries can offer them a platform to reach communities that they might themselves struggle to reach.” CAERPHILLY GOES FOR BROKE  Just over ten years ago, the Welsh Borough of Caerphilly was boasting that it had refurbished all its libraries on the previous ten years. How are the mighty fallen – the Council now propose to close 10 of those same libraries. Most, if not all, of the remaining 8 will become ‘hybrid hubs’. There is one comment in the local press that there is a children’s centre attached to one branch due for closure, the entrance to which is though the library. The opposition parties (it’s a Labour Council) are proposing a vote of no confidence in the leader but it would seem that Labour has a very secure majority. The closures are due to take effect from August. Unusually, perhaps, for this kind of cut, the Council does not seem to be entertaining the possibility of other organisations taking over the libraries up for closure. The Library Campaign does not support running libraries that way but Caerphilly seem to be doubling down on their plans to make sure there is no possibility of getting them back in the short term, if ever. KATE (CONTINUED) Writer Kate Thompson published a book about the wartime underground library in London’s Bethnal Green – and joined the campaign to protect the one on the surface in 2021! She wrote about this in our magazine, issue no 102 She remains fascinated by libraries, book clubs and the power of reading, plus “stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things”. Catch up on new publications and events (not just her own) via her podcasts and lively newsletter The latter comes in various options from free to £7 a month. Worth checking out just now as the current issue features a very good bio of Andrew Carnegie. Other topics have ranged from the Titanic, a modern prison library to the 19th century female journalist who exposed the horrors of a “mental asylum”.  FUTURE OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES DEBATE May 14th saw a debate in the House of Commons on public libraries. The transcript is available here and you can see the recording here. Labour MP Jonathan Davies initiated the debate He spoke well about the value of libraries and was followed by MPs from all four nations and major parties. They all praised the work of their local library serves and explained how they interact with the service. Jonathan Davies raised the fact that with some councils now led by the Reform party, there is no indication of what that may mean for local libraries as they have no clear library policy. Reform was not present during the debate so could not respond As happens with all these Commons debates the House of Commons Library published a research briefing ‘Future of Public Libraries’, which dug into an analysis conducted by the BBC showing that, between 2016 and 2023, 125 physical libraries closed in England, whilst a further 100 have been handed over from being the responsibility of local government to being volunteer led. The BBC Freedom of Information request also discovered that a third of all UK libraries have reduced their opening hours since 2016. Also summarised in the briefing were the eight points of recommendation from the 2023 Sanderson review, which included the proposition of a national branding campaign focused on libraries. That’s not an actual national advertising campaign which The Library Campaign has been keen on for a long time but arguably it is a small advance – if it ever happens. LibraryON WANTS YOUR HELP LibraryON is the British Library’s attempt to create a sinfgle digital resource for all public libraries. Although it has been going for a couple of years and has produced some useful stuff – a website where you can search for a local library and taken through to other details – opening hours etc. – it has along way to go before it will be useful to most library users. Now they have put out a call for volunteers to hope them with their research between May and July 2025. The aim is to better understand how people use the LibraryOn website and make sure it’s meeting real user needs. They are after people from all walks of life: regular library-goers, people just getting started, or those interested in exploring what’s available. You can help by: Sharing a call-out via your own newsletter or social channels Reaching out to any local groups you’re connected with (e.g. youth advisory groups, digital skills sessions, hobby groups or book clubs) Encouraging people to take part in a short, friendly testing session, either online or in-person at the British Library. Participants will be asked to complete a few simple tasks on the LibraryOn website, either remotely or in person. Sessions will be run by the LibraryOn team – no technical skills needed! Contact [email protected] if you can help. They can supply you with copy for any call-outs you make. LIBRARY GARDENS From the same source, if your local library has a garden, which so many do we encourage you to enter your photo or video footage of it to the call from LibraryON who are running a social media campaign, in conjunction with The British Libraries ‘Unearthed’ exhibition. The aim of the campaign is to highlight the green spaces in local UK communities that are connected to libraries and to emphasise how these green spaces contribute to the reasons to use our local libraries. Email [email protected] with your photo or video of your local library asap! It would serve as research as well as looking pretty and your image would count towards documenting the green spaces that libraries have. Check this link for more info. Green Library Hubs CILIP, has announced the launch of the Green Library Hubs programme – a groundbreaking, community-led climate action project made possible through £1.2 million in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund’s Climate Action Fund – Our Shared Future. The three-year programme, delivered in partnership with 10 libraries across the UK, will establish 10 Green Library Hubs – spaces rooted in local libraries that act as catalysts for community awareness, behaviour change and grassroots action on climate change. Each Green Library Hub will: Serve as a community space for environmental learning and events Humanise the climate crisis through local relevance and engagement Support partnerships with local groups, schools, and climate organisations Equip library staff with environmental literacy and community engagement tools The project is an integral part of CILIP’s Green Libraries Campaign, and activities delivered through the Green Libraries Hubs will support the campaign as it enables climate action in local communities through a network of coordinated library services. Louis Coiffait-Gunn, CEO at CILIP said: “This project is about enabling real, meaningful climate action at the heart of communities. Library services are deeply rooted in place giving them a unique ability to harness local communities, understand wider society and tackle complex challenges. Building on the success of the Green Libraries Campaign, this initiative continues to showcase how libraries foster collaboration and inspire action.” ROUND UP  ESSEX Save Our Libraries Essex umbrella group of Library supporters have been keeping people up to date stating that the Derby council “realises that “outsourcing was not the best approach”.They gave a link to the BBC article that expanded upon their successful campaign. BURNHAM Buckinghamshire’s Burnham Library is a place where one can get one’s blood pressure checked. So much happens at libraries for local communities and health depots such as this may be unexpected so the friends group making people aware on Facebook seems very useful. LANCASTER The Friends of Lancaster Library have been inspiringly busy with a series of workshops run during the half-term break including hammock weaving – surely a great pursuit at this time of year in preparation for a hot English summer. STANDISH Wigan’s Standish Library Friends group holds a reminiscing group for adults to participate in that is also open to all to attend and has recently held a separate evening of talks all about the history of Standish. They posted on Facebook photos of their busy event commenting that “It was great to see the library packed out… Standish people love their history!” BATLEY Friends at West Yorkshire’s Batley Library are another busy group and over the last week posted about several groups that they either run or are involved with including a crochet afternoon, a meet-up group for local rugby players to share memories, and a talk about medieval text production! DEDDINGTON Friends of Deddington Library in Oxfordshire are holding a photo competition where the winning entries will get a place in their upcoming parish calendar. The closing date is August 4th. They have also been promoting their local farmers market alongside other goings-on in their local community. HEYSHAM Also in Lancashire, Heysham Library friends group advertised on their Facebook page a interesting event that they are starting to run for blind children and adults featuring Lego blocks that have braille on them. The session is free and runs for two hours. We hope that ideas like this catch on and can serve as a spark of imagination for other friends groups. It’s good to keep up with what all these Friend’s groups and many more on social media have been up to and plan to do. Please get in touch if your group wishes to be featured in our newsletter. AND FINALLY… COMPARE AND CONTRAST There will now, as they say, be a short pause… while we wrestle with the job of judging our £4,000 competition. We have a neat total of 40 entries judged to be eligible. It amounts, as we had hoped, to a treasure chest of good ideas. This will be a resource for Friends groups to draw on. It will also be a big help to us in publicising the importance of Friends groups within the statutory library framework – a point we constantly have to make. But how to choose winners? Apart from the sheer amount of material to go through, we have a problem we probably should have anticipated – the variety. Different Friends groups have shown great creativity, and come up with innovative ideas suited to their different situations. It’s hard to make comparisons! 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. *|You are subscribed to The Library Campaign Newsletter|* |
