Morning:
8°c
Yet again the libraries round my way are being "restructured". According to Steve Reed, the leader of Lambeth council, the final decisions haven't been made yet and - you guessed it - consultation is ongoing. In practice, the notice is already pinned on the musty old corkboard: the plan is to axe the jobs of 23 librarians and have them re-apply for half that number. Naturally, these new posts will be of a more lowly "non-librarian" grade. In a borough that already has the lowest staffing spend in London, there will be fewer staff to deal with the book-borrowing public.
The justification for this swingeing axe to the tree of learning is twofold: on the one hand Lambeth wants to save a measly £200,000; on the other, according to them, the rise of the Great God Google means people no longer require librarians to help them find books or the information they contain. If only the latter were true - but in fact library staff spend a lot of their time helping people to use the internet to begin with, and setting up email accounts for them.
Lambeth may be the most egregious example, but it reflects a growing trend in library services throughout London and the country as a whole. As it happens, I'm actually sitting in a library while I type this. Or rather, I'm sitting in a Costa cappuccino bar inside a library. Should I wish it I can also borrow a "sexy" DVD in this "library", hire a conference room and, of course, surf the internet. Don't get me wrong: there are books available in here, but they look distinctly dull next to the shiny retail opportunities.
Over the past decade libraries have been increasingly driven to compete with web cafés, Borders and Blockbuster in order to guarantee their funding; then they fail to do so and their budgets are still cut. It's not that I'm such a Luddite that I don't think there's place for DVDs and computers in our libraries (although I draw the line at skinny lattes); it's just that the primary purpose of these venerable institutions should always be the provision of books, free, to the community-charge and tax-payer.
The internet is a valuable tool, but Googling Plato can never be the same experience as reading The Republic, let alone being directed to The Republic by a qualified librarian who can also help you to widen your reading in classics or political philosophy. The guarantor of cultured society is a proper storehouse of knowledge, properly maintained - not a cringeing imitation of Starbucks, where the staff are under the lash to "up their quotas" or else.
If people don't want to visit a library as traditionally conceived, that's their loss. There's no reason for local authorities to capitalise on it.
Reader views (1)
Restructuring is also taking place in Hillingdon . All the professional Librarians will be given redundancy notices and forced to apply for non-professional posts. The enquiry desk at the Central Library, which is the only tourist office in Hillingdon will be closed. We will no longer be able to provide class visits for schools and children's events as there will be no children's librarians to encourage the love of reading to our children. What we will have instead are coffee bars and uniforms for the staff.
- Antonia Davis, Hillingdon, Middx., 26/10/2007 17:22
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