Libraries: Stop patronising, start patronising

Anna Baddeley

Monday, 17th October 2011

Be honest, how many times have you used your local library in the past year? If you live in Kensal Rise, the answer is “not enough”. Before it was locked up last week, after the High Court overturned a last-ditch appeal by campaigners, its pretty Victorian library had been getting only 850 visits a week.
 
With each of these visits costing £4, Brent Council decided this wasn’t sustainable. Kensal, along with five other “under-performing” libraries, would be closed, with some of the £1 million saved going towards the borough’s six remaining libraries. There are also plans underfoot to build a new “super library” near Wembley stadium.
 
Naturally, the Labour council have been portrayed as greedy philistines, using Tory cuts as an excuse to save money. There’s no question the library closures have been badly managed, both in PR terms (the council leader allegedly told people to “buy their books from a supermarket”) and logistically (one of the surviving libraries is about to close for refurbishment for a year).
 
It’s not as simple as that, however. Of course cutting costs is a big priority: Brent has been ordered to save £41.7 million this year. But while the shadow of the chancellor’s axe has certainly added to the urgency of these closures, Brent has been dying to overhaul its libraries for years.
 
Reducing library closures to a matter of short-term economies distracts from the real debates we need to be having: what are libraries for, and — if we’re all agreed they’re worth keeping — how we can get more people to use them?
 
Clearly, a library getting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year is going to be in a safer position than one getting tens of thousands. The biggest shortcoming of the Brent library campaigners, as well as an unhelpful “all or nothing” approach, has been a failure to appeal to anyone who wasn’t already a library user.
 
How many people listening to Zadie Smith’s speech in a trendy Kensal Rise bar had never set foot in a library before? Did Alan Bennett think a London Review of Books essay would inspire thousands to take out library membership?
 
A lot of high-profile library supporters base their arguments on nostalgia: that if it weren’t for libraries rescuing them from impoverished childhoods, they wouldn’t be the hugely successful authors they are today. But all this harking after a golden age undermines the many exciting developments on the library front.
 
One of the main reasons people give for not using libraries is "they never have what I want". If, however, you’re lucky enough to live in one of the London boroughs (including Brent) that have pooled their stock into the London Libraries Consortium you no longer have an excuse. Your library card gives you access to six million free books, a surprising proportion of which have just been published, all available to reserve and renew online. It’s a shame librarians don’t publicise it more.

Adult library usage, though falling nationally, is also picking up in parts of London. A few years ago, Tower Hamlets’ libraries rebranded themselves as Idea Stores. If you’re prepared to look past the dubious name, the stats are very promising. The flagship branch in Whitechapel is getting 14,000 visits a week and Tower Hamlets' issues have increased by 20 per cent since the rebranding. A lot of this is down to bright new buildings and shiny new books.

Another London borough, Hillingdon, is halfway through renovating its 17 libraries. One of them even has a Starbucks, which makes the branch about £7,000 a year. Apparently, there has been a fifty per cent increase in visits to the refurbished branches.
 
Throughout the UK, library festivals and author events are thriving, thanks in part to the Reading Agency, which has been tirelessly educating publishers that libraries — far from simply giving away books for free — can be useful, money-making partners.
 
Some of us need educating too. If libraries are going to survive, we need to see them as more than just a safety net for the poor, the old and the young. Like all public services, they function best when used by everyone.

Anna Baddeley is editor of The Omnivore.

Blog Tags: Libraries , Literature , Politics