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There’s no substitute for real thing with librarians
• AT the well-attended public meeting in Belsize Library, organised by Camden Public Libraries Users Group, pugnacious comments from local people indicated that democracy still lives in unlikely corners of Belsize.
Thank goodness!
But the confused messages coming from the council about the uses of libraries, together with a perverse intention to change instead of maintain and cherish services and institutions, needed to be heard to be believed.
One very wise comment from a member of the public at the end of a stormy session, deserves to be emphasised: that the libraries are themselves making no intelligent use of education to inform and enlighten their own public, especially the young.
Librarians should follow the example of London’s museums and galleries and take the responsibility – with the enthusiastic support of Councillor Flick Rea and officials – of educating young readers in libraries, to nourish the general perception that libraries are lovely, comfortable, quiet places in which to study, or read Harry Potter, or find out from qualified staff what it is to research their project with unique, rare books and maps and computers, rather than pinch stuff from “the net” .
Meanwhile we in Belsize have made it clear that machines to stamp books are not a trade-off for informed, qualified librarians and archivists, and in our prized local history archive in Holborn, machines are an extravagant add-on in a recession, an irrelevance, compared with an intelligent, qualified, librarian who “carries the collection around in his or her head”.
Gene Adams
Lawn Road, NW3
Council knows best?
• FEAR, frustration and anger were clearly present in the audience at Monday’s Camden Public Libraries Users Group meeting on new technology in Camden’s libraries – fear that much-loved libraries were to be changed out of all recognition; frustration about an almost complete absence of understandable information; anger that the public has been considered to be the least important of the interested groups.
The packed, rowdy meeting made it very obvious that the technology was not really the main issue.
There were certainly questions associated with the equipment, such as its reliability, but these were not addressed. The impression given by council representatives was that the audience was considered to be ignorant and ever so slightly retarded. The subliminal message was that the council knows what is best for Camden’s residents and the public should be grateful.
Perhaps the Camden Library Service is behind the times, as the council suggests. However, it has not been able to show that bringing it up-to-date will improve it, from a user’s viewpoint and no attempt was made at the meeting to rectify this situation.
Effectively, the council had lost the technology debate long before the CPLUG meeting took place.
In Camden, you ignore the public at your peril. People are prepared to listen and consider the issues calmly, if the proposals are clearly set out at an early stage.
This did not happen. Even at this late stage, there was a palpable reluctance from the council representatives to consider the arguments put forward by members of the audience. The audience left the meeting with a slightly better understanding of the technology, but with their initial suspicions intact.
It is all very sad. There is some substance in the argument that Camden’s Library Service has been slumbering while the rest of the library world moved on.
However, the conclusion has to be that the present proposals were less about improving the service (little was made of the possibilities for large, zero-cost increases in opening hours, for instance) than about saving money.
An unholy alliance of greedy bankers and ignorant, national politicians has almost wrecked the world’s economy and the rest of us will have to pay for their misdeeds.
At present, the private sector is painfully adjusting to the new reality and the public sector will have to do so in due course.
The pain has to be shared and even public libraries cannot escape. When times are hard, the usual local government reaction is to take the easy route and close libraries.
Whether by luck or good judgment, Camden has found a method of saving money which does not rely on that. This is not a shameful story, but it was not the story told. The council preferred to employ its usual policy of obfuscation – a policy that is guaranteed to lose the support of the public. Why?
Is there more that we have not been told? Are the rumours of yet more, less palatable, cuts to the library budget true?
Alan Templeton
Chair Camden Public Libraries Users Group, NW6
‘Soft’ target
• MANY of those who now take their seats in Camden Council chamber will not know of – or remember – the fight in 1998, reported in the local and national press, to save Camden’s library service. The service was rightly saved, three libraries remained open and a senior officer was sacked.
It was saved by the brave decision of 13 Labour backbenchers to vote with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat opposition.
The rebels were never punished and for 10 years Camden continued with an expanded library service.
Three members who will vividly recall the triumph of that night were councillors Keith Moffitt, Flick Rea and Andrew Marshall, who all, I remember, cheered when the vote was counted.
We now see them, grimly in power, and wielding much the same hatchet. In local government, libraries are always regarded as a soft target.
But few libraries have the tradition of Camden, and few have had a councillor who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, as was George Bernard Shaw in 1925, who had been elected to St Pancras Vestry and Council.
It is the potential damage to Camden’s recorded history that now particularly concerns me.
The value of the borough’s Local Studies and Archives at Holborn Library is second to none. It is an immensely popular resource for residents and for researchers from across the world.
Yet councillors Moffitt, Rea and Marshall, for all their professed interest and attendance at functions there, now want to see it decimated. Richard Knight, the head of this service, could be sacked, and a senior librarian/ archivist could follow him. This would be either Aidan Flood, a stalwart of local studies, or Tudor Allen who was appointed to replace Malcolm Holmes on his retirement.
The councillors may remember that Mr Holmes was awarded an MBE for the commitment he gave to a service which has gained an international reputation with a vastly increased business.
New councillors, even some who may be “here today, gone tomorrow” politicians, should consider the history of Camden – the borough they represent – in the world, and be prepared to ignore their party whips, as we did, to come together and vote against the most excessive cuts that will be levelled by the blunt hatchets of this leadership against the library service.
And, do you know what will happen? When the dust settles, they will be quietly congratulated as before, the library service will continue and possibly improve. And party leaderships will have to look elsewhere for their cuts.
One small start would be to remove the scandal of top-up salaries of party whips, who are political appointments.
Gerry Harrison
Former Camden Labour councillor, Co Clare
Abusive!
• HERE I am at the computer in “my” library at Queen’s Crescent.
It is quiet and people are going about their business. On Monday night, however, at Belsize Library, I saw a different side to library life.
At the meeting of the users group some of the people who spoke from the floor were more abusive and noisier than the teenagers someone was complaining about.
The invited speakers, Flick Rea and Camden library staff, were not even given a seat to sit on, or allowed the finish what they were saying.
I had gone to the meeting to find out about the proposed introduction of machines to check books in and out and to support the people wanting to keep the local history archives.
I don’t think the changes have been well reported so far and although I haven’t read the full report the language used is very off-putting.
I hope that the idea of introducing mobile phones is not part of it! In spite of some of the people’s best efforts I did get some reassurance about both subjects and certainly was persuaded of Cllr Rea’s passion for libraries.
I share that passion. If I hadn’t had a public library to go to when I was a child and teenager I would probably not have been at such a meeting. My education was very meagre and I started work before my 16th birthday because there was no expectation for me to to do otherwise.
I was an avid reader, though – still am – and certainly couldn’t afford to buy the number of books I was able to read. For more than 60 years I have been a member of the public library wherever I have found myself and I hope future generations have the same privilege.
Queen’s Crescent library is well used by people of all ages and cultures and the staff are friendly and helpful. I hope this is allowed to continue, machines or not.
Valerie Dunn
Weedington Road, NW5
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