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Don’t let our staff become a footnote in the archives
• THE recommendations to be made to Camden Council regarding the staff of the Local Studies and Archives Centre at Holborn have been published on the Internet.
They represent an improvement on the previous proposals in that one senior post is saved after numerous protests had been sent to Councillor Flick Rea and the Leader of the Council, Keith Moffitt.
However the new proposal is still that the person in charge of the Centre is replaced by an officer who has other responsibilities – namely the overall supervision of two branch libraries and of the information department.
This person will not necessarily have experience of Local Studies and it is likely that he or she will only devote, at the most, half time to Local Studies, thereby leaving the rest of the staff to do what he or she would have done. In effect the department loses the input of a qualified senior local history librarian who has years of experience in Camden.
There can be no other way of expressing this, for there is no guarantee at all that the present head of Local Studies, who is much respected in his profession and by the public, will be offered this multi-task post even if he wished to apply for it.
The question remains unanswered, why is the Council proposing this? They have what is regarded as the best Local Studies department in London, based on a staff at 1974 levels, but with a 500 per cent increase in visitors since that date. It is the only part of the library service that is actually receiving more visitors, which is the main objective of the Executive’s “Grow Your Library” report.
Why seek to reduce its qualified staff or working arrangements?
Cllr Rea has often expressed in both correspondence and at the ill-tempered meeting at Belsize Library recently, her commitment to Camden libraries. I believe her. She has a difficult role to play, for in local government libraries are a frequent target for saving money.
But it seems absurd that she should wish to diminish the standard of one of the best performing parts of her
cultural empire, especially by rewarding the loyalty of one of her long-serving qualified employees with shabby treatment.
There must surely be another way of encouraging the general public back into libraries without reducing the effectiveness of a department which is already successful in this.
I would urge borough councillors of all parties to oppose this proposal.
John Richardson
Chairman
Camden History Society
Service that should not be diminished
• I SAW letters in the New Journal about possible changes to Camden libraries (There’s no substitute for real thing with librarians, October 8) and hope that these do not prompt trimming of the service provided by Local Studies and Archives at Holborn Library.
Over the years I have used the Archives on several occasions: to research my dictionary, Artists in Britain since 1945; and more recently, while collating information for a book on the East London Group of artists, in which there was a strong Hampstead element.
What the Archives revealed about the latter could probably not have been located elsewhere, and I am sure that other researchers have found the Archives invaluable. The staff always put themselves out to track down often arcane information.
This type of expertise is not lightly to be diminished or disposed of.
David Buckman
Ufton Grove, N1
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