Libraries

Editorial What a week. In seven days that will likely remain in everyone’s memory for life, it started with chief librarians – and frontline staff – arguing vociferously for councils to shut down library services. Boris freaking Johnson then went on television and officially closed the sector for the duration. Whoa. Then everyone had to…

It took too long and there was a lot of avoidable drama the last few days but the Prime Minister has finally done what is necessary, effectively closing the country except for essentials. He specifically mentioned public libraries in his speech. By that time though, 95% of library services had already decided to close. So…

Editorial There’s never been a week like this before in our lives. I count 171 library services in the UK now fully closed, with many of those remaining open running a reduced service to varying degrees of severity. There are very few left who are aiming to keep all libraries open. I estimate at least…

Please note a list of UK public library responses to the emergency can be found here. Editorial In a statement that would be have been undreamt of mere days ago, Libraries Connected is calling on the British Government to close all public libraries. The statement reads in part that “in light of the recent escalation…

Editorial Well, it’s been a surreal week. The news has got worse and worse. As I write this, country after country is closing its borders. Spain is telling its citizens to stay inside and they’re using drones to do it. Austria has just announced it is banning gatherings of more than five people. Meanwhile, the…

So, unless there’s a centenarian reading this (if so, hi there!) none of us have lived through a time similar to what we have now with Coronavirus. So far, the library response can be summed up as searching for hand gel supplies. putting up notices and waiting for government and councils to tell them what…

Editorial The CILIP/Big Issue petition to boost public libraries prior to Budget Day barely managed seven thousand signatures, far fewer than the membership just of CILIP itself. There are several reasons for this including there being no huge coverage of it and, connected to this, no actual energising major crises at the moment outside of…

Editorial CILIP has got in trouble over the last few days due to an article it published on Dominic Cummings and his views on libraries. To be honest, I did not really take much note of it myself other than thinking it was a quite interesting piece on the viewpoint of a very important advisor.…

Editorial Another week of, on aggregate, good news for libraries. The biggest of these is Bradford, that has gone from wanting to, basically, strip its library service to, rather, keep it all open but with more co-locations and other services coming in. The last decade has been very much a period of co-locationing libraries with…

Editorial It’s no surprise when a government spokesman says how they’re big believers and funders in libraries. Any government is accomplished at massaging the truth and the person in question may even have believed it. The line about wanting libraries to “thrive” is directly out of the Ed Vaizey playbook, circa 2012, and the bias…