would you volunteer to keep your library open?

[carriedababi]

?

The point made earlier about ebooks being so much more expensive for libraries to buy, highlights why this is all such nonsense. Unpaid work is completely incompatible with late Capitalism, which is about the commodification of all relationships. There is no way to get more out of people than is already being got - everyone is already squeezed to the hilt for someone's profit somewhere. The idea that a publisher would make an ebook available to many readers for the same price as they would to one, is as ridiculous as the idea that someone who is paying a hardly bearable maximum for everything that they need - housing, childcare, transport - has any resources left over to volunteer.
If my landlord didn't mind what rent I paid maybe I wouldn't mind so much whether I was being paid for my time. If my train fares hadn't gone up 10% while my salary has gone up 0%, maybe I would have time to do things for free on a reliable, regular basis.

I'm afraid I can barely take care of my family and friends. I feel guilty about not having made it over to see someone who's housebound with a bad infection this week. I feel guilty that I see my daughter for about an hour a day on week days. If I hadn't known that the friend's mum had been able to pop in I would have made time. But I don't have a regular hour a week to visit sick people, run libraries, be on the council or anything else. I feel bad about this not just for the sake of those to whom I should be giving more, but for me, who would benefit from having a more varied life and closer links with my community. But the Tories - the ultimate proponents of the Market - have created, deliberately, ideologically, a world where nothing is free. Nothing.

At the risk of rousing someone's ire, I haven't read the whole thread. :) But yes, I would, and actually plan on going to do just that. We use it all the time, and they can have it when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. So to speak.

As long as it's not taking someone's job to do so. We're going through a lot of drama about stuff like this in Minnesota right now, because the governor is calling for more volunteerism and (gasp gasp gasp) fair share taxes for the wealthiest 5% of the state. People keep talking about all the things they want to be done, but they're not willing to actually do any of it. Well, suck it up. Life's going to be tough for awhile, and everyone's going to have to pitch in unless they want it to get worse.

No, I dont have skills and i dont have the time. I would also feel a bit scabish in that i was facilitating the government firing people from important jobs - bastards

whilst I don't really want to part of Cameron's big society, libraries are such as vital part of the community and our children's education, that I would want to do something. closing public libraries is completely non-sensical in an information society when the gap between information rich and poor is growing- but libraries need to get with the times. they need to demonstrate their impact (it's not about a few books coming in and out)- it's about empowering people to find the information they need in whatever format to enrich or just live their lives. my public library could be a brilliant and vibrant place (unfortunately it's rather dead most days). If it closes (which it probably will) I might try to persuade starbucks or costa to open up in there and let us run a community library as part of it...

County Music services are being cut.

Will music teachers etc volunteer to teach children to learn an instrument?

I have had a letter this afternoon explaining that costs of lessons will rise and that the county music services needs to be self funding - so great if people could volunteer to teach and save costs on wages just the same as in the libraries

[its never bl**ding right]

I'll volunteer to teach for free when:

a) our elected representatives do their jobs for free.
b) my childcare and travel costs are all met.
c) I have a rock solid assurance that some sort of decent pension will be provided for me in my dotage.
d) legal aid, free healthcare and dentistry are universally available and I can benefit fully from that.
e) people donate what I need to live on foodwise and so on.
f) the state provides me with housing.

Until then, I am charging. Otherwise I would be a total mug.

Public libraries will be already run on a bare bones budget anyway. There will be plenty of library tasks that are not getting done as regularly as they should because they already don't have enough staff. The staff already there will be already doing the most essential tasks.

To save money I would rather see a reduction in the opening hours of bigger libraries, and maybe closure of very underused rural libraries (to be then covered by a mobile library service) than for staff to be made redundant and then replaced with volunteers.

I also think it's feasible to charge a small borrowing fee per book, eg. 10p and to allow people on benefits or low incomes to borrow for free.

It's all very complicated when you start thinking of ways to save money in libraries. Cutting the budget for new books would be bad news. You'd be eventually left with a load of shitty old tatty outdated books, which would put users off bothering to go, and then managers would use decreasing usage figures as an excuse to shut it down altogether.

I'm a qualified librarian (but now working as a part-time library assistant in a school.) There are no librarians jobs being advertised these days, so there'll be no new young people being attracted to the profession. In a few years' time, I really wonder just what sort of people will be staffing our public libraries, I really do.

To think that public libraries were set up so as to create more social equality and social mobility......and now they might be taken away from us. It doesn't bear thinking about.

I should imagine that this ideological, lunatic government are completely aware of the socialist principles behind libraries. Another reason to get rid of them.

No. There's no way I have the skills or training to replace the lovely, wonderful librarians at my local library.

I would if it comes to that, except that it won't, because it can't, because it'll take more than a motley, inexperienced group of volunteers to keep a library going to an acceptable standard.

We are about to lose both our local village libraries. One of them is one we go to once or twice a week. DS1 loves the librarians who work there and it's part of his life. When it does close, he won't stop reading, because we have plenty of books, but something special will be lost. He'll stop having a share in important communal property, learning to respect something that belongs to everyone, and meeting friends somewhere neutral and welcoming.

The local parish meeting the other week was a bit dispiriting. Almost everyone there volunteered to be put on a rota list 'to keep the library open'. The librarians were hoping that instead of just accepting the cuts, the local supporters would say 'let's protest, let's just refuse to let this happen here'. But they got a long list of potential volunteers instead. And the sad thing is, however well-meaning that was, it'll come to nothing. We can't afford to keep the building running. The council could put 4 houses and gardens on that plot, and land is expensive here.

The pot of money that we're being invited to bid for (at the expense of other village communities, it's horribly divisive) is too small, after being split between dozens of local community interests, to keep the place going either. So then what? Basically, the 'business plan' (since when were libraries businesses? The 1930's, maybe?) that has to be submitted will have to entail making a profit from the library. Charging for loans and services. And that's something I'm not prepared to be part of. Libraries are for everyone. Paying for the service at point of delivery isn't what they're for.

Yes I would definitely volunteer.

Biscuitscoco - in response to your post about librarians having the right quals - I was sounding off about this to our well-loved library staff in the local library I've mentioned above, and saying how offensive I thought it was to qualified librarians who had university degrees, to suggest that us lot would do as good a job.

And my friend replied 'Oh no, none of us have degrees! We applied for the job and we run this library but none of us have degrees in librarianship.' Apparently there are only a couple of dozen librarians with university qualifications in the entire county and they've been at the sharp end of cuts for ages, because they cost too much to employ. Hardly any of them have their 'own' library - they are bussed about and manage several libraries remotely. And over half of them are to lose their jobs in this round of cuts.

As far as I'm concerned though, the staff at places like our local library ARE qualified as librarians. They've been doing a job they love (for peanuts - no quals, remember?) for years and are very well experienced in it. So my contention that it's offensive to suggest that we could take their jobs over still stands.

God this all makes me so angry. Fucking asset-strippers.

Fanny tell me first, what are all the other ways in which people can improve their literacy for free?
And second, where is the library that only lends four books a week? And is that an average of every week, or the worst week?

The quote from the poster who said 'something special would be lost'- absolutely. Libraries are something special. For a wide range of reasons.

Oh and on school libraries- in many places the schools' library service has been done away with too.

No. People should be trained and paid to work in libraries. Obviously.

NO, not prepared to allow this Government to undermine the right to paid employment.

Kicking and screaming I still won't, when it means someone who has studied for three years on a degree will lose their means of making a living.

Have the save view as xstitch

Maddy68 - school libraries are woeful - ours buys the minimum of new books and then only from the very limited stock offered by the various book fairs. And I hear that schools no longer have to have a library.
What if you home educate?
What about older people who have nowhere else to access large print books? Or talking books for free if they're visually impaired? And who might just want to read lots of books?
(Slight ageist tone to this thread I notice - older people seen as anti-children, homophobic, racist and incompetent. But I digress.)

Everyone who has said 'yes', do you already volunteer for equally important causes?

NO absolutely NOT I would never volunteer to replace skilled trained staff who were thus redundant

If libraries close it IS awful - but that is something this government has to stand by - we shouldn;t cover their tracks for them and we should help them make peoples redundant

Absolutely not - this 'Big society' idea sucks.

The reason why Cameron and his millionaire cronies don't care about the closure of public libraries and swimming pools is because they can afford to buy all the books their hearts desire and their own personal swimming pool(s) if they so wished.

The rest of us in the real world are not quite so fortunate...

Ok, so the country is in huge debt, but where is the fairness in making the hard working poor and middle-income families pay for the fuck-ups of others?

There are other ways of raising money - how about increasing the tax of the super rich (yes, that's you Cameron & Co)? How about clamping down on tax avoidance (Yes, Philip 'Top Shop' Green, that's you too)?

Pleased to see there is lots of anger out there about public spending cuts (and in particular about the libraries) but whinging is not enough to get the Con Dems to change their minds. Where's the action? Soon it'll be too late...

P.s. I use my library loads: It saved my sanity whilst the kids were babes & toddlers. Now my kids can indulge their love of reading for free - something I couldn't afford to do if had to purchase books.

P.p.s I currently volunteer around four hours a week in school. However, increases in living costs mean that I can no longer afford to be so generous with my time so will have to give it up. I'll call Tory boy Cameron and see if he can help out at the school instead ;)

I really wanted to work in a library and would have loved to volunteer in one when I had time and if I wasn't being a replacement for a paid member of staff who needs to earn to keep a roof over her/his and family's head.

In the present context, no way. On principle.