To think its shit that local library is only open 3.5 "days" a week

[livingintheNL]

Closed on Wednesdays (grrr) and closes at 2PM on Friday.

Even the days its open (mon, tue, thur), these are 10-12 and 2-6pm. Its all just a bit useless imo.

Books are certainly not available at our local charity shop for pennies. You will pay £2 for a very ordinary book, and more for a rarer one. That is unaffordable to many who read a lot.

Definitely running a bit late for this thread now, but anyone seriously interested in whether libraries are still useful might want to take a look at www.publiclibrariesnews.com/reasons-for/myth-busting which derails the 'books are cheap and it's all on the internet' argument.

Further to my economic points (limited due to limited expertise ) people might also be interested to know that publishers have long known that libraries support the books and publishing industry, and here is a story about how some publishers feel their sector is declining as a result of libraries' decline. Libraries actually present a very good picture of how the public and private sectors work together, and therefore why austerity economics will fail every time. www.thebookseller.com/news/publishers-should-partner-libraries-321273

We really all need to be persecuting MPs about this. Nothing realistically will be done unless and until the government perceives that it will harm them at the polling booths.

I think this is such a shame; Curlyhairedassasin way back in the thread certainly had a point. I was a bright kid from a poor background and whiled away my childhood and teenage years reading in the library. I always thought of it as a safe and secure place where I could escape to. Unlike clubs etc. you don't really have to talk to anyone you're perfectly entitled to just go and be in the warmth and sit down and no one bothers you. It was bliss tbh.

Ours is open 5 half days, though 2 of those run into early evening.

Much better than if it had closed, given that we're in a village.

I am also grateful that our council didn't outsource, like this one
www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/charity-behind-northumberlands-leisure-centres-10821436

*I used to visit my local library for academic and work research. I never do that now because I use the internet - the new global library accessible to rich & poor almost everywhere.8

Aye. The thing is, a lot of people round here still have to go to the library to access the Internet. Not everyone has iPhones with huge contracts and, being in a village, we don't enjoy the dirt cheap broadband deals that our townie neighbours can access.

Okay, my family and I am heavily involved in local and national politics. My DM and DH are both local councillors (of different parties).

In our borough, the problem is that very few people use our small branch libraries these days -- the whole landscape of people's lives no longer facilitates trips to a small local library. Attempts to strengthen the value of these libraries by, say, moving other government operations and activities into the buildings, which I believe is the best way to save these resources, is met with an incredible level of resistance (which infuriates me no end).

Ours suffer from a cost/benefit negative, and are thus an easy target for expenditure cuts. You are looking at a minimum spend of £40K per year for running costs for a small portacabin-size library and one librarian on 0.5 fte with cover on 0.25. This is not really sustainable when only twenty people use the service every week.

And just to add ... the impact of the banking crisis and the ensuing credit crunch upon British public finances was that tax receipts shrank by £200 billion -- this is what created the operational deficit (difference between tax receipts and public expenditure).

It's not that government spent money that it would have otherwise spent on services on bailing out the banks, but that the financial climate post-banking crisis arrested the inflationary forces that were flooding the UK economy and filtering into tax receipts. Said tax receipts crashed by £200 billion, and could no longer cover public operational liabilities.

Anyone that tells you different either doesn't know what they are talking about, or has an agenda.

Aside from the fact not everyone has a computer/ Internet/ printer at home, you also have access to academic material that is subscription based and very expensive for a lower income household. You also have more choice than in a charity shop as you often don't get much beyond romance and suspense books.

Some of you may be interested in the My Library By Right campaign being organised by CILIP (professional body for librarians) - see www.cilip.org.uk/advocacy-campaigns-awards/advocacy-campaigns/my-library-right for information and link to a Change.org petition "HM Government: act now to protect my statutory rights to a quality public library service" currently with over 12,000 signatures but the more the better. Also it's National Library Day this Sat 6th Feb!

"Anyone that tells you different either doesn't know what they are talking about, or has an agenda."

I think you're being a tad disingenuous there Werks. Anyone with an interest in anything political has opinions, some kind of vision of what they would like to see in the future, and therefore what you would call, in tones suited to cloak and dagger, an agenda. Don't try to pretend that you don't and only those who disagree with your opinion do.

As a librarian my "agenda" is to enable all people, rich or poor - possibly more the poor to be honest - to get the information they need to improve their lives, and politically my interest lies in improving the lives of the poorest and creating a more just and equal society within sustainable environmental bounds. What's yours? It sounds like you're fully bought into the idea that there is no alternative to austerity.

We all know (or should) that the tax take has fallen. It has fallen for various reasons: among them low wages, no wages, tax cuts for the rich, outright illegal tax evasion, and most worryingly the fully legal avoidance of tax practised by the most profitable multi-national companies, e.g. the 5 large banks that paid no tax in 2014 (BBC report). There are things that we could be doing about that, such as a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions, or as Lord Lawson has said, scrapping Corporation tax in favour of a tax on sales (Telegraph report). Britain is not a poor country. We could try to solve this problem and rebuild public services, rebuild local economies with them, stop the rise in inequality in Britain and begin to reverse it. We could, and we should at least try. Austerity won't do it.

I'm not surprised portacabin-size libraries are not being used (I will be surprised if you genuinely have a librarian in charge of each one, as opposed to a lower paid alternative). The larger libraries are, the more resources they have, the more they get used. I don't have anything against the idea of creating multipurpose centres though, as long as they are resourced (space, materials and staff) adequately.

We all know (or should) that the tax take has fallen. It has fallen for various reasons: among them low wages, no wages, tax cuts for the rich, outright illegal tax evasion, and most worryingly the fully legal avoidance of tax practised by the most profitable multi-national companies, e.g. the 5 large banks that paid no tax in 2014 (BBC report).

The operational deficit since 2008 was caused by tax receipts falling by £200 billion due to the credit crunch. This was the primary cause of the deficit. This is fact, not an opinion.

Anyone that tries to say the operational deficit is anything to do with the government "bailing out banks" is lying or has read something written by someone who hasn't a clue. It is as simple as that.

A Robin Hood tax will not work. Do you honestly think that government tax and finance specialists on £40k a year at the FSA can out-think and outwork billionaire financiers with teams of expensive lawyers and financial analysts with Oxbridge Maths PhDs on speed dial? Wake up, for crying out loud! That's why the FSA got caught out by the banking crisis in the first place!

And scrapping corporation tax for a sales tax? We already have VAT. Do you want to load more tax onto everyday consumers?

You say "we should try to solve this problem". Well, my family and I are the people who ARE TRYING TO SOLVE THE FUCKING PROBLEM at local level, and have to put up with people who have no bloody idea about the reality of delivery, the idiocy inherent in local and national governmental structures, and the reality of British public finance.

Well, let me give you an insight. A couple of the wealthiest people in Britain are the Hinduja brothers with an estimated total wealth of £11 billion. If you seized this wealth, French revolution style, it would pay for the law and order budget in Britain for a year. And that's it.

And no ... I do not think Britain is a rich country. What we are is a bankrupt country with a Monaco-style city-state for a capital. If we had gone into the euro when the bien pensants wanted us to, we would currently be in the same economic situation as Greece.

Sorry, Bungo, I shouldn't have got so overheated about this subject and I apologise for swearing.

It's just that I fear, deeply, that if workable and practical financial solutions are not found, we are going to lose pretty much everything we now take for granted in terms of public services.

Nobody is being realistic about the situation. Nobody is being honest. The left pump out dross about tax evasion and avoidance that is significantly different from HMRC figures, and states no references to data sources where you might check the validity of their statements; the right doesn't really give much of a shit.

Most MPs have no idea of the scale of the problem and confuse the national debt with the deficit; newspapers tell people a load of old bumpf; "austerity" cuts are imposed on the wrong departments in the wrong areas ...

It is incredibly frustrating and totally tragic.

See, where I grew up, our library was only open 2.5 days a week: Mondays and Fridays 10-1 and 2-7 and Wednesdays 10-1 (that was in the 70s and 80).

Where many of you are complaining about the reduction of hours and it all being due to austerity and cuts - which may well be true - seems to me in many cases you are coming into line with what our libraries have ALWAYS been like.

"Most MPs have no idea of the scale of the problem". No, witness bloody Cameron's letters to Oxfordshire County Council.

I don't mind swearing. The situation is dire. Government needs to get a grip, or frankly - I get the piss taken out of me for this - I think we're looking at the collapse of this age of civilisation, and god help us all then. The whole country has been asset-stripped for the benefit of a rich elite. We need to rebuild from the bottom up, somehow.

I would also say, local councils urgently need to start informing MPs of just what the state of play is. Start screaming at the media, local and national. Bombard the Commons with letters like Oxfordshire's. Make up newssheets to deliver to all local homes showing the scale of cuts. Wasn't there a Council of Local Councils at one time? Get the word out there. Somehow!

I love libraries, adore libraries. At university I was rarely anywhere else.

That said, my local library is a bit shit to be honest. It's mostly CDs and DVDs now, and it's great if you want a public copy of 50 Shades (no, thank you), z-list celebrity biographies, or cheap paperbacks about alien encounters and conspiracy theories. But it has very few good books or useful books. I got a card again last year hoping it might have improved - it hasn't.

It's been a bit shit for the last 16 years, so I don't think it's a result of recent cuts. The library I grew up with in another town was absolutely brilliant :)

If you are against cuts and closures for public libraries, go to change.org. Search for and sign the national petition "My Library By Right "
Public libraries are amazing for picture books, trying and discovering new authors, homework help; recipe books, healthcare books; self help... Parenting....local info on clubs and activities ....occasionally, when I have time, magazines or a good novel for me etc etc etc