Library closures

[neepsntatties]

Hello, I don't post much here due to not knowing enough but I read the posts everyday in the hope some wisdom will rub off onto me! I am thinking about libraries at the moment for a piece of work I need to do and I am wondering if you think there is a feminist angle on the way they are being cut/closed. I wondered about the job losses and the loss of access and if it impacts women in a particular way?

Most of the public sector jobs losses will be female. I'ld wager that over half of the library assistants at the desk. Also safe private internet access may be an issue for some. And of course it's a loss of a free safe warm and educational space that mothers can take young children. As women disproportionately are responsible for health/educational issues affecting their family, being cut off from this source of information will affect them (library as first point of info re:local support groups/advice lines etc)

I also wonder if there is something about patterns of library usage that impact more on women than on men. Libraries also offer important services and sources of information for families with children, which will impact on all parents and carers. However, the majority of primary parents and carers are women, so cuts in services would potentially impact on them disproportionately.

Oh yes totally. Cuts against libraries, along with most of them, disproportionately affect women and children. Other have said the specifics. I know feminists campaigning against it.

I used the library when I was a child

Then not at all, until I had children, and now I am there once a week

I suspect once I stop taking the children it will be when I am old!

While children are seen as women's "job" in our society, then closing libraries which will adversely affect stacks of children is a women's issue. But actually I think this is an issue for society as a whole - the people affected most will be children, the elderly, and people who are less well off. It's a political issue foremost for me I think.

Thanks, we've been lucky that our library is staying although hours are reduced. I find the whole thing really sad, they are important places for so many people.

I think it's too simplistic to try to correlate library services as being 'for women and children'. Almost everyone has access to the internet these days and that is now the first stop for most people - any gender. We are far less reliant on books as a format either for information or entertainment than we were in the heyday of the library. Look at the way music retailers are closing now that we can download music.... why, with the advent of e-readers and places like Amazon selling paperbacks for 1p, wouldn't traditional sources of books go the same way?

Bigger libraries are staying open, have a better range of products, can diversify, and are useful if there's something you need to read that can't be accessed online. Unlike the smaller branches, they also tend to have opening hours that fit around the working day.

Libraries aren't just about books. I'd say that's the overly simplistic view .

Cogito the first stop for pre-schoolers is not the internet or an ereader.

I have one who has just started school and a smaller one, and we use the library. I think that is quite normal - around here anyway. We sometimes print off a picture from a website for them to colour in, and the older one plays teh occasional game on cbeebies website, but that;s about as far as it goes for them and computers. I imagine that this is the reason that all teh libraries I have been in have had a disproportionately large area dedicated to younger children, with teeny little chairs and all the rest of it. I don't know how old your children are but surely you understand that? I take my children to the library and it's the same as when my parents took me - young children have board books and pop up books and textures and things that is simply not the same when viewed on a screen. I'm also not sure if trying to look at books on a screen would encourage reading in the same way as looking at real books.

I was taken to libraries as a kid in the seventies but I remember them being pretty empty places, even then. I never took my own child - small or otherwise - to a library because our local branch shuts at 5 and is therefore not a useful service for me. My DS has, however, had access to lots of books either new or secondhand, passed on from friends or given as gifts. He used the school library for reading material once he got there, and enjoys reading as much as anyone.

I didn't say that small children should start with e-readers. I'm saying that if the core purpose of a library is to provide access to the written word for information or entertainment, and if there are alternative or more convenient ways to access the same thing, why are we surprised when the demand for libraries diminishes?

" I never took my own child - small or otherwise - to a library because our local branch shuts at 5 and is therefore not a useful service for me"

How is this situation going to improve by closing a lot of smaller local libraries that people can pop into in their locality?

Access to lots of books new or secondhand? I really think that having everyone in the country buy all this stuff when it could be shared and borrowed via a library setting is a bad idea for a host of different reasons.

I think that if you look at the groups who actually use libraries - people with small children, the elderly and people on low incomes, the argument that we can all just buy all the books or look at computers really goes off the rails.