Library closures are a hot topic at the moment; on the whole I think they are a Bad Thing, and I don’t want my current local library, which I adore with a passion, to be hit. However, if it vanished, I could still afford books, if not so many and such a wide range. Cuts have to be made somewhere and I could, albeit very reluctantly, understand the argument if the library in my affluent part of London was scaled back.
Not so with the library in Hesters Way, Cheltenham, which I have just read is threatened with closure unless volunteers step in to run it. And frankly, that translates as ‘it will be closed’, because who seriously imagines that a concern as large as a local library can be effectively be run by volunteers, particularly in an area that is locally associated with crime and antisocial behaviour? Yes, there may well be some at first, but when they burn out because of the thankless exploitation …?
Cheltenham has a largely-deserved reputation for gentility, but any town has its sink estates. One of the folk etymologies for ‘chav’ is that the it comes from the term ‘Cheltenham average’, coined by the Cheltenham Ladies College girls to describe the inhabitants of Hesters Way. I grew up there; in an ex-council house on the fringe rather than in one of the grim central blocks, but life still centered on ‘The Top’, Coronation Square, where the shops and library are. Our house had one shelf of books in the living room, plus a few titles that my parents were able to buy for me – and the endless supply I brought home from Hesters Way. My parents wanted me to be educated but weren’t readers themselves; in the library I was able to range at will.
Without it, I would probably have got books somehow. There was and is Cheltenham Central Library, but I couldn’t have visited there every day if I wanted, as I did with Hesters Way. Would it be different if I was growing up now? Possibly, if I had access to the internet, as I probably would if I had those same parents who pushed me to learn. If I lived in a workless family in a council flat looking out over the barbed-wire car-park and the half-empty row of discount shops, though, I’m not so sure. The grimmest blocks I remember from the 80s have now been flattened and rebuilt as more appealing houses, but if you go out of your door around there, the only thing worth seeing is the library. It’s not pretty – while I was still living there an attempt was made to give it floor to ceiling windows, which just resulted, with depressing predictability, in repeated smashings and the eventual application of semi-permanent boards – but the option is always there to go inside, and find something better.
With this cut, Gloucestershire County Council are going straight for the poorest, very likely because they think it won’t lose them support among real, i.e. wealthy, people.
And now, time to go back to work, as I’m on my lunchbreak at Penguin and it's 2.05. And also time to calm down: the Designer sitting next to me has complained about me banging the desk with my elbows and making it shake!
As a child I lived in what Australians call "the bush". It was far from any library at all, let alone a public library. The thing that saved me and my brother was something called "The Country Lending Service". Put simply it was a central library in the city. You could sign up and they would send you four books (or, in my case, six!)and then more when you returned them. I do not know how my father worked it but he also managed to get a box for the little school each term and arranged it so that my brother and I did not have to wait between book deliveries. The books came with the weekly freight train that passed through at about 5:30 am in the morning. My brother and I would go down to meet the train - winter and summer and bring the books, my father's newspapers (a week's supply) and other essentials (such as food).
ReplyDeleteThose books meant everything to us. They no longer have that system and many children in rural areas still do not have internet access. I hate to think how they manage! The closure of any library or library service is to be fought - fiercely!
With this cut, Gloucestershire County Council are going straight for the poorest, because they think it won’t lose them support among real, i.e. wealthy, people. It’s as simple, and as sadly ubiquitous, as that.
ReplyDeleteI share that suspicion. But it's also possible that what they're doing is cutting a library which isn't used very much and which, from your description, probably soaks up a lot of money: repeatedly replacing all the windows, for example, is unlikely to be cheap. I expect that the benefit per pound spent is much higher for Cheltenham Central Library, and given that GCC have no option but to make cuts, it's hard to argue against that kind of calculation. And it's not as if the locals can't use the central library; maybe not every day, as you say, but while it might well be argued that any civilised society ought to provide access to libraries for all, it's rather harder to argue that everybody's entitled to a library right on the doorstep.
Also, enough charity shops run sucessfully with a volunteer staff and one paid manager; so it may not be out of the question that enough volunteers can be found, if GCC can fund one person to coordinate (probably working across several local libraries, since I doubt this is the only one threatened), and continue to cover the costs of the building and provide the books. If they're expecting some local philanthropist to pay for the next set of replacement windows then, yes, probably doomed.
catdownunder: The Country Lending Service sounds like a lifeline! I hope something similar is still running.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I think your argument might make the council look sensible *if* they were replacing the library with a 'better' (in the strictly utilitarian sense) use of money. These days I admittedly have little idea about how much HW Library is used, but the librarian says in a newspaper article that they get a lot of people who can't afford internet access at home, using the library to file job applications. There’s clearly an economic argument for enabling them to continue doing that. But I don’t see how it’s going to happen; provision for book-borrowing and internet use are both just going to evaporate.
Plus I suppose I do think libraries in remote or deprived areas should be specially protected, even if it doesn’t add up pound for pound. As I said at the start of the post, I could more readily accept cuts to my current local library, which is a central resource. As you’re anonymous I don’t know if you’re familiar with Hesters Way, but last time I visited there it looked much as it does now on Street View. I don’t suppose things have changed much since those pictures were taken, and f you start at the Princess Elizabeth Way end of Edinburgh Place and follow the parade of shops down to the library on Goldsmiths Road, you get a pretty good visual argument for why this community does not need one of its public buildings shutting down.
Still, I agree it’s not impossible your ‘one employee plus volunteers’ system could work – were the council not planning to close 11 libraries, across the county. It would take more than one co-ordinator to give all those even a fragment of the necessary attention.
Hesters Way library plays a major part in the community.
ReplyDeleteAnnoymous - I appreciate your comment that you think Gloucestershire are cutting a library that is little used but you are so wrong. how do I know? I am the manager of that library. It is used by a whole spectrum of people. Despite its location it does not constantly need its windows replacing. in fact, since I have been here there has been no incidents of criminal damage whatsoever. Yes, we do have anti-social behaviour and yes, we do have a security guard but then, so does Cheltenham main library. Take away the library from Hesters Way and you take away what is for many of the chldren there, their only hope of a better future.
Thanks for commenting here, Louise. The problem with the windows must have been about 20 years ago - I'm sorry I've brought it to public attention now, but I didn't originally anticipate this being more than a personal blog entry.
ReplyDeleteI wish you the best of luck in your fight to remain open. Do reuse my quotes any way you like; 'I grew up around there and the library made a real difference' is a powerful message, I think.