Following up on my blog post last January, today I met with my local Conservative MP, Anna Soubry, to discuss public libraries. While the library cuts in Nottinghamshire have long ago been enshrined in policy, I still felt it was worth meeting with her to discuss public libraries in general, and the wider national picture. Here’s some of what we discussed:
Our local situation
Nottinghamshire have cut opening hours at many branches, and generally we were in agreement that their approach to cuts were not particularly strategic, and their solutions not particularly imaginative; i.e. reducing opening hours and cutting book budgets, rather than thinking about how best to serve their communities and looking at alternative revenue sources. MPs can only make recommendations to councils, but it’s good that she would encourage ours to take a different tack.
Changes to library services
As a trained lawyer, Anna was keen that volunteers did not replace professionals, so we were generally on the same page here. I also made her aware of some of the issues around charging for library services, and the (profession-wide) suspicion that charging for internet access or non-paper books (both have happened in local authorities) set a dangerous precedent which might eventually lead to charging for e-books, if not traditional book loans.
The national situation
Anna was quite interested in The modernisation review of public libraries, which I’ve found immensely informative. She did offer to raise a question about what happened to this report in parliament, but as Ed Vaizey seems to have ruled out implementing any of the ideas in the report, I suspect that there’s little that can be done. It’s a shame, because many of the recommendations in the report are small, but only seem implementable at a national scale.
As the Nottinghamshire Public Libraries service is not one where intervention on the grounds of the statutory duty seems appropriate, there’s not a huge amount to be done at this stage (apparently MPs are expected to only raise questions about issues that affect their own constituency) but it’s good to have made contact and raised awareness of the issues we’re facing, and I’d encourage others to do the same with their MP. I’ve urged Anna to get in touch with me if she has any questions, or would like further information on libraries in general, so I’m hoping there’ll be some follow-up.
