So war is declared.
Government spending cuts are going to affect libraries badly. Through closures and reduced opening hours and, as the Reading Agency’s Miranda McKearney fears in last week’s Bookseller, by seriously jeopardising library reader development with its effects on events, festivals, reader groups and all kinds of partnerships.
We were at Redbridge Libraries Big Red Read Awards on Friday. Painstaking work with readers and reader groups over a whole year ended with awards in various genres. It was an amazing evening and a tribute to the power of libraries. Even Oxygen Books, our small publishing company, in one month alone will have done two library book events (already one with a capacity audience), been selected for a great library promotion and been chosen as book of the month by five hundred library reader groups.
Libraries are amazing and we want to keep them like this for reasons both altruistic and self-interested. But libraries are also easier targets for cuts than hospitals or schools and we all need to stay incredibly vigilant.
Unfortunately libraries aren’t always their own best advocates: the MLA is masochistically happy to be scuttled and librarians can’t campaign or speak out directly for fear of their jobs. The unions will do all they can but will have so many other fights on their hands, plus the murky terrain of local government (where final decisions will be made) makes things even more complicated.
Publishers and their organisations have already issued national statements criticising possible meltdown. But the real work has to be done locally, wherever there is a library. Which is where, you writers come in.
There are thousands of writers in the UK and quite a few owe their success to being on a library shelf, doing a library event or being read by a library reading group. Now is the time for writers to start adopting their local library as never before: to write letters to their local councillors and paper, get on local radio, lead meetings. Use their powers of persuasion, which they should be good at, to let everyone know what a detrimental effect library changes and closures will have.
At the last count there were 8,900 libraries in the UK which on our reckoning means there should be at least ten writers to support each library. Let’s show the Government what the Big Society is really about as concerned individuals volunteer to act together to preserve these vital building blocks in our communities.
The process may need a bit of co-ordination which is where the Society of Authors, The Writers’ Guild and other representative bodies need to come in quickly. Find out from friendly librarians and public sector unions what is happening – don’t wait for news in the local media because by then it will be too late. Link up with other protest groups where these exist.and get local publishers involved too
Our professional futures depend on it – as does the civilized society that most of us still want.
