Librarian III: the one with the scary robot computer

Here is another of my ill-informed hot takes on Library news.





I don't get it.
Why would anyone support public library closures?

"Without the library, you have no civilisation" (Ray Bradbury). I truly believe that.

Surely, if public libraries had never been invented 2300 years ago as a good thing, then in 2016 we would be looking to create them as a good thing?

A public library service is a place for a community to get authoritative information, entertainment and other communication resources. It does this without judgment, without prejudice and without bias.

A public library service is the place to help with reading and information gathering skills, to expand intellectual horizons, to support hobbies, to facilitate research in everything from job interviews to caring for herbaceous plants, for local news and history, for government information, EU laws. It gives use of the internet, to fax machines, photocopiers and other service equipment.

A public library service, crucially, has professionally trained staff in information and library management to enhance the resources, research skillset and education potential of any public library user. They improve the access to answers without agenda or commission.

A public library service does all this in a period of time where there is more information and platforms to find it than at any other point on this planet.

And public libraries exist under absolute equality for anyone for free at point of enquiry.

What person in their right mind would look at a library service and go "Nope, not on my watch!"

Increasingly libraries and librarians are being replaced by something else. Something less. School librarians are under threat from boards who see it as an administrative role, law libraries are being broken up for more office space, and even more "volunteer" public libraries are being spoken of as replacements for the public libraries in the future. If that future was set in a Midsommers Murder episode involving a church congregation.

The BBC came late to the Wake with their report of 1/4 English library losses last week. Scotland seems rather more robust in maintaining a public library service, given they are less impacted with UK government budgets set, but they are not immune and have faced cuts and closures also and threats of more to come.

And this is what this blog post will focus on: public libraries.

I mean, I can understand if a politician makes the argument that, in a time of budgetary crisis... hard choices... regrettable forced hand... this is something I will disagree with, but will understand to debate against.

But to be actively against libraries? What sort of odd-ball argument is that?

When people protest against this removal of the library service to replace it with a private gym, in what Twilight Zone are we trapped that a local councillor condemns the protestors for being too privileged?

What weirdo does that?

Bet he's proud of that political scoring against the...
oh wait *he's* the councillor happy to turn a public library into a private gym?

How someone put in trust of public services can actively take the side of the private gym over people wanting to save the library service seems perverse to me.

And so it goes on: Jane Edbrooke talking on the same protest reached a strange low by arguing a link between wanting to have a library service at the expense of domestic abuse centres.

When Nick Pool of CILIP says in defence of libraries:

"[A library] doesn’t just mean a room with books. It means getting people the information they need, when they need it. Information to help them build a business, find things to read, do their homework, access healthcare information or participate in their community."

But politician, Jane Edbrooke says in defence of libraries:

“For me [a library's] whether there are people there who welcome you to a building, answer your queries and that there’s a well stocked book service."

We clearly have a problem.

A problem like it's something out of, I don't know, fucking... The Bladerunner. Who are the real information professionals who know what a library is? We need a test to find out.

"How do you feel seeing a turtle on it's back in the midday sun?"
"Do you think the internet contains less information when the internet is inside a library?"

Not even joking:

Credit: Ian Clark

Actually, Jane and Matthew Bennett will be delighted at the recent news people are welcoming users to a library building. Specifically, bouncers. Edinburgh Central Library is employing bouncers to help with security to deal with the library being used by people who are mainly on the fortified wine rather than the merlots of those pesky protestors.

When a councillor says of reappointing a library to become a private gym:

"The building will re-open to the public, for longer hours, in early 2017 and will have a neighbourhood library service, health and fitness facilities and space for community groups to use... Lambeth council has worked incredibly hard to minimise the impact of the cuts on Lambeth libraries"

It is beyond me to think it possible to argue that library is improved when the professional staff are removed, the resources reduced and the main thing in the library is a private gym. To have libraries placed in the Leisure budget for councils.

For some reason completely incomprehensible to me, the people who are closing public libraries try to justify it:

• The internet has provided access to information to everyone.
• Books are more available.
• Only 1 in 5 have borrowed a library book in the past year.
• Volunteers are just as good as professional librarians.
• Some volunteer libraries are successful.

For information professionals these arguments are as sensible as:

• The internet is everywhere and some of it even goes in our mouths when we sleep.
• Kindles grow on trees
• Only 1 in 3 die from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
• An MSc in Information Studies is months and months of learning the alphabet really well
• The amateur football down the park sometimes has terrible refereeing

The truth is:

• The internet is not a panacea where everyone has access or has the training to use it safely
• Books are luxuries.
• Library usage is very subjective. Borrowing does not equal usage. Membership does not equal impact. And 1 in 5 of the population, is a rather large number.
• Information Professionals are expert in efficient information provision, management, negotiation and a plethora of skills combined within a network of other information professionals
• Volunteer libraries are not ever a success story. They indicate failures. Volunteers don't want to be running a library. They are doing it because they see themselves as a last solution to a need for the service which the powers at be are choosing to let slide. And the volunteer libraries are not as good as professionally staffed libraries.

I'd feel better if those making the decisions didn't try and justify it and said:
"It's for money, basically. The decision is already made to reduce it's size, staffing and budget. And then with less library users and staff to protest, it will be easier to have it completely gone by 2019, saving us more money. If we can replace it with something we can actually charge people for, so much the better. "

But that's only because I am coming to terms with having no councillor saying:
"Me approving the cutting out of library services is awful - horrendous - it will be a scar on our cultural landscape as we enter a future without free, objective and protected information provision for all. A future where we rely on businesses to hand feed us their services until they decide to remove them or change them or refuse them or simply stop caring about them because they have enough information about us in return or we are not paying enough, and so commit us into a dark age where only the monarchy and monks can control information dissemination. Unless you like Fifty Shades a lot, then you'll be A-OK."

But even the economic argument is wrong. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland has published an excellent summary Manifesto for Libraries showing money to libraries is an investment: £1 = £8 of national benefits.

In previous posts I've given my opinion on why Google isn't good enough to replace a librarian, and why a reconstituted telephone box of books isn't good enough to call a library.

But the situation is caused by exactly this thinking.

And still it comes back to books. People argue that you can get a book on Amazon Kindle for 1p. It won't be probably anywhere near being a good book - barely readable - and a book for a Kindle requires a Kindle and rolling service provider, and electricity: but 1p.

If 1p going to Amazon to tax orbit it away and store your reading habits into its algorithm isn't your bag, why not go to a charity shop, some argue. Books are still cheap and you are helping a charity. Which is great if you want to enter a pick an mix of BDSM fiction and 5 year old Guinness Book of Records annuals.

What if you don't want a second (shudder) hand copy of Fifty Shades of Grey from Oxfam?

What if you want a book that you don't need to access via a screen and search?

What if you want the book you want, for free?

The fact is, why it comes back to books is because public libraries are seen by councillors as a place for the very old, the very young and the very unemployed. Which is no bad thing, but libraries should be about so much more than leisure, shelter and a time for rhyme-time time.

And that's where they are going wrong with their thinking. Public libraries are there for everyone. The question is: why is the perception that they are not?

How have public libraries (and libraries in general) become thought of obsolete to all but the few when information is now more volatile than ever before?




A common accusation is that the internet has killed the librarian. Whereas librarians and libraries are better equipped to use tools of the digital than most private and government offices. But how to convince people that there is almost nothing else libraries can do to be more cutting edge? I'm at a loss.

We need to sea-change the belief that librarians are dusty, timid, fussy book shelvers which the stereotype suggests they are. They do not shush people under stares through spectacles at the end of noses.

Perhaps there is a need to tweak the message of Librarianship and the valued significance of public libraries to tell people how relevant librarians still are.

Might I suggest a new origins story (they are so hot right now) and a reimagining of an old, darker, professional name:

Queue heavy rain, it is night in the city and a black cat scowls before diving for cover under a great granite pillar of the Public Library:

It began when librarians embraced CD-ROMs as the future of libraries in 1994 as a way of countering those who claimed librarians were old fashioned and uncool. In a merciless attempt at providing well catalogued, authoritative and ethically delivered electronic information to everyone, it was only a matter of time before they used top cybernetics to install 33.6k modems in themselves.

That time was 2008.

Physically linking into the internet, they realised that if they were to maintain logical and consistent access points and search terms then they must remove the one variable in preventing this: Non-library trained mankind hell-bent on using Google on the Simple Search screen.

They became: Cybrarians.

At first, Cybrarians were crude and easily spotted. Because they were basically wooden index card cabinets on coasters, with a couple of pincers on the end. Quickly they adapted and evolved to look more and more human. Only their strange penchants for tweed-wear and spectacle safety chains on their Ray-Bans give them away in this dystopian 2016 future we now live in.

Cybrarians can't be bargained with. Cybrarians don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. Cybraians will never have their hair bun out of place. And Cybrarians absolutely will not stop, ever… in delivering digital literacy. Yep, they are the most uncool, coolest robots in the Galaxy.
~~~~

Or maybe not. Sure, CILIP and other interested groups in the sector had become complacent (and there is another blog to be wrote around that) until recently as to the value and worth of the profession, preferring to accept rather than own their lot in life, but still...

Maybe we need to reframe the problem to one of asking why anyone would want to support library closures and remove professional library services? What makes someone take a stance to mock and troll information professionals fighting for the services to be the best they can be. Ask them to admit to themselves what it is they are supporting in their place. Get an answer to the question:

How on earth did it come to you falling out of love with Librarians?