UK libraries will start to reopen from 4 July. But anyone hoping to pop in and browse the bookshelves, take their child to rhymetime or spend a couple of hours using the computers is going to be disappointed.

“We have the capacity for 20 people at a time,” says Rachel Braithwaite, project development manager at the Archibald Corbett Library in south London, which will, unlike many other libraries, be opening its doors from 4 July and restarting at least some former activities. “There will be a space marshall and hand sanitiser at the door. Everyone feels differently. People who would be worried won’t come. But personally I’m looking forward to it.”

Returned books will be put into crates and quarantined for 72 hours. As for browsing, there may be a system whereby any books that have been touched and not borrowed have to go into quarantine; it’s still to be decided. But the system to check books out is in place: librarians will be behind perspex screens, through which library cards can be scanned.

During lockdown online library services have been booming, but it’s also important, says Braithwaite, to offer more than online services. For the past three weeks, the library has provided a click and collect service – and only one book order has so far been put in. “A lot of our customers are people without access to computers. If we do things like click and collect, or online activities, that won’t reach them,” she explains. “We want people to come in and get books.”

Libraries are struggling because they are “trying to do too much” by becoming community centres that offer yoga classes and iPads rather than focusing on books, the former managing director of Waterstones has said.

Tim Coates criticised the “hopeless” direction libraries in the UK have taken over the past 20 years, attributing their declining use to the industry’s obsession with “rigging them out” with the latest technology and trendy activities.

His comments come after recent research revealed that UK public and school library use is less than half of that in the US because “America stuck to just providing books,” he said.

Mr Coates, who was also the managing director of WhSmith, said British libraries have “lost direction”, adding: “The library profession has got too hung up on how important it is as a ‘social force’ and it is a terrible mistake.

Libraries, museums and art galleries across England have had their funding slashed by nearly £400m in the past eight years, forcing hundreds to close, The Independent can reveal.

Leaders of county councils, which are mainly Conservative-run, say spending cuts have been made to the arts and education to ensure there is enough funding to provide care for the elderly and the vulnerable.

It comes as Essex County Council plans to close a third of its 74 libraries, while Birmingham City Council is looking to reduce its grants to arts and cultural organisations by nearly 50 per cent.  

Councils will be forced to make even more cuts to cultural services unless more funding is awarded to local authorities for care services in the spending review, county council leaders warn.

Figures reveal that council spending on museums, galleries, libraries, and local arts support has already reduced by more than £390m since 2011.

Original article

Almost 130 public libraries have closed in the last year in Britain while an extra 3,000 volunteers have been brought in to run remaining services, as the decade’s austerity pressures see local authorities continuing to apply swingeing cuts to budgets.

The annual survey of British libraries by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) has revealed a similar picture each year since 2010, with the number of branches and paid staff falling every year.

Over the last year, spending on libraries by local authorities fell by £30m to £741m. There was a net loss of 127 public libraries in England, Wales and Scotland, while 712 full-time employees lost or left their jobs and volunteer numbers increased by 3,000, to 51,394.

“Community-run” library branches have become the norm in the UK as councils ask volunteers to take the service off their books. In 2010, estimates from Public Libraries News suggest there were only around 10 libraries in the hands of volunteers; by 2017, the figure had risen to around 500. Cipfa calculations show that 10,000 new volunteers have joined Britain’s library service over the last three years, increasing from 41,402 in 2014-15 to 51,394 in 2017-18.

Proposals to axe more than half of Northamptonshire’s public libraries have been denounced by readers and authors. Up to 28 of the county’s 36 libraries could be closed if the plans get the go-ahead. The move has been branded “monstrous” by Watchmen creator Alan Moore.

Northamptonshire county council, which needs to claw back £115m in savings over the next four years, has launched a consultation on the future of its library service. Three options have been put forward: two would shut the doors of 21 libraries; the third would close 28, leaving only eight branches open.

A proposal from Liberal Democrat councillor Chris Stanbra to halt cuts to the libraries service was rejected by the county council last week. “We wanted them to add a fourth option, which said ‘keep libraries as they are’, but the Conservatives voted against that,” Stanbra said. “At the moment, the consultation is giving the choice of three options, all of which involve the closure of libraries.”

Stanbra said he doubted that the council would be able to provide the statutory requirement of a comprehensive and efficient public library service if 21 branches closed. “All of the libraries left would be in the larger urban centres, and this is quite a rural county,” he said. “People here are definitely against the closure of libraries … [they] are the heart of communities.”

Readers checking a book out of the village library might not immediately notice much of a difference, but Congresbury is the latest public library to haven been handed over “to the community”. You may be used to libraries being run by volunteers – maybe your local is – but this structure is relatively new.

Over the last decade, as many libraries began closing across the UK due to swingeing cuts to local authority funding by central government – 121 libraries closed last year alone – some have instead been handed over by councils to the community to run.

Since librarian Ian Anstice began charting the cuts to UK libraries on his campaigning website Public Libraries News in 2010, 500 of the UK’s 3,850 remaining libraries have now been taken over, at least in part, by volunteers. “I’ve been looking at the count going up steadily for the last few years,” says Anstice. “In 2010, there were a handful – perhaps 10 in the whole country. So this is quite a staggering change.”

Paid library staff fell by almost 1,000 in the year to March 2016, from 18,028 to 17,064, according to official figures from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa). In the same period, volunteer numbers rose by more than 3,000, from 41,402 to 44,501.

Anstice warns that the rise in volunteer-run libraries is masking how dramatic the decline in the library service actually is. “[Closure numbers] would be double if volunteer libraries were not taken into account,” he says. “It’s diverting pressure from councils and, in a way, making austerity that bit easier to live with. It is a trend that will only continue while there’s no effective statutory protection for libraries.”

But expecting the public to have to volunteer in order to keep their local library open is, in the words of Mandy Powell, “frustrating”. Powell works for the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip), which is currently campaigning for the government to “fulfil their statutory responsibilities to taxpayers” to provide a quality public library service. Like DCMS, Cilip is adamant that volunteers are not a replacement for paid professionals.

“Volunteers are fearful they will lose their libraries, so rather than be faced with that, people think of volunteering … I can understand why people go that route but they should never have been in the position to have to make that decision,” Powell says. “Volunteers have a brilliant role to play in boosting capacity and outreach but they shouldn’t be compelled to take over running the service.”

For the moment, many volunteers are taking the strain.

Campaigners have given a cautious welcome to new Arts Council England (ACE) support for short-term public library projects, but questioned whether the money will have any long-term impact on the beleaguered services.

Seven library organisations are to receive a total of £1.6m as part of ACE’s four-year National Portfolio Organisation programme, announced on Tuesday. They range from projects in Cambridgeshire, Devon and Nottinghamshire to funding for the Society of Chief Librarians. It is the first time libraries have been included in the programme, which invests £409m of public and national lottery money a year in 831 arts and culture organisations in England.

Though they applauded news that the sector is to receive additional funds, library campaigners said that the move failed to address a gap in national leadership that would solve systemic problems caused by years of severe cuts by local authorities.

Tim Coates, a former managing director of Waterstones, said that the extra cash would not have a significant impact unless it was anchored to a national strategy to revive libraries across the country. Citing a response to a freedom of information request in which ACE admitted it held no record of discussions about declines in public library usage with its library partners, he added: “It is ridiculous to hand out public money when they are not looking at libraries’ performance overall.”

Hay-on-Wye literary festival has stepped in to save the famously bookish town’s library after it was threatened with closure. As news emerged of the temporary cash rescue, the festival slammed plans by the local council to close libraries, saying that if a town synonymous with books could not keep its library service open, “what hope does anywhere else have?”

The rescue package was revealed as the Welsh government announced a £2.7m boost to libraries, museums and archives aimed at modernising buildings and extending digital access to collections and archives.

Also called “the town of books”, Hay-on-Wye is home to more than 20 bookshops and holds the title of the National Book Town of Wales. Campaigners announced the “stay of execution” for the library after a Powys county council review of 11 of its public libraries. Despite the money, the council said the service would have to close its doors by December if alternative funding was not found.

Peter Florence, the festival’s director, said the organisation had been supporting the library financially for “the past couple of years”, but added that the threat to the service had escalated, forcing an emergency rescue plan to be put in place. “But it shouldn’t be a matter of rescue and survival, it should be about how we can make a hub for the community that’s an inspiring space and a hive of knowledge and imagination.”

A report on the future of public libraries from the prestigious Carnegie Trust has been slammed as “over-optimistic”, amid calls for it to be withdrawn. Leading library campaigner Tim Coates has filed a formal complaint with the charity’s trustees, claiming that the report, published last month, “seriously avoids the truth” about the long-term decline of the sector and misrepresents data on library use.

In an open letter, Coates says that the report, called Shining a Light, omits key evidence about the impact of cuts and underfunding and “seriously avoids the truth of what is happening”. He adds that the report “fails to draw the right conclusions from data in the research it has carried out”.

The report recommended a five-point plan to save a sector that has been in the frontline of savage cuts imposed on local government over the past 10 years. Among the recommendations were that libraries make better use of data to improve their offer and provide better online services; focus more on demonstrating how they help deliver government policies; and provide innovation and leadership training for staff.

Coates writes that the report avoids key evidence about “the essential, continuous and destructive decline of use in public libraries in the UK”. The report draws conclusions without evidence and fails to highlight key findings from the research done on behalf of the trust by Ipsos Mori, claims the former managing director of Waterstones, adding that it failed to research the views of lapsed library users or to highlight the role of leadership in the sector’s rapid decline.

Data overlooked by the report, according to Coates, include figures collated annually by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) on library usage and expenditure. In December, the latest Cipfa survey revealed UK public libraries had taken a £25m hit to budgets and 15m drop in visitors as a result of swingeing cuts by local authorities faced with reduced grant from central government and the rising cost of social care.

Local authorities will face government action if they cannot justify library cuts, libraries minister Rob Wilson told librarians, peers and MPs at a packed meeting in the House of Lords to mark the launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Libraries (APPG).

In his strongest statement yet in defence of library services, Wilson said: “Councils really need to make these decisions based on robust evidence rather than being ad hoc and reactive.” He added: “I also expect councils to consider a full range of funding and delivery options before making significant cuts.”

At the meeting on Tuesday, the minister vowed to investigate if councils appeared to be failing their statutory duty under the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act and added that the government would take action where needed. Under the act, local authorities must provide a “comprehensive and efficient” public library service. If they fail to do so, local authorities can be forced by ministers to take remedial action.

Wilson said councils should only sanction significant cuts after “actively consulting” local people and professionals on all options to save money.

His comments follow revelations by the Local Government Association that library services will be in the firing line as cash-strapped local authorities seek to plug a gap in funding of £5.8bn by 2020. The LGA claimed that two thirds of councils would be forced to shave millions off budgets after the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement, published in December, failed to provide additional government funding for the financial year from April 2018.