A message from Alan Gibbons about National Libraries Day

Four years after I called for a National Libraries Day, an event that is now an annual celebration, I fear for their future. On May 25th that year I said:

“We are delighted to launch National Libraries Day, a week of events in early February leading to a day of celebration of reading, libraries and librarians around the United Kingdom. A reading child is a successful child. A child who goes to the library is twice as likely to be a good reader and that child becomes a literate adult, a lifelong reader. There are 320 million visits a year to our libraries but we can make them even more popular,”
Four years on, the annual number of visits has fallen by forty million. The fall has been steepest in deprived communities, according to research by the House of Commons library commissioned by the Labour Party. The research follows the Cipfa figures in assessing that there were 282m visits to libraries in England in 2013-14, compared with 322m four years earlier.
In deprived areas, the percentage of people using libraries has dropped by more than a fifth from 46.2 per cent to 36.8 per cent.
A third of people aged 16 and 24 had visited a library in the last year, compared with nearly 40 per cent four years earlier.
There are now at least 330 fewer libraries open for 10 hours or more a week, a fall of eight per cent.
A few months ago William Sieghart, author of an independent report on libraries, warned the network was at a “critical moment.” Even the prestigious Birmingham of Library faces devastating service cuts.
Add the number of library closures to branches being handed over to an uncertain future in the hands of trusts and volunteers, book stock reductions and ever shorter opening hours and you have a recipe for possibly irreversible decline.
During my years of campaigning to save our libraries, I have debated with MPs, councillors and the Culture Secretary. I have yet to hear a single comment from any of these people to reassure me that the service is safe in their hands. So let’s celebrate National Libraries Day, but we will have to fight for them if it is to mean anything.

Alan Gibbons, Campaign for the Book

All of the day and all of the night

It's World Book Night this Saturday. I'm joining with 19,999 other people to give away 48 books, part of a million being given away from a set of 25 very good titles reprinted specially by big publishers. I should have subverted it slightly and given away 48 Five Leaves' books. But I'm mean that way. I'll be giving The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, mostly to people attending a showing of the film by the same name at Flicks in the Sticks, Lowdham Book Festival's film weekend. Is it a good thing? There are quite a few people in the book trade complaining that flooding the market with free books at a time when shops are under pressure is crazy. On the other hand, in Lowdham village there are quite a few givers, and the local bookshop is handling the distribution, as part of its general promotion of a reading culture. I'm with them on that. Two of our writers are taking part in WBN events - J. David Simons will be doing a late night at Sauchiehall Street Waterestone's in Glasgow and Russel McLean will be strutting his stuff at Dundee Waterstone's, together with other local writers in each city. Some, backed by Susan Hill, argue that - as they do in Catalonia - there is a day where everyone buys a book to give away. This is the first WBN - I'm happy to go with the flow for next year, but there is a day Five Leaves' will be backing for sure. The Campaign for the Book is proposing a national library day, on the first Saturday of February, following the 110 events of protest against closures this February just gone (see this blog passim). The Campaign is suggesting a celebration of libraries - as the day of protest turned out to be - as part of a longer term campaign to keep libraries open, public and popular. Five Leaves can sign up for that without any need for discussion.

The power of one and the power of many

Sometime over the Christmas break, Five Leaves towers received an email from Alan Gibbons, children's author and organiser of the Campaign for the Book. I don't have it to hand but to precis it said, look, I know you are still munching mince pies, but what do people feel about a day of action around threatened libraries, let's say Feb 5th. We were not picked out, the email was sent to heaps of people and organisations in contact with the Campaign for the Book. And lo! (as folks say around Christmas) the people said yes. The Campaign is not something you can join, send off £20 and sleep better at night. It is not a campaign with local branches, nor is it a campaign that produces print, guidelines, or has Hon. Vice Presidents. There is an annual conference with speakers, but unless I have misunderstood, it is Alan Gibbons stirring us up and encouraging us to do what is right in our own area. On Feb 5th there is action in many parts of the UK - you can read about some of them at Alan's blog, and enter more in the Guardian's map of protest http://alangibbons.net/?paged=2.

If you are in Nottinghamshire come and join the Five Leaves' staff from 11.00am at Beeston Library in Nottinghamshire (there are also events in Sneinton and Stapleford). We'll be "reading-in" and "reading-out". Bring your library card (returns can be made at any Nottingham City or County Library) for a mass borrow or bring along something to read out. The event has the support of UNISON and will in turn support the staff, not get in their way. Do protests work? You can see on Alan's blog stories of local authorities backing off from library cuts. Not all, but some. And here the Council has put back £400,000 into its book fund and £70,000 back into staffing for 22 of the smaller libraries. The fund and the opening hours for these libraries will now only be cut by 50% not 75% - which takes us from catastrophic to bad. But it does save the jobs of many part-time low paid women and make the service viable if diminished. That those libraries will be returned to viability is the direct result of protest, including a letter signed by 100 local writers. So on Saturday we celebrate a minor victory and read in support of our local staff and library workers and users all over the country.

Peters

On Five Leaves' young adult fiction side, Peters, the specialist library supplier of children's books is a great account. The Birmingham company orders in multiples, regularly, and rarely (if ever) does returns. It just sends in orders, receives them, pays up. No fuss. One of their staff approached us at our stall at the School Library Association, and again at the Branford Boase Award and invited us to visit. Yesterday a couple of people from Five Leaves did just that, and were met by managing director Carl McInerney and chief buyer Joe Chapman. They toured us round the place and sat down to discuss our young adult list, our covers, what they thought of us and how we could work better together. Five Leaves publishes 3-5 young adult books a year, and two senior staff in a multi-million pound business set aside a couple of hours of their time to talk to what must be one of the smallest accounts they have. Impressed.
Impressed at seeing their showroom, which brings together more books for young people than can be seen anywhere in Britain. Impressed at seeing the information their ten librarians send out to their public and school library accounts (this included seeing some of their non-public reviews of our books, which felt a bit like hearing someone talk about you further down the bus; like the bus passenger, they say what they think). Impressed at the firm's independence. Peters is an indie, and its selectors and librarians are encouraged to ignore discounts, ignore the reputation of the publisher, and to buy and recommend according to the value of the book in front of them.
The number of library suppliers in the UK has been falling steadily, mostly into the hands of book wholesalers, while local authorities move into buying consortia and competitive tendering. For all our sakes Peters deserves to keep winning the tenders, and building their direct sales to local authority School Library Services.
And we were impressed to see a big poster of the MD with Alan Gibbons under the banner of the Campaign for the Book.
www.peters-books.co.uk