As libraries are caught in the eye of the austerity storm, communities step in to save them. But are volunteer-based libraries sustainable?
Mike Thomas wears a tired smile. He is a tall man, of big build, in his forties. He sits down and smiles tiredly, like an athlete at the end of a race or a warrior after the battle has ended.
Mike is the chair of Rumney Forum, a resident organisation that strives to make Rumney a better place to live. When Cardiff Council revealed plans to shut down Rumney Library in September 2014, he and other residents joined in Community Action for Rumney Library (CARL) to fight against the decision. They organised graffiti expositions, large demonstrations, children’s activities, but to no avail – the Council had to overcome a deficit in funding and would not hear it.
Then the breakthrough: in March Cardiff Council proposed that the library should move to a new building and be run by volunteers. The old staff left on 29 September and the new Rumney Community Partnership Hub opened in its new location in Llanstephan Road at the end of November.
“It is disappointing to hear people say the campaign for the library wasn’t successful,” Mike says. “We fought passionately, and it’s hard to hear that we failed or are in cahoots with the council,” he smiles.
Yet many people believe that the battle for Rumney Library has been lost.
“Community-based libraries hinge in the balance of the difference between saving a library and managing its death”
(Peter Finch, writer and historian)
A matter of cats
What happened to Rumney Library has something to do with CATs – that is, something to do with Community Asset Transfers.
CATs are tools to save public money. Instead of shutting services down altogether, councils hand them over to community volunteers. They often move libraries into the same building with other services and sell the old library’s building to make profit. Volunteers can keep running the service if they can, but public funding stops.
In Rumney, the council followed a similar logic: they moved the library with other services to Llanstephan Road, and sold the old building to a local resident. Rumney Partnership Hub manager Rebecca Hunt says it’s still very early stages and it’s still unclear how the hub will work, and how many volunteers it will need.
But as useful as they may seem, CATs are no bed of roses.
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) is one of the many players lobbying against them.
Mandy Powell, head of CILIP Cymru Wales, said public libraries should not be replaced by volunteer ones because they sustain the national economy under a number of aspects: running initiatives like code-club sessions, support to find work or set up new businesses, events for digital and children’s literacy, their impact can hardly be overestimated. She says volunteer libraries might not be able to do the same.
“It is understandable that communities step forward to run libraries when local authorities are unable or unwilling to,” she said, “and volunteers play an extremely valuable role extending library services so they can do more than through staff alone.
“But a library without professional staff is no more than a shadow of its former self.”
Volunteer libraries may be fine in the first year or two, in the first flush of enthusiasm and with council support, but what about when the first wave of volunteers lose interest, or when the roof needs replacing?
(Ian Alstice, director of Public Libraries News)
Very British problems
With increasing budget cuts, local authorities are often left between a rock and a hard place: closing libraries or handing them over to communities.
Public Libraries News, a blog monitoring cuts to public libraries, estimates that 322 of about 4,400 British public libraries have been “withdrawn” since 2011, while 374 were handed over to volunteers.
CATs have been widely implemented in England but are relatively new in Wales.
The only community library in Cardiff used to be Lisvane Library, opened by volunteers in 1999 after being closed as a public library, and today only open eight hours a week.
However, after the Rumney Library case and with new cuts on the horizon, volunteer libraries are a model Cardiff council is looking to implement more. Councillor Peter Bradbury, Cabinet Member for Community Development, Co-operatives and Social Enterprise, said, “I think it is the best model, with the public sector and communities getting closer together to ensure to deliver services.
“I would love to have more librarians, but with austerity we’ve got to just try and spare public services the best we can, that’s what we’re trying to do here really.”
Fact: Libraries are statutory services in England and Wales. It is mandatory for councils to offer “comprehensive and efficient” libraries.
(1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act)
The next in line
The next public library set to be handed over to the community is Roath Library in Newport Road.
When Cardiff Council announced plans to close Roath Library in October 2014, Alice Shing gathered local residents around to fight against.
In Roath the council is looking for a similar solution to Rumney, but Alice and the Save Roath Library campaign are fighting against it.
“That’s not what the community wants, not in Adamdown anyway,” she says. “We don’t need a superhub two miles away, we just want an ok, refurbished local library, not a bus into town.”
For one battle that enters the hottest stage, another one has finished. Mike Thomas is pleased of how the fight for Rumney Library has ended. He says CARL won a battle but not the war.
“We used to have two and a half full time librarians and now we have none,” he says. “One of the librarians had been there for 28 years. Now a neighbourhood development librarian visits four hours a week. But at least we were able to secure a building for Rumney.
“We had to settle for some results – we didn’t fight in way we hoped to, but in the way we’ve had to.”