Ten years in the past, after the UK’s 2010 common election, which led to a coalition authorities forming, it began to change into clear that the Liberal Democrats’ affect wasn’t reigning within the Conservatives’ austerity insurance policies as a lot as everybody had hoped. Central authorities introduced funding cuts to native authorities, which in flip meant that metropolis and county councils needed to revise their budgets, reducing cash to an enormous variety of native providers – together with libraries. In line with the organisation Voices for the Library, over 10% of UK libraries had been threatened with closure, as native authorities had been now not in a position to hold them open with the big reductions within the funding they obtained from central authorities.
The proposed library closures brought about a widespread outcry. In some counties, similar to Oxfordshire, almost half the libraries had been slated for closure. One in every of these was my native library, a gorgeous constructing on the sting of the park, which seemed like one thing out of Jane Austen – till you bought inside and noticed the books, computer systems, play space for the children, and the bustle of people that used the place as a group hub. Librarians, authors and native library customers started to talk out in opposition to the federal government’s austerity measures, arguing that communities relied on their libraries and that closing them would trigger irrevocable injury. Campaigners identified that libraries had been the one method that many kids residing in poverty or troublesome monetary circumstances needed to entry books; that they offered important web entry for jobseekers; and that they had been a vital web site for social golf equipment and gatherings, similar to guide golf equipment and youngsters’s storytime occasions. Libraries’ native Pals teams (organisations devoted to supporting their group’s library) started to organise their responses to the proposed cuts. A barnstorming speech by writer Philip Pullman, which shortly went viral, helped to focus consideration right into a motion that might change into the Save Our Libraries marketing campaign.
The Save Our Libraries marketing campaign galvanised readers throughout the nation, with an enormous variety of public figures coming to bat for his or her native libraries and the broader battle to maintain books and libraries accessible to all communities. On 5 February 2011, campaigners ran dozens of occasions for Save Our Libraries Day; authors held read-ins, individuals lobbied politicians, and members of the local people turned as much as present how necessary their libraries had been as central, focal factors. The assist for saving libraries was overwhelming, and issues seemed hopeful.
I bear in mind the occasions, and the excitement round them – after which the information cycle moved on, and whereas many authors and different campaigners nonetheless talked concerning the challenge on Twitter and at occasions, the marketing campaign acquired much less and fewer focus within the nationwide press. The Tories stayed in energy, ending the coalition with the Lib Dems, and austerity continued – as, inevitably, did the cuts to important providers. I did some analysis on what number of library closures had truly occurred because the cuts had been first introduced, and what I discovered was horrifying: almost 800 libraries have closed within the near-decade because the Save Our Libraries marketing campaign started. That is getting near 20% of libraries, a a lot greater quantity than the projected 10% that folks had been citing again in 2011. The variety of paid, full-time librarians working in public libraries are additionally down, with the gaps being stuffed by volunteers – and as Pullman stated in his speech, whereas volunteers are nice, even probably the most enthusiastic and caring volunteer can’t substitute a skilled librarian who’s been given the monetary assets and assist to hold out their necessary work.
I don’t consider the widespread closure of libraries over the previous 9 years was a failure of the Save Our Libraries marketing campaign – the librarians, authors and readers who got here collectively to attempt to save their libraries from austerity couldn’t have labored tougher, and we don’t know what number of extra libraries would have been closed with out their efforts. My previous native library was one of many ones saved, and though its doorways are presently closed due to the worldwide pandemic, it’s there ready for the locals when lockdown ends. However even probably the most devoted campaigns wrestle within the face of a authorities bent on making cuts, and austerity measures meant that we had been nonetheless left with a public library infrastructure that has been greater than decimated. Philip Pullman concluded his speech with the warning phrases, “Go away the libraries alone. You don’t know the worth of what you’re taking care of. It’s too valuable to destroy.” Hopefully, in the future, austerity will finish and our valuable misplaced libraries will probably be returned to the individuals who want them.
