01 Jul 2012 02:53:33
Crisis, what crisis? Despite a report earlier this week predicting that public libraries could disappear by the end of the decade, the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, hailed the "thriving library service that we have in England" as he announced a series of initiatives at Thursday's Future of Library Services conference.
Unveiling plans to boost cultural activities in libraries, automatically enrol primary school pupils in their local libraries and an ambition to put Wi-Fi in libraries across England by 2015, Vaizey claimed that the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals' prediction of 600 library closures "regularly quoted in the media... is very wide of the mark".
"A truer picture of building closures would be about a 10th of that," he said. "I remain resolutely optimistic about library services. I have never, even in opposition, depicted the library service as being in crisis." He added that "even while there have been closures, sometimes services merge or move to community management, and it's important that we are able to have an intelligent debate about this. And it's also important to remember that many libraries are also opening."
Library campaigner and award-winning children's author Alan Gibbons rejected Vaizey's positivity, calling it "a masterpiece of Life of Brian optimism, the massaging of reality and evasion".
"The reason this nightmarish scenario [of 600 library closures] has not occurred has been because local communities have mounted commendable resistance, reducing councils' room to manoeuvre. This has included legal actions, pickets, protests, read-ins and a lobby of parliament. None of this agitation is reflected in this blandest of speeches."
The Public Libraries News website, which takes a daily tally of the threat to UK libraries by counting media reports, estimates that 121 were closed last year and that 275 are currently under threat – considerably more than Vaizey's 60.
Vaizey's speech outlined plans for the library service, including an allocation of £6m in funding from the Arts Council's Grants for the Arts programme, which over the next two years will allow library authorities to work with artists and other cultural organisations on cultural activities in libraries. "This fund will aim to stimulate ambitious, innovative partnerships between libraries and artists and arts organisations. It will help raise the ambition and expectation of libraries, and represents a significant commitment by the Arts Council to their new role," said Vaizey.
The culture minister also revealed new plans to identify and help underperforming local authorities, to have Wi-Fi in every library in England by 2015, and to work with the Department for Education to give automatic library membership to primary school pupils – an idea put forward by the author Michael Rosen.
"I have made it clear from the moment I became a minister that no library authority should contemplate closing libraries unless they have conducted a proper review of their library service," said Vaizey, stressing that "libraries are and will remain a statutory service".
Although he acknowledged that "some local authorities have put forward controversial proposals since 2010", he said that "all of them have conducted a library review", and he shied away from launching his own library inquiry. "I have no doubt that the efforts of library campaigners have also brought about welcome changes in some of the more extreme proposals put forward," he said. "Nevertheless, I am always mindful that libraries are a local service, paid for by local taxpayers. As far as possible, local democracy, not Whitehall diktat, should have an impact on how they are shaped. A library inquiry is a power of last resort – it has only ever been used once in 50 years. It is not a tool to be used lightly, or for political expediency."
Gibbons said that campaigners would "not be fooled by Mr Vaizey's latest blandishments", and that a fresh conference was being planned to prepare for new challenges. "Vaizey continues to evade his responsibilities, and the public library service is anything but safe in his hands," said Gibbons.
