‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: how Britain’s libraries provide much more than books
https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/jun/25/how-britains-libraries-provide-more-than-books
Posted by Currency_Cat
‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: how Britain’s libraries provide much more than books
https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/jun/25/how-britains-libraries-provide-more-than-books
Posted by Currency_Cat
10 Comments
“How the draft horse still is very useful and the industry totally needs taxpayer money in 1930”
Up the libraries.
Terry Curran and Amanda Giles sound like amazing people doing incredible work.
I love my library. It’s great getting to see homeless people watching porn
And yet library staff, even those with an MA which is mandatory for any role other than “Assistant Librarian”, are expected to eat a shit sandwich of salary – even more so than teachers and healthcare workers.
As a library assistant, this article is pretty frustrating. We’ve got a lot on our plates after staffing was cut recently due to the financial pressure put on our local authorities. We don’t have time running around trying to find magnifying glasses for customers, making cups of tea, scanning documents if not part of the service (GGPR?) and putting up with anti-social behaviour. And no, we’re not an “unofficial creche”, there are rules about leaving your children unoccupied.
>Reading Borough Council provides about £70 a year for the craft supplies Curran and Giles use in weekly clubs. Everything else they go shopping for together, with their own money, in their free time, or order online. (It’s worth noting, here, that library assistant jobs start at around £23,500.)
This is not a normal thing. DO NOT expect library assistants to spend their own money on craft supplies
>“What you won’t necessarily see is the care they’ve taken over the preceding six years, to make sure that when somebody walks in and says, ‘I’m trying to learn about this,’ or, ‘Have you got any books in Chinese?’ we can say, ‘Yes,’ and it’s the right thing. It’s a really diligent job that requires serious skill and dedication.”
This is a very easy part of the job. There’s a library catalogue with search filters so that you can find exactly what the customer is looking for.
I understand that this is a piece which tries to make people empathetic towards library assistants, but don’t normalise this idea that were’re the communities personal servant
I love our library. I can take my kids there, I can work on things there, read in quiet, join clubs…. it’s brilliant.
I love libraries but I do wish that they (or at least my local one) catered to working adults more. There are classes and events, but they’re all either for children or happen during working hours. I’d love to join the knitting group, for example, but I’m working when its on because it’s at 11:00. I get that retired/unemployed people need stuff to do during the day, but there is literally nothing after 15:00 that isn’t specifically for families and children. Considering most adults work, it’s a bit of a shame.
I quite like the library here. It helps it also has a cool museum and art gallery on the second floor.
The building (interior and exterior are also interesting even though it is relatively new – built in 1901)
I also have fond memories from it in the 80s, borrowing C64 cassettes.
I remember visiting the local library with my mum and brother to get cool books to read. Also I was amazed when I went with my cousin there one day and onto the computer for the first time where the mouse was like a ball that you would roll around not even like a proper mouse, very thick old CRT monitors. He showed me a game called RuneScape which I became addicted to for a while, it was good times. I miss being a kid sometimes
The importance of libraries has dwindled so people need to face the reality that as the needs fall that less resources will be put into them to the stage that they will close entirely.
People never had it so good when it came to accessibility of information, there’s almost no reason to attend a library.
I think the solution is to open availability to the public to those institutions who might still require a library (education) so that the burden in offering them is shared, or that the catchment area of a library is radically increased.
Financially every book borrowed costs £5 to provide that service. Most charity shops have too many books to know what to do with and end up selling them for pennies to the likes of world of books, whilst councils are paying £3-18 each to buy books.