Our next chat, on Tuesday 3 February at 6:30pm UK time, is about what we can do about the crisis in UK public libraries. The Agenda is available for you to add questions.
We chose this topic partly in honour of National Libraries Day, Saturday 7 February 2015. We also felt it was an overdue #uklibchat topic, considering the scale of the threat to public libraries.
It is a topic close to my heart. I worked in public libraries 2008 – 2013, as a library assistant and as a children’s librarian. I left when my children’s librarian role was eliminated in a restructure and now work in a university careers service.
This month, instead of an article giving one point of view on the crisis in UK public libraries, our feature article will be a digest of links and sources for finding out about where UK public libraries are currently, how they got there, and what we can do about it. You can use this article to help inform yourself before the chat, get thinking about the issues, and about what you might be able to do.
The main answer to this is cuts to public spending. Local authorities in the UK have been particularly hard hit by cuts.
Many would also argue that public libraries find themselves under threat because of the changing ways in which we access information, and the wider choice which people now have of how to spend their leisure time compared with 50 years ago. This is something we’ve covered in other chats and it is a big topic, but here are some viewpoints on it:
I hope you can join us for the chat on 3 February, where we’ll talk more about what we can do and share experiences of library advocacy.
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