The earlier Council decision was to fund 12 of 26 libraries and to ‘improve and develop’ these ‘to ensure they are sustainable, high quality, fully maintained libraries that are significant community facilities;.  65,000 questionnaires were sent out to people living near the 14 libraries (not those who work or are educated in those areas as the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act includes).  Following feedback on the 7,000 returned, a thorough impact assessment and discussions with volunteers, community groups and library action groups the proposals drawn up are:-

Expected community-led provision at Bawtry, Intake and Warmsworth.

Expected community-led provision in a different venue at Valby, Bessacarr, Edenthorpe, Wheatley and Sprotborough.

Expected self-service supplemented by community volunteers co-located with another council service in Moorends, Rossington, Stainforth and Scawthorpe.

Enhanced Mobile/Outreach at Carcroft and Denaby (ie they will be closed).

Currently libraries cost £5.26 million to run not including money needed to maintain and invest in the buildings.  Keeping all 26 in current form not a option.

My initial reaction – what impact assessment?  Who are these groups with whom they consulted?  What other formats were the questionnaires provided in?  How did this adhere to the 1964 Act?  What costings are expected to be met by the community groups?  What support and training and provisions are the Council going to provide?  What if no community-led groups are found?  What about the current staff of the 14 – and indeed the whole service?  What is the time-frame expected to be met?  Have they considered the impact on literacy levels and education?  What about the employment market, eg Barnsley Council only accept online job applications so if you cannot access a local library to do so, how are you going to compete in the job market fairly – and against those who used to work in those libraries!? etc etc

The Review should be here:- http://www.doncaster.gov.uk/db/chamber/default.asp?Nav=Meeting&MeetingID=5515,  if that link doesn’t work it’s the DMBC home page, select Council Chamber, select Agendas, Minutes and Reports, selectCalendar of Council Meetings and Event, then choose Cabinet on the calndar date of 12th October   As Jon’s just said “Easy to find”!!!

The Mayor – defending decimation of services on Radio Sheffield Drive time – here  at about 59:23. He says one sentence basically which is the council will put in some books, refresh them regularly and give as much support as they can without ploughing money into it, and that if people want a library putting in one or two hours per week ‘isn’t too much to expect’. NOT A CLUE!!!!!

There is more of his interview at 1:05:32. In summary – His usual line blaming the cuts on the government. Preferring 14 libraries open via other means such as volunteers or schools. Says opponents seem to think there’s a magic tree to get money from. Says opponents invented his saying he will close a library. He’s asking people to talk to him about opening the libraries, and that’s it, the plan. Schools can take them over… Great, my kids school has just closed theirs! Says more libraries per head of population (“I think”) than any other borough “a mighty number” and had little interest in some for keeping them open – BECAUSE WE CAN’T any council funding? He says putting books in, refresh them regularly and as much support again but money. happy they can be run by volunteers? Yes in Warmsworth – they have an army of volunteers it seems. Is suspicious in one or two cases as to whether people actually want a library, Librarians are professionals – hes laughed! Says all sorts of trades and jobs need training but what;s needed for stamping a book and letting them out an in “Things are made mysterious” Admits he doesn’t know and that libraries are in the state they’re in means not had good librarians in over the recent years! NO BECAUSE YOU (AND OTHER EQUALLY GUILTY FROM ALL PARTIES) CUT THE FUNDING AND STAFFING IN DMBC OVER THE LAST 5-8 YEARS YOU UNEDUCATED AND ILL-INFORMED PERSON Sorry, typed as listened.

The responses – First up is Phil Bradley ( ♥ ) A very polite response, far more than Mayor Davies deserved, says doubts many agree with {Mayor Davies}, shame when think can get rid [of libraries], it’s part of community and without one not really a community, disrespectful to community and also to CILIP members, talking about common misconception, assistants wonderful, but like comparing receptionist to a Doctor, explained training time and that [Mayor Davies] interpretation a typical ignorant idea…. now some examples…. What about closing if not got volunteers, can you keep it this simple? A basic book service? Yes, they’re extremely valuable… but costs money to train and support… working with children therefore need CRB checks. Helpful to running but not running it themselves.

Another response came from Dave of Mexborough via text who agreed that the Mayor’s Librarian comments were an insult and he should be taken to a library, stamped, but not returned!!!

So – with the amount of support to Save Doncaster’s Libraries and the total lack of flexibility shown over the last year to change their stance in any way, despite MANY alternatives being given, how are we to think that the wholesale decimation of our libraries is anything but a political stance to dumb down our population any further.

The proposed referendum regarding a Mayoral system in Doncaster could not come soon enough, lets get rid. The possibility of electing a moron by accident is too great a risk.

I confess I have not used it lately. I am planning to tweet once per day from that account with some pertinent piece of driving news or advice, but am waiting for my Glam School of Motoring website to be updated before starting that! I am also one of the twitterers for Danum School‘s account.
So, I guess I’m okay with Twitter!

What else? Oh yes, RSS Feeds. Once again I’m ahead of the game *boast boast*. I have set up my own RSS Feed within my google ID. Once again the concentration tends to be professional blogs or friends who enter into discourse or offer considered opinion with which I can engage. I think there is one humourous one but… I tend to keep them professional. Here are my current feeds:-

• Alan Gibbons Blog
• CILIP: News
• CPD23 single feed
• Heart of the School
• My Arse
• Neijygof
• Public Libraries News
• Save Doncaster Libraries
• SLA Weblog
• The Librain
• The Unquiet Librarian
• Voices for the Library
• Walk You Home
• xkcd.com

Between the RSS feeds and the tweets I am more current with ILS innovations and news than I have ever been before.

Pushnote – I cannot access this at the moment as I cannot use it at work. I have read other comments about it and am not sure what use it may be initially as the websites shared by fellow professionals tend to be recommendation enough, but I will have a look-see later.

1) Name Used – in my blog.  Well, this has changed for personal reasons.  Unfortunately I cannot change the blog URL (although according to libwig I can, and may do…), which I chose because it marries the main factors that make me, me.  My forename, vocation, original family acronym and my being a twin.  My family make-up has altered but as my self-employed business is called this so it remains.  But my posting ID is now my first name and my new family acronym, the first initials of me and my daughters.  It was unusual enough to be unique but identifiable as me by those who know me.

2) Photograph – easy, it’s a really old one that, again, people will know is me IF they know me but isn’t instantly identifiable for those who haven’t ever met me physically, and vanity finds it flattering

3) Professional/Personal Identity – am putting this last, it’s the longest one…

4) Visual.  I just chose one that was simple, not girly, and not too busy, in colours I like.  Not a lot more thought went into it than that!  I may need to look for a meaningful wallpaper as I feel it is a bit boring but…  Time… just not got the time!

Back to 3).  Well.  My blog started off as a place to have a rant about whatever was bothering me at the time.  I did not intend it to be a particularly professional sphere of communication although saving libraries is both one of my issues and a professional concern so it actually does marry both.  I thought about starting a new blog and separating the personal from the professional but… I can’t!  If my profession was simply a place I went to in order to earn a wage then maybe, but it’s not, it is personal so…  I just hope those reading my blog don’t do so to see if they want to work with me, and think that what they see there is truly representative of my conduct in professional circumstances!  My blog is intended as a place to have considered moans, that’s probably the best way of putting it!

Googling my name.  Of COURSE I’ve done this!  I’ll just do it again and see what occurs…  Oooh, my first result is the Write Path ID that I have as a project undertaken in the Day job, then a Guardian article from when I was interviewed annually over 3 years as the school librarian representative of 50 different public sector jobs (and proving my salary has gone DOWN), next GLAM School of Motoring within a Driving School Directory – this is my business; 4th is Linked In… then sites in which my name appears, blimey, the first sites actually refer to me! Benefits of an unusual surname? The first 25 results are me, often from sites in which I have no control over the content, the 26th links to someone with my name in Second Life, and the 27th lists a Librarian in Erdington Library, Birmingham with my name!!!!  OMG!!!  Exciting!!!!  Am going to be stalking her!  Oh, it’s me in a list underneath which is Erdington Library.  *sigh*.

Online Presence.  I have 6 email addresses, all used for different reasons.  My main work one used in my day job; my GLAM School of Motoring one used for that sphere of work; my older personal yahoo one I primarily use for SLN; my hotmail one which I use as an alternate to the day job, for my NVQ assessing and ebay-type online IDS; My Save Our Libraries Doncaster ID which I use for trying to save Doncaster from itself and FINALLY my personal google one for friends and family and chitchat.  I have a Facebook account which I LOVE and use both personally and professionally insofar as I use it for my driving school and also for interest groups.  I also have a bebo account that I only set up to keep in touch with certain younger friends of mine such as nieces and Godchildren and rarely look at.  I have a Linked In account for my driving school and may set up a separate one in order to connect in the library world.  I have two twitter accounts, my personal one which I actually use more for the Library World than personally, and my driving school one, and I am also a tweeter for my day job on their account.

So there is very little I can do about the information already out there, and I simply need to ensure that areas where I do separate personal from professional has clear and obvious delineations.  On the whole I am pretty happy about the representations of me out there, on a professional level perhaps they could be more serious but that’s a niggle, not a concern.  

I wonder, is t’interweb perhaps a little oversaturated by me???

Dear Ms Coppendale
Thank you for your email of 22 March, addressed to the Secretary of State for Education, about the summer reading challenge (50 books a year). I hope you are able to appreciate the Secretary of State for Education receives a vast amount of correspondence and is unable to reply to each one personally. It is for this reason I have been asked to reply.

Children can obtain the books from the school itself. It is the Government’s policy to put as much money as possible directly into schools’ budgets, allowing schools to target resources appropriately and to make their own choices about their school library provision and book resourcing. However I must stress libraries are not the responsibility of this Department but of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Thank you once again for your email.

Yours sincerely

Sandra Duggan
Public Communications Unit
www.education.gov.uk
Your correspondence has been allocated the reference number 2011/0024265. To contact the Department for Education, please visit www.education.gov.uk/contactus

Well, there you go then. Ignores my points and passes the buck over to schools to fund a non-statutory element of their provision against a background of projects and supports cuts. She also mixes the Michael Gove challenge with the Summer Reading Challenge annually run in public libraries for Primary school children, with a transition element for those in year 7. Therefore we either conclude that Michael Gove MP and his office have not a clue what they are talking about, or his challenge of 50 books per year was aimed at those 12 and under!

I have replied thus, but being unable to respond directly to Ms Duggan, due to her reponse coming from Unmonitored.ACCOUNT@education.gsi.gov.uk, I have sent it to the original email address for Michael Gove and I have no idea if she will actually see it:-

Dear Mr Gove,
I thank you for the response I received from Ms Sandra Duggan (see below). However it does not actually answer either of my questions and also highlights a worrying lack of understanding of both Mr Gove’s original challenge and the Summer Reading challenge, which you appear to have confused with each other.

My original points were:-

1. You cannot have missed the facts that over 520 public libraries are under threat of closure as a direct consequence of the swingeing and too fast cuts being forced upon local governments. Further information can be found here http://alangibbons.net and here http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/wordpress
2. I am sure you are also aware that the provision of school libraries is non-statutory and patchy at best. The vast majority are not run by professionally qualified and/or experienced dedicated Library staff, some schools have no library at all. For best practise against dire financial provision and lack of curriculum time see http://heartoftheschool.edublogs.org

I now direct you to the Summer Reading challenge website, which is coordinated annually by The Reading Agency, a registered charity and company limited by guarantee – http://www.summerreadingchallenge.org.uk/. The summer reading challenge requires it’s young participants to read 6 books over the summer holiday period and take part in activities, where the libraries are able to fund such, gaining a certificate and entering a draw once completed. A totally different project to the one of Michael Gove spoke I’m sure you will agree.

I hope you find this information of help and it clears up your confusion, and I look forward to a reply detailing how the challenge Michael Gove sent out will be put into action, given the library provision situations of which I have informed you. I suggest he contacts his counterpart in the DCMS if, as you say, it would be their responsibility to carry out this directive; Although I would have expected the DCMS remit to include public libraries and the Department for Education to find School Libraries within theirs, I am happy to be corrected on this matter.

Thank you,

Lynne Coppendale BA(Hons), DipIS, MCLIP,
School Librarian, Doncaster

We wait and see…

START LISTENING TO YOUR ELECTORATE.