Can we (please!) be more ambitious for our libraries?

“We do mind-building, soul-affirming, life-saving work”. - Khalil Gibran Muhammad, former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Imagine if the British Library was open to everyone, and was also responsible for running all the local libraries in London. The funding, I suppose, would come partly from the Mayor’s office, with the rest coming from private donations. That’s the closest I can get to describing the New York Public Library system as depicted in Frederick Wiseman’s documentary Ex Libris, shown at Deptford Cinema last weekend.

The film is 3hrs 17 minutes long, which I appreciate sounds like a big commitment if you’re not a library nerd. But it doesn’t have a narrative, so you could watch it in chunks, or watch just half an hour of it to get the idea. I would urge anyone with responsibility for libraries to do so. The film moves from librarians and other staff on the front line, to glimpses of public events, footage of the many different services that take place across the library network – lectures, reading groups, baby sessions, kids’ programming classes -  and a number of administrative meetings. While watching it felt like there were perhaps too many of these, but in fact they are the scenes that have really stayed with me. In every scene the leadership demonstrate passion, strong values, and most strikingly ambition.

This is what comes through most in the film, and has nothing to do with available funds or staffing structures. The management team are clearly aiming to meet not only their statutory requirements, but asking how they can go further. All their plans are underpinned by their mission, as they ask themselves not just what they need to do but what could they possibly do? How are they serving the communities they are working in? We see how they are constantly monitoring how their needs change and looking at how they can continue to meet them; planning alongside educators to make sure their collections meet the needs of students and teachers; considering their duty to homeless New Yorkers who use the library; providing local people with internet access at home, to help them develop their digital skills and access the library’s online services. There is such a strong sense of a mission, a passionate belief in who and what libraries are for.

Rather than exporting a model that treats libraries as a problem, rather than the solution to many problems, we should be learning from the places that have got it right – Chester West & Chester were the winners of last year’s Guardian’s Public Service awards for their ambitious Storyhouse project. Funded partly by the local authority and partly by the Arts Council and other trusts (see the Guardian article here), Storyhouse combines a new library, cinema and theatre and is run by the council’s library services team. The result?

“Today, visitor numbers have rocketed by more than half a million, library membership has increased by 6% – up 11% among teenagers – and book borrowing is on the rise.”

The size and scope of the two are very different, but what Chester and New York have in common is ambition. Someone, somewhere in Chester thought big and then tried to make it happen. We may not be able to spend that much, or raise that much in additional funding, and we might not have a spare art deco building lying about, but surely we can do better than the minimum? Rather than asking how little can we get away with spending on our library service, why not ask how much we could get away with spending? What’s the best we could do with what we have, and what could we do if we had a bit more?

But with the best will in the world, such a service cannot be run on a shoestring. A service that goes above and beyond for its residents cannot rely mostly on volunteers, however passionate they may be. We need trained staff who can help the public with the wide variety of issues they have, and staffed opening hours that can meet the community’s needs.

I’m not suggesting that we move to a public-private partnership like New York, or that we could replicate their budget, but imagine if we could replicate the kind of ambition that both New York and Chester have for their libraries. I appreciate that these are hard times, and I’m aware of the huge cuts local authorities have suffered under austerity, but an ambitious library strategy would connect the service to other council goals – (as such they could be said to be part of social care strategies rather than leisure). As described in previous blogs, libraries are pivotal in reducing loneliness in older people, and supporting people living in poverty. The council aims to be a sanctuary borough, and admirably plans to welcome 100 refugee families in the next year, aims to improve our secondary schools, reduce knife crime and make Lewisham safer. Libraries can support all these ambitions, and should be seen as an intrinsic part of all those strategies, rather than a hindrance to them, just another rival for funding.

We await the results of the council’s feasibility study into the possibility of rebuilding Lewisham Library. I hope the council will take this opportunity to ‘think big’ for libraries, and will see the true value of a professionally staffed, well-funded and ambitious service.

Ex Libris film review by a Save Lewisham Libraries campaigner