SAVE WIMBLEDON LIBRARY CAMPAIGN

Sorry for the hiatus here. I have been keeping on campaigning elsewhere, for libraries all around, though. And working in one!

Please go here for my current campaign:

http://www.savewimbledonlibrary.org/

https://twitter.com/SaveWimLibrary

We are collecting personal statements about Wimbledon library, also. So if you've any comments to make about Merton Council's inclusion of Wimbledon Library in its Sites & Proposals document. We attended a council meeting where it was openly discussed that the library entrance could be altered, library front developed into retail frontage, ground floor turned into retail space, or library moved altogether! Yet the public were not widely consulted. Now is the time to have our say!

A Visit to York Gardens Library - this library must not be forced to close

Having heard news of the possible closure of York Gardens Library in the Wandsworth borough of London, I made a special trip to visit when normally I would access Southfields library, 3 miles away.

I immediately warmed to York Gardens Library. Set in a large estate of towerblocks, I can see how vital an asset it must be to the surrounding large community. Looking at the various events, info, and things on offer, it's clear that there's so much more than a mere book-lending facility here. Reading groups of all ages, activities for children, craft activities for young people, even an old memories of Battersea group.

What's more, the library itself is inside a community building with a community centre that offers much to the local residents.

The library offers an incredibly impressive range of items on loan for such a compact space, and is laid out in such a way that it's heartwarming - I feel immediately positive of mood, after what had today been an upsetting morning; because it's simply such a good place to be; good for the mental health.

People think of London as being this big centre, when really there are countless little communities just as cut-off as anywhere smaller. And London does have its tiny communities. York Gardens is beset by what must be council or ex-council (hard to know these days, since it's all changed with the right-to-buy) tower block flats. So gloomy and grey and 60s - 80s era. There are pockets of poverty in all bits of London - and places where activity or centralised amenities are hard to come by. Somewhere like York Gardens needs a community centre/library to lend children a free place to go - to learn, to think. Likewise, with the elderly, probably many of them life-long residents, proud of their locale - there is a "Memories of Battersea" group for them; imagine the socialising and the simple solace and pleasure, not to mention lifeline, that would provide. The elderly are so often cut-off and if I have learnt one thing about libraries it is that the elderly benefit from them the most.

A leaflet on the table of the library revealed all sorts of craft activities for various ages, and there were sing-songs for little toddlers, reading groups for all ages. On walking in the building, there was a sale of books fiction and non-fiction for 50 pence or so.

The range of stock was incredibly impressive for such a compact space. The non-ficiton topics, the DVDs, the foreign literature, the access to local information - and people forget this, just how vital libraries are in providing info on all kinds of local info, be it related to further education, benefits, leisure centres and other amenities in the area, local writing competitions, even the sale of local postcards and local history books. The provision is palpable.

I will make the lengthy journey every week to use this library and make it my regular library. A former Wandsworth resident, I now live in Merton.

The series of public consultation meetings in relation to the closure of York Gardens library as well as the proposal of reduction in hours of every library in the borough of Wandsworth have begun, and will roll into January. Consultation meetings about the future of Wandsworth Borough Libraries. The final meeting at York Gardens will be January 10th.

Correspondence with Stephen Hammond, Wimbledon Conservative MP

A heartfelt letter to make a stand against library cuts addressed to my local MP was met with a very general, off-hand response addressing none of my queries and concerns.

Thus far no cuts announcements have been made or indeed any news whatsoever made public as to the future of Merton Council's libraries. This makes me almost as uneasy as if cuts had been announced because it means there is no transpareny as to where my boroughs' libraries figure in budget plans.

I have simply been told the usual stack of hackneyed soundbites such as how the cuts are "necessary", how decisions are "tough" and how we are "all in it together" and must all take the assigned sufferage as one. It's sickening to be told this by someone on a six figure salary when, as a public sector worker who is very likely to be directly affected by such cuts (possibly losing my job altogether - a job sector that it has taken me four years to enter), I earn just above the national minimum wage, with part-time hours at that (no full-time posts available in my job sector).

The Good Library Blog has nailed some pertinent points in a recent post. Summing things up about library cuts and the way admin and behind-the-scenes activity is afforded opportunity to continue their financial wastages whilst the people on the frontline on lower wages suffer the effects of cuts as do the libraries themselves:

The cuts that need to be made should be taken in the so called 'corporate' structures of local councils, and in the back office and library administration where there is a huge waste of money. But they aren't being, because that is where the senior management work and they are clinging to their jobs. They have been handed the right to decide where the cuts will come and it is they who are deciding it is better to close libraries than lose their own income.

And another quote:

We could achieve all the budget reductions that are needed in the library service and not close one library. In fact with the money that would be available after all the cuts, we would be able to increase book funds and opening hours. There is plenty of capital funding available to refurbish most of the community libraries in the country.