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Library Of Birmingham 2013

  • Thread starter Thread starter BernardR
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hi folks thought i would start going to the library more ofen now before the proposed cuts start next year...wrote my tickets out for the material i want to view and handed them over..as most of you know the material then has to be retrieved from the archives storage room by staff so we have to make an appointment to view material....was given an appointment for next tues providing that staff can get into the archives rooms so i asked was there a problem and apparently the oxygen levels are not correct so at the moment staff are not allowed into the archives rooms...member of staff asked me for my telephone number and said she would phone me if the problem had not been resolved in time for my appointment next week....also one of the lifts on the ground floor not working and the down escalator on the 4th floor is not working...

lyn
 
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Hi Lyn,

This reminds me very much of the LDS Family History Centres which I used very much when I lived in the UK. You go there, tell them which films you want to view, they telephone you at some point in the future, then you make an appointment to view. For the outlay of 188 million pounds I can't see how on earth this is an improvement on the system we had at the previous library!

Maurice
 
hi maurice with the previous library we used to be able to see the material we wanted on the same day therefore only having to make one trip instead of the two we now have to make...may have had to wait up to an hour (depending on how busy they were) which was fine with me as there was always something do while waiting...

when the new libary opened i was told that they hoped to do away with this appointments system but given what we now know i cant see that happening...all i see are longer waiting times for appointments..i really was hoping i would be wrong about this new library that promised us so much but right now all i can see are negatives...i can only tell it as it is from my own experiences..

lyn
 
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leslam said:
It looks as though you can also email a request (FAQ page)
https://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/faqs-archivesandheritagephotography
Click to expand...


hi lesley and yes quite right you can email the archives and ask them to do a search for material you are looking for...i have used this option a few times and its fine providing you are prepared to wait longer for an appointment..

after you have emailed the details of what you are looking for and given the choice of 2 dates you would like to visit you will receive an automated reply saying please allow time for staff to do the search for you...usually they will then get back to you within 7 days saying if they have the material you want and also if either of the 2 dates you have requested are available so make sure if you are using this option that the dates you put down gives enough time for staff to complete search and get back to you..

lyn
 
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I honestly can´t see how this is progress.
I haven´t lived in England for 10 years, but when I did, I used the old library at least once every week.
Sometimes I would be looking for something specific & other times, just browsing. How can you do that if you have to order in advance? Most of the time I wasn´t looking for anything specific......Just seeing what turned up.
I am aware that the old library had it´s shortcomings & to be fair, I haven´t seen the new one, but it seems to me that an enormous amount of money has been spent on a building which isn´t even user friendly.
The old building was badly underfunded for decades, probably to justify the new building.
 
senoraruz said:
I honestly can´t see how this is progress.
I haven´t lived in England for 10 years, but when I did, I used the old library at least once every week.
Sometimes I would be looking for something specific & other times, just browsing. How can you do that if you have to order in advance? Most of the time I wasn´t looking for anything specific......Just seeing what turned up.
I am aware that the old library had it´s shortcomings & to be fair, I haven´t seen the new one, but it seems to me that an enormous amount of money has been spent on a building which isn´t even user friendly.
The old building was badly underfunded for decades, probably to justify the new building.
Click to expand...


absolutely agree with you senoraruz there is so much material that is no longer out on the shelves that was available to the public at the old library....i have spoken to a few members of staff since it opened and as they say to me when they saw the plans for just how the inside of the library would be run they voiced their concerns saying that certain things will never work as far as the public is concerned but of course it was out of their hands and ignored and when the library first opened one member of staff was urging members of the public to complain...i feel so sorry for them as they are trying their best to put a brave face on what they thought was going to be a great library for the people of birmingham and they certainly did not invisage that so soon after its opening at least 100 out of the 188 staff would lose their jobs next year and the opening hours cut by half..something has gone badly wrong here and as usual the people of birmingham will suffer and of course are the last to know...they are also very grateful for all the support the library has been given in trying to overturn the proposed cuts..

lyn
 
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Because most of my research is in London and other parts of the country, I've become quite used to planning a month or so in advance- ordering and planning my trip according to my orders. I haven't had reason to access anything from the archives in Birmingham since they moved, but I can understand that it is frustrating.

I think that it's important to understand that there are two separate things that are affecting access to the archives in the library:
  • the method of accessing the archives and the number of holdings are now using that method
  • the cuts

The method of accessing the archives does seem less than ideal, particularly when less is on general access. But the holdings are safe, in a temperature-controlled environment. Hopefully one day, the system will be improved. Until then, we all have to plan our research, I think :)

The cuts are completely unrelated to the building of the new library. I have explained this elsewhere, but I think it's worth clarifying it here as well:
  • The building of the library was a capital expense, largely funded by a grant from central government, with the rest coming from the capital expenditure 'pot'. It was one of the last major project to receive funding from central gov. when the austerity axe was wielded (in 2010) after the crash of 2008. The cost of building the library is unrelated to the cuts; you cannot use money from capital expenditure projects to plug holes in operating budgets.
  • Running costs (staff, heating etc) are from the operating budget, which is funded by council tax and gov grant (which had been cut). The operating budget has been deeply affected by the equal ops ruling from EU. That ruling was the direct result of the council implementing a grading system that was full of holes, but the payouts have to be funded from the operating budget. Part of it is coming from a 500m loan, but the rest has to be found from savings - hence the huge cuts across the council services.

The cuts to the library service would have happened anyway, to contribute to the payout fund. We would have been left with a leaky building that threatened the integrity of archives and resources on the top floor of the old building. The staff cuts would have still happened and probably been effected by closing the whole floor for several days a week. We were already in the situation where access to the archives section (as opposed to the general local studies section) was restricted to certain times a week (even before they started getting ready for the move). By the way, fixing the old building wouldn't have worked either - that huge cost would have come from the operating budget, causing even further cuts!

I hope that helps to clarify why we are in the situation we are - it's not a happy situation. Without the (in my opinion, avoidable) ruling from the EU, we would have been in a better place :(
 
I've always found the library staff very helpful and I can't fault them in anyway, whether I have been there in person or dealing with them by email. On one occasion I was there and requested three publications, which should have been on the open shelves and weren't. The staff searched diligently for these items and eventually informed me that a staff member on the third floor had taken them without booking them out in the proper way. What was more to the point, the guy was on holiday. They apologised, took my details, and photocopies of the pages I wanted arrived in the post here in Crete about a month later at no charge. That's what I call service - but their actions probably wouldn't be approved of by the upper hierarchy. It's just a shame so many helpful and knowledgeable people are going to be thrown out of work purely through the actions of a few incompetent councillors.

Maurice
 
Personally. I always found the staff both in the Local History section & the Archives extremely helpful & the facilities in the old library user friendly (with the possible exception of access to the archives via the spiral staircase & the months when the escalators were out of action)
While I understand the funding problems, I still maintain that it would have been far cheaper to keep the old library in a good state of repair & updated.
Just because money is available, surely it´s not compulsory to spend it.
I´m old enough to remember the library which was pulled down to make way for the "old"one.
That, to me , was an even bigger crime.
The building was beautiful.
Yes, we have to move with the times, but there are limits to what is generally acceptable & to go ahead, regardless of the opinions of the users is a big mistake.
 
leslam said:
.



The cuts are completely unrelated to the building of the new library. I have explained this elsewhere, but I think it's worth clarifying it here as well:
  • The building of the library was a capital expense, largely funded by a grant from central government, with the rest coming from the capital expenditure 'pot'. It was one of the last major project to receive funding from central gov. when the austerity axe was wielded (in 2010) after the crash of 2008. The cost of building the library is unrelated to the cuts; you cannot use money from capital expenditure projects to plug holes in operating budgets.
  • Running costs (staff, heating etc) are from the operating budget, which is funded by council tax and gov grant (which had been cut). The operating budget has been deeply affected by the equal ops ruling from EU. That ruling was the direct result of the council implementing a grading system that was full of holes, but the payouts have to be funded from the operating budget. Part of it is coming from a 500m loan, but the rest has to be found from savings - hence the huge cuts across the council services.


I hope that helps to clarify why we are in the situation we are - it's not a happy situation. Without the (in my opinion, avoidable) ruling from the EU, we would have been in a better place :(
Click to expand...
Just a thought, when the NEC, NIA etc were built that would have been capital expenditure. The payout fund is compensation for unpaid wages ie operating costs. So capital funds can be used for operating costs?
 
Good point. However, once a capital project is complete (I.e the building is built), it beomes an asset. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing to stop you selling an asset (such as the NEC) to raise money to supplement the operating budget. What you can't do is divert money (a big chunk of which came from central gov grants) from a capital project to supplement the operating budget.
 
Youve got to remember that there are probably some people who regret the demolition of air raid shelters after the war. Come to think of it a large concrete air raid shelter would probably look like that if you put in windows
 
What is the point of having a state of the art,grossly expensive white elephant of an asset, just because you have the money to fund it, then decide that you can´t afford the running costs.
I wouldn´t buy a propety with 30 rooms, standing in 2 acres of land, even if I had the capital if I was only earning the national average wage.
What happened to the old adage of cutting your coat according to your cloth?
 
senoraruz said:
What is the point of having a state of the art,grossly expensive white elephant of an asset, just because you have the money to fund it, then decide that you can´t afford the running costs.
I wouldn´t buy a propety with 30 rooms, standing in 2 acres of land, even if I had the capital if I was only earning the national average wage.
What happened to the old adage of cutting your coat according to your cloth?
Click to expand...


absolutely agree with you senoraruz and if as has been suggested they knew before it was built that there would have to be cuts (and drastic ones at that) that makes it even worse...crikey i may not be the sharpest knife in the draw when it comes to sums but even i can work out that is was bad housekeeping...as i have said before its a bit like buying a rolls royce on HP and knowing you cant afford the petrol to run it...no wonder the city is in financial ruin if this is how things are run.

lyn
 
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I can't find the post now but I recall taking a lot of flack from "New Library supporters" on this forum when I predicted this outcome when the building was first proposed.
 
Two table tennis tables in use today in the amphitheatre.

Repairs on the Discovery Terrace. Installing new paving stones just outside the windows.



Those red chairs haven't stopped being really comfy!


Think The Gallery was closed as a new exhibition was being set up (by the looks of it).





 
Speaking of the central library I have just seen two deemed from the central library now on sale on EBay
Being auctioned off on EBay anybody biding guys you guys whom spend time there is it one you may have sat at ,
Get your memorability now don't know what the bidding started at Astonian,,,,
 
Like you guys in Brum here in Barnstaple we have a newish library,(not quite so grand) like you in Brum the council,(oh we have two of those one for the district and one for the county),are stuck for cash, so they are closing the reference section of the library and moving the archives some 50 miles down to Exeter, so convenient! Then the county council will move into the vacated part of the library, and THEN the plan is to flog off the council house for it to be converted into posh riverside flats.
 
hi jim that will be a bit of a jaunt then to access your archives...seems lots of places are now short of cash...


i was at our library yesterday and as usual the staff very helpful...i once again asked if there is any sign yet of the boxes of index cards which give us details of what photographs they have of buildings being made available to the public in the archives ..staff told me that they do not have the space to put them out because they need new cabinets to put them in...they keep asking but some 16 months later are still waiting...

lyn
 
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hi john welcome back to brum and good luck in your new home...i was at the library today but i was inside not out lol

lyn
 
hi viv the way i read it is the mail are only asking if the chance arose would become a volunteer if they could...cant see it happening as this would i think have to be sanctioned by the council mind you having said that it would not cost them anything in wages so anything is possible but i can just imagine the chaos we would have if untrained staff although for all the right reasons stood in for those who have lost their jobs....as we know this is only the beginning of the massive cuts which will see opening hours cut from 73 hours per week to 40 hours and job losses from 188 to just 88..a few years ago viv i would have given my right arm to work as a volunteer and learn about library work and be surrounded by all that history but now and on principal and in answer to the mails question it is an emphatic NO..as i have said many times before the folk of birmingham have once again been sold down the river...weekend opening hours cut to just 6 hours is ridiculous...people who work full time can only visit at weekends...

lyn
 
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Understand Lyn. Shambolic given it's only been built 18 months. Maybe this campaign is to put pressure on Council. Hard to say where it will all go though. Viv.
 
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