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Library Of Birmingham 2013

  • Thread starter Thread starter BernardR
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May I drawn your attention to this article:- https://www.thebookseller.com/news/8k-library-jobs-lost-due-closures-325187

Six years is a bit of an understatement as I was discussing this very subject with various library groups several years before I retired from the library systems business in 2001. Around that same time Birmingham Libraries were discussing the new library, but on a different site to the current one - somewhere down near New Canal Street if I remember right. So the Authority were well aware of the shrinking nature of libraries long before they committed to spending all that money on the present building. I might also add that the company I worked for employed 240 people when I retired and it is now down to about 50.

The problem is that it is the Archives, or lack of access to, that concerns most BHF members more than the library itself. Most other counties and cities have managed to keep libraries and archives as separate entities - would this have made any difference in Birmingham's case? I doubt it.

Maurice
 
Can someone tell me whether archive usage is a major or minor part of library work? What roughly is the percentage who use archive services and what percentage use lending etc? Have no feel for this at all. Viv.
 
Viv,

I don't even know whether such figures are available, although I suppose the number of people holding CARN cards would be a partial guide. However, I would have thought that the vast majority of the non-local users are visiting to use the Archives rather than wander around the Library itself. But lack of statistics is a major problem.

Even here in Aghios Nikolaos, we used to have an annual Art Festival where artists from all over Greece submitted their works, which were judged, prizes awarded, and then the works of art remained on display for two weeks. In the penultimate year, the Council said that they could not afford to staff the building. Our Foreign Residents Association offered to provide volunteers and we arranged a shift system to cover the two weeks. I was amazed when I found out that in previous years the Council had not bothered to keep even a simple tally of how many visitors the event had had. At the end of the event that year we presented them with a tally for every day and a breakdown as to whether they were tourists or locals and where from. That seemed to amaze them and yet very little effort was involved.

Maurice
 
Very surprised Maurice. It's a basic piece of information needed in any successful business to know who your customers are. I wonder therefore on what stats/customer info/usage info the original plans for major investment in the new library were based. Viv.
 
Viv,

The libraries extract stats for CIPRA, but I think this is mainly to do with the books, though records are kept of how many times the library tickets are used and how many times a title is borrowed. That doesn't tell us anything about the Archives, which is a somewhat different kettle of fish. Much of the data accesed in the Archives is via microfiche or microfilm or via photocopies of documents, old maps, etc. Most of the data they are dealing with is long out of copyright. The Archives system is a separate computer system with altogether different requirements. Whilst in our case we provided the software for both systems, it was done by different companies on different sites and there is no integration between the two. As I mentioned, they're not normally accessible within the same building.

Edit: I should have mentioned that most of the lending system is mechanised and most of the cataloguing is now done externally. This is a somewhat different system to Archives

Maurice
 
Hi wam,

I registered with CIPFA, but it seems they don't give anything away for free, you have to buy them by the year with no indication of how much detail they contain.

Maurice
 
wam/Viv,

It seems these statitics contain:-

The profiles enable you to examine how your service costs and performance compare to your peers, providing key decision-makers with a quick, inexpensive way to engage with the most recent CIPFAstats data to support evidence based decision-making.


The profiles look at the following key aspects of library provision:

  • Numbers of libraries and service users.
  • Costs of running library services.
  • Levels of staffing and volunteers.
  • Annual book and audio-visual issues.
  • Stock and acquisition levels.
  • Performance in relation to speed of requests.
  • User satisfaction.

And it is going to cost you £475 for a copy! But that doesn't help you with the Archives.

Maurice
 
Thanks Maurice and Wam. The old survey suggests only 41% of its sample (5,000) used a library. At a very simple level, I'm incredibly surprised that funds were justified to build such a grand library costing millions to serve a little over 40% of the population. Maybe they believed somehow it would attract more users. A few surprises in the report's stats suggest there's little difference in usage across age groups, people on lower incomes are less likely to use a library and 'research' is a secondary activity with 'book borrowing' the main activity. Still fail to see how the new library investment was ever (financially) justified. It would be interesting to see usage data now - but of course the figures would be even lower as access to services has been cut. And it sounds that the way the services are currently being delivered is they're not meeting the need. A disappointment. Viv.
 
5 weeks in and i am still waiting for an email from the archives dept to say if they have any photos of 2 schools i am researching..once again i will say that this library is just not fit for purpose..

lyn
 
Doesn't look too good for the future of their archives then Lyn. Researchers will become very frustrated by a wait that long. Some will just give up which is one more person unlikely to use the library service in the future. Does not bode well. Viv.
 
i agree viv...when we knew we were to have a new library i had a feeling (and i wish i had been wrong) that it would go belly up so i did intense research at the old library for 2 years and the same for 1 year after the new library opened...it was at this point that things started to decline in the archives dept..i am still so very angry about it as we were promised that the archives dept would not suffer in anyway...it is now so long winded to access material that i just can not be bothered to go again and unless it is for something very important i wont...as i said earlier i have waited 5 weeks with no reply just for them to let me know if they have any photos i am after..back in the day the whole process would have only taken 5 days and that would include me making an appointment to go and view photos..

lyn
 
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The only solution to this problem involves more capital expenditure. This involves complete digitisation of all the archives, which would allow the storage of the archives in fireproof air-conditioned premises on a much cheaper out of town site. As capital is the one thing they haven't got and PFI is not the way to pay for it, the only alternative is privatisation, i.e. "selling the records" to some outfit like Ancestry, DC Thompson (FindMyPast) or Google, who would do the expensive digitisation for free and provide an income to the Local Authority.

There are, of course, many downsides. Many staff would eventually lose their jobs, though a small number would have to be retained to handle äccess to "closed" records such as inquests, poor quality data that didn't copy well, etc. Joe Public would lose their right of free access as they would have to subscribe to Ancestry and/or FindMyPast or whatever, which many of us already do. The aforementioned private companies would be happy to pay for such things as parish records, but may not be so keen to acquire obscure company records, etc. There would no doubt be problems with copyright, etc.

It's already started, of course. Staffordshire parish records have been sold to FindMyPast, for instance. But for the project to achieve its aim of ridding the local authority of the major costs of running archives, you can't just sell part of the stock, and the most profitable part at that. Staffordshire may just have shot themselves in the foot!

I've probably left a lot of important points out in my attempt to simplify the project. Apart from genealogists & researchers, who else uses the Archives, for instance? But I don't see any other real alternative if the Council want to reduce this part of the budget, other than the present reduction in service.

Maurice
 
hello maurice hope you are well.... pure and simple...at the end of the day the problem is the lack of staff...they just cant cope with the publics demands..i dont think it matters much how much we chew the old cud on this one there is never going to be an easy cheap solution the public will always suffer as the council have no money...its just a great pity that the library that promised so much has let us down so badly

lyn x
 
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I think digitisation is the only way - and of course the most logical in this digital age. It'll safely store the archives for the future. I've often thought that educational establishments (schools, colleges, universities etc) should be more involved in helping to digitise the records, for free but closely supervised. The current experienced archivists could supervise of course. Surely we can't just sit on antiquated systems of archiving and do nothing more if we want to preserve our heritage. Viv.
 
I agree Viv. only thing is most digitisation is likely to be by by commercial company which will then charge , in some occasions a lot, for access.
 
i agree viv but the library holds billions of archive material to digitalise it all would take years and years and staff would be needed for that...since carl chinn lost his job at the uni of birmingham he had no choice but to lodge all his archive material at the library as he had nowhere else to store it but even he knows it most likely will never see the light of day...such a shame...

also take your point mike but who would pay for it to be digitalised...the city just does not have any spare money they cant even afford a few cabinets to put the warwickshire index cards out and at the end of the day the people of birmingham should be able to visit our library to access the archives..we must remember that not everyone is on the net

lyn
 
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Lyn,

I'm not too bad thanks and it's just nice to wake up in the morning! Long may it last.

I agree - like most governments and councils, too many heads buried in the sand and too much effort involved to seek a solution. We live in a lazy world, and the ones telling us we're lazy are the laziest!

Maurice
 
hi maurice glad all is well with you and yes i agree with you completely...i know its sounds like i am always moaning and i am lol but i am also a realist who has seen first hand just how much the library has gone downhill since it opened and i just dont think there is any way at least in the very near future that things will get any better and there is nothing any of us can do about it

lyn x
 
Viv,

Many of us would volunteer, but councils and governments always throw up barriers. There are so many examples of this in recent years that I don't even need to quote them. It was the same with transcribing - ask any member on the Committe of FreeReg. The same thing happened with Staffordshire and five minutes later they were "sold" to FindMyPast. I'm sure there are many other examples.

Think what ten trusted volunteers could scan, supervised by one member of staff in a secure room in a couple of hours. Scanning is far more productive than transcribing and involves minimal checking.

Maurice
 
Lyn,

I don't think there's anything in the Forum Rules that says we can't whinge as long as it is on topic! LOL

Maurice
 
sospiri said:
Lyn,

I don't think there's anything in the Forum Rules that says we can't whinge as long as it is on topic! LOL

Maurice
Click to expand...

oh thats ok then maurice we are deffo on topic with this one lol..just going back to volunteers..the new library has plenty of them who do their very best but most likely know no more about library work than i do but is this right that a library that cost so much to build should be run this way...

lyn
 
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Lyn, I don't think you are whingeing!
I agree with what you have said. I had a feeling too, that things would not be the same and I did as much family research as I could before the other library closed.
The first time I went to the new library I could not use those dreadful electronic cupboards because other people were inside them. Next time I needed to move the whole row to get what I wanted and I was not able to as someone went inside before I could move them all. This is all material that used to be freely available and now it's shut away, I haven't even tried to use the Archives since then. It sounds hopeless.
The later opening times are not convenient either!! I used to queue up at 9am to use a "reader" until I had to leave at 12, it's hardly worth trying now. (I know it's on a different system now.)
Rant over!
rosie.
 
ahh yes rosie electoral roll booths..like you say all the e rolls books used to be out on the shelves at the old library now only one person at a time can use any one of the 6 electronic booths they have...fancy having to wait for someone to find the e roll book they are looking for..get out of the booth and close it before the next person can enter a booth...i posted ages ago that on talking to the staff i was told that they did not want these booths installed they wanted the books readily available on the shelves..they knew it would not work...right thats my rant over.....for now lol

lyn
 
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Rosie,

I've never seen these "cupboards" because I haven't managed to get to Brum for three years or so, but they sound horrendous. Some supplier obviously sold them a pag in a poke! We really shouldn't be having to use oldhat mechanical devices like microfiche and microfilm readers in this digital age. It takes needless ages to find anything unless you know the date and page number and people are queueing up to use them. Once digitised, everything can be indexed automatically. Less time spent searching, more devices available to search.

Maurice
 
they are horrendous maurice..as i tried to explain in my last post its 6 booths all electronically attached to each other..each containing different years of e roll books ie...1948 to 1958...so what you do is punch some buttons to get into the booth that you want once inside you have to find the year and area you are looking for and take it outside the booth...then the next person waiting can close that booth and get into the booth they want...in other words only one booth will open at any one time...so whats happens then is if its busy a line is formed...so time consuming if there are lots of people wanting to look at the e rolls..in the end i clocked what to do..if i wanted more than one e roll book from the same booth once inside i would take out 3 or 4 at a time which thinking about it is not quite fair to those who maybe want the same books/book as i have taken out..basically its a mess

lyn
 
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Maurice
The "cupboards" are miniature ( around 4 ft long shelves) versions of the shelving they often have in the stacks at libraries where you have to press a button to get the shelf to move to open a space to get in. Its fine in the stacks, when probably only a few people a day want to go in, but useless for something that is used continually.

Lyn - SNAP
 
lol mike its very hard to describe these contraptions but i think between us people will get the picture..

lyn
 
Mike & Lyn,

It sounds horrendous and something akin to the Spanish Inquisition! I guess this is it what happens when you try to provide something for free!

Maurice
 
sospiri said:
Mike & Lyn,

It sounds horrendous and something akin to the Spanish Inquisition! I guess this is it what happens when you try to provide something for free!

Maurice
Click to expand...


its not far off that maurice...i know i was never a fan of the design of the old library and i have to say i am glad its gone..well almost gone but there is an old saying..be careful what you wish for...i would now give anything to have our old one back warts and all at least it was fit for purpose so far as the public were concerned...in my estimation this new library was built as some sort of show stopper...a building to attract non brummies to...its just a pity that they forgot all about the good people of birminghams needs to have a functional library with plenty of staff and decent opening hours

lyn
 
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