flyers and poster to print off and display in your window, car, local business, tree…! Hope to see you on Saturday!
(if you can’t print but want some flyers and posters, hopefully i’ll get this sorted tomorrow!. Please do take the time to read the post below if you would like more background).
Got a view on what should happen to the library? Help us by filling in the St James St Library Campaign survey here
you can drop it back to the open air library outside St James every Saturday afternoon during March, or email it to stjamesstlibrary@gmail.com by 31st March.
We will be presenting the results to the council in April, when they are meeting to discuss the future of library provision in the St James St area. Many thanks for your help!
Drop in at The Londonist blog to see the latest coverage:
We’re also in Libraries for Life for Londoners.
Fantastic night of Carol singing against the cuts both outside and inside the Town Hall on Wednesday night - big thanks to all of you who came, we counted about 50 people of all ages outside, serenading the councillors by candlelight as they went in. Not bad for something hastily organised in 24 hours to get round the council’s sneaky shifting of meeting timings!
See the video and read the press coverage here
Some of us then went inside and sang joyfully from the public gallery. But rather than stay and listen to our musical rendition of what is going on in Waltham Forest, or even join in, the councillors trooped out of the Council chamber (though some were chuckling) after we’d done a few of our favourites.
Some councillors indicated their support verbally to the campaign to re-open St James St Library and protect services in Waltham Forest more widely - but the acid test will be their votes and actions over the next month or two as the budget setting finalised. We’ll be keeping a close eye, trying to lift the veil of secrecy over decision making and keeping you as informed as possible - now is a great time to be lobbying your councillors via letters, emails, and at their surgeries.
Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!
Yet more coverage of the disastrous mismanagement of WF Libraries all over the local papers this week. The WF Guardian makes the link between destruction of thousands of books and falling local educational standards here , investigates those infamous fishtanks here
plus loads of letters to the Editor here , the front page of this week’s Yellow Advertiser here, .
The national’s are on the case, too. Following The Independent’s coverage last week, angry comments about WF Libraries are even making the national papers’s letters page too. Finally, Private Eye (Clyde Loakes’s favourite reading matter, apparantly) has begun to pick up what is going on in WF Libraries - see this piece from the latest issue.
The council is finalising its budget and voting very shortly (i think on 12th Dec). Here is the text of a letter the Campaign sent to all councillors today, especially Clyde Loakes, Geraldine Reardon and Keith Rayner. (copied also to the local paper and our current MP Neil Gerrard and prospective MP Stella Creasy). Now is a great time to urge the council to spend their money wisely!!!
Today’s national Independent (p55, in the editorial and comment section) carries the following story, about St James Library and Waltham Forest libraries, and how this shows up what is happening to libraries elsewhere - “We desecrate the nations libraries at our peril” . It’s great news that the national media is starting to pick up the tragedy of St James Library (as they call it, rather than St James St Library) and the outrageous culling of books within Waltham Forest libraries.
Wow…thanks to everyone’s messages of support, ideas and suggestions, which has given the St James Library Campaign the encouragement to campaign against what we always knew was a scandal of national proportions… please, keep it coming! (and don’t forget to come along on Sat 8th - fun for all the family!)
The scandal continues on p2 of the WF Guardian and all across the letters page and editorial. The journalist has done a great job of forcing answers out of the council that they weren’t prepared to give to us, despite months of trying.
Hope you will forgive the following little rant - I’m so angry! The Council, whilst pleading poverty, chucks loads of money at overpaid senior managers, expensive consultants, way over budget capital projects, and rubbish computer catalogue & security systems, whilst sacking experienced librarians. The result, not surprisingly, is that libraries are not properly managed, and book purchasing, shelf space, visits and book borrowing all drop sharply. But rather than working to improve this, the council then destroys all books (including valuable ones) that have not been borrowed in a while, and loses loads too. And because they’ve wasted so much money through their total lack of understanding of what libraries do, and don’t, need, they also end up closing libraries like St James St, and reducing staff and actual opening hours further borough-wide.
This is a matter of serious concern to other boroughs, too. If this scandal had occurred just a few months later, we probably wouldn’t have been able to uncover it. Thanks to the wisdom of central government, councils are no longer required to report on how many library books they have - only on things like ‘books borrowed as a proportion of book stock’ (so if you have fewer books, this ‘performance indicator’ will improve)…
You have to wonder if at this rate, there’ll be any books or librarians left in libraries at all, unless we take further action… watch this space! We still haven’t given up on getting St James St re-opened, either - come along on the Sat 8th and show support!
