There are  activities across the country including all Wokingham Borough libraries.

Click here for information on the planned activities including crafts, coffee mornings and talks.

Brian Gamble, Assistant Director – Culture at Birmingham City Council will speak on “Libraries, the Community Hub & Service needs in the Online age.” He will acknowledge the severe budgetary restraints but regards many of his senior colleagues are maintaining an outdated view of local libraries and their role in the community and fail to grasp the concept of libraries as community hubs and thus fail to commit the necessary funding.

The SELMS Consortium in which 11 library authorities have built a framework with Civica as a specialist service provider and technical facilitator will be the focus for discussion on Shared Services. Wokingham libraries were a founder member of the consortium but have subsequently withdrawn on ‘value for money’ grounds but still use the library management software.

In the seminar entitled “Reduce Costs, Balance Staffing Levels & Drive Service Improvements through Outsourcing” Simon Parkes, Director of Library and Learning at Civica envisages that many libraries in future will be partially or completely outsourced to private sector companies such as Civica. This move will transfer libraries’ investment needs from capital budgets to operational expenditure. ‘Balance staffing levels’ is a euphemism for getting rid of staff as the main means for reducing costs.

The final seminar is on “How Do You Exploit Technologies & Collaborative Working to Re-invent the Community Library?” It looks to changes in publishing and how we consume written material in electronic formats that will force libraries to re-consider how they provide information and charge for it. The centrally-driven mandates for community outreach as well as trends towards online information and study is forcing them to re-evaluate how they manage loans, collections and front desk services. Through exploiting technology and taking a collaborative approach through service integration can help re-shape the libraries of tomorrow and increase both the physical and virtual footfall.

The seminars will present strong cases to local government to encourage outsourcing to the private sector. The library seminars do not appear to acknowledge the vital need for professional staff to design and manage the programme of change that the potential contractors envisage.

For full details of the conference see www.civicaconference.co.uk

We are dedicated to letting you know about  the proposals to outsource the borough’s entire library services

We will publish a timetable of meetings, tenders and community activity relating to this proposal

We will share documentation as it becomes available