How We Saved Our Library
Wrinklies to the rescue!
The 2010–19 UK Conservative Government (initially in coalition with the Liberal Democrats), led at first by David Cameron, was notable for its programme of austerity that was designed to repair the nation’s finances. A major victim of this policy was local government, which was forced to make budgetary savings in order to account for reductions in grants from central government.
Local authorities are required to ringfence certain areas of spending, such as social services and payment of pensions to former employees, but other areas are “low-hanging fruit” for savings, and one of these is the provision of library services.
In Leicestershire, the blow came in 2014, when the decision was made to make drastic cuts in the employment of library staff, particularly in rural parts of the county. If villages wanted to keep their libraries, they would have to staff them themselves.
A meeting was convened at County Hall at which anyone interested in running their local library on a voluntary basis was invited to put themselves forward. Given that I was only working part-time (one evening a week at De Montfort University in Leicester), and had years of prior experience as a full-time professional librarian, I responded to the call.
