I wasn't going to write anything on this but sadly I am far
too angry after days of thinking about it that I have to vent. In my head I
have a little Venn diagram of the enemies of libraries and it has who you what
you would expect in it: David Cameron, Big Society, Keith Mitchell, LGA, Ed
Vaizey and the DCMS etc. In the past few days CILIP has crept into the enemies
box. The reason for this is their stance on job substitution and using volunteers
in public libraries.
They have changed their policy on job substitution as to not
be too rigid. Here is the text:
“However
Council agreed at its meeting in February 2010 that this policy was too rigid
and failed to reflect present day realities where significant expenditure
reductions had to be made. Some authorities had already introduced a number of
voluntary-managed libraries (e.g. Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire) and there
was also a strong policy steer to increase community engagement in the running
and management of libraries that had emerged before the recession, for instance
as part of the Big Lottery Community Libraries Programme. “
CILIP are the chartered institute of library and information
professionals. The vision of clip is:
"A fair and economically prosperous society is
underpinned by literacy, access to information and the transfer of knowledge.”
And their mission and the reason they exist is to:
“Promote and support the people who work to deliver this
vision.”
And:
“Be the leading voice for information, library and knowledge
practitioners, working to advocate strongly, provide unity through shared
values and develop skills and excellence.”
CILIP’s membership is libraries in all sectors not just
public libraries and they provide lots of expensive training and courses. I’m
not a librarian so I have no idea how good they are at this stuff. Sadly their
main goal to promote and support the people who deliver their vision they have
betrayed.
This policy only applies to public sector libraries and
despite their vision to promote the people who pay their membership fees they
are happy to allow those people to be replaced by volunteers like me. There is
so much wrong with this stance that I have to make it into a list:
1.
Rural libraries are mainly the ones in the cuts
firing line, replacing a couple of part-time library managers (not librarians)
doesn’t save actually save any money because of the number of volunteers
required. I can prove this is the case in Oxfordshire and I think the same
applies elsewhere.
2.
How will CILIP continue to exist when its fee
paying members are replaced by volunteers?
3.
Cameron himself is quoted as saying “the big
society isn’t about cuts, it’s about making existing services better”
4.
Volunteering England is specifically against job
substitution of paid staff with volunteers, quote from the chief exec: “There is a
danger that volunteers are seen as a way of reducing costs, and that undermines
staff jobs and is extremely damaging to the perception of volunteering.”
5.
You have handed the ideological
morons who live in a bubble of simplicity a massive weapon to sack your
members. However nuanced and pragmatic your intention this has severely
undermined the library campaigners up and down the country.
6.
When the economy recovers
will you reverse this stance, this seems to be the only reason for it?
I feel like I have been
kicked in the teeth by this, so much time campaigning to keep professional staff in the rural libraries against the misguided ideological
attacks and its completely undermined by the professional body for
librarians who believe its ok to replace their members with volunteers. I’m
going to email the current members of the CILIP council and ask them why they
are against libraries.
I'm also going to volunteer to be chief librarian of Oxfordshire County Council, this should save about 5 of the threatened libraries.
Some links if you want to
read a more coherent and well-argued dissection of this nonsense:
Ian Clark’s storify:
The volunteering England policy:
And the ill-advised nonsense from CILIP:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9r-dNr4kPL0WGJHcUZMeThEQXc/edit
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