It only took a bit of twitter nagging, filling in the contact us form three times and a polite, non-sweary email and The Society of Chief Librarians have finally got back to me on their position on replacing staff with volunteers in public libraries.
What is interesting is the SCL its also updating is position, no doubt after CILIP had to change theirs after so many of its members were rightly upset.
What this hopefully means is that those of us who understand that libraries only work when they are professionally staffed are all now publically in the same position, volunteers can and do make libraries better but they cannot run them and it doesn't save money. Vaizey can tall gibberish all he wants and throw a few million about but the public library service is being decimated and we know on which line of the sand nearly everyone is now. I'm really glad the SCL has responded and are changing their position, my enemies of libraries venn diagram I carry round in my head is getting smaller all the time.
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