libraries

Why we should close libraries

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Recently there was a House of Lords debate on the role of libraries and independent bookshops, with Lord Bird – founder of the Big Issue – warning Government that if they keep closing libraries they’ll have to build more prisons and homeless shelters.

Libraries, added Baroness Rebuck, Labour peer and chair of Penguin Random House publishing group, are a bedrock of social mobility and social cohesion, and should be seen as key community centres, where alongside books, people can rely on other essential life services.

I agree with the view that we must protect essential services, knowledge and education for those most disadvantaged in our communities. I agree there is a wider, long term impact if we don’t.  

I don’t agree that libraries should receive an automatic ‘get out of austerity free’ card, merely on the grounds of being libraries.

The thing is, that this ‘community’ role is not in fact part of libraries’ official statutory duties. Not all of them are living up to it. But all of them are taking credit for it.

Furthermore, I need to point out that knowledge is no longer just found in books. Increasingly, knowledge, education, history, news and even fiction, are found online. I would go as far as to say that talking about bookshops in the same breath as libraries is particularly unhelpful. Books are not synonymous with knowledge, and they are certainly not synonymous with community.

In my view, libraries need to work beyond books to really become the community hubs Baroness Rebuck already gives them credit for being. They should be about social inclusion, providing learning and training opportunities to meet the needs of the communities they serve. Digital skills and digital inclusion are now a vital part of that remit – and it’s a part that was curiously missing from the Lord’s debate.

Some libraries are doing an amazing job of supporting the needs of their community, using digital and other means to engage and empower excluded and vulnerable groups. They’re working closely with Jobcentres, Citizens Advice Bureaux, GPs, social and sheltered housing organisations, faith groups, community centres and charities. They’re offering digital skills, jobs clubs, hosting community workshops, mother and toddler groups, school programmes, local history exhibitions and much, much more.

These, these are the community hubs. Online, offline, on the ground, in real life.

Other libraries are not.

They are insular, don’t integrate with other community groups or services, barely integrate with the council that runs them, and have a cultural resistance to change or modification. These libraries, I believe, deserve to close. I understand that change at a micro level in isolation is very hard. But the fact is these are organisations that have now consistently failed to make the most of the considerable advantage of their position and long-term funding.

From my perspective, it’s time this long-term funding should be channeled to the libraries – and other community organisations – really playing the role of community hubs. The organisations whose whole remit and reason for existence is about providing access to knowledge, learning, advice and other vital support services.

I want to make it really clear at this point that I love libraries. But I love them when they’re fulfilling their potential. When they are not, I believe they are bringing the institution down. I believe they are letting local people down. And I’m fed up of seeing them get a free pass to do so when other community hubs – community centres – are also at the brink of closures, and also faced with the really pointy end of the local council cuts.

During better economic times, some libraries have grown lazy. Austerity has been a shock to them. Now they really need to look beyond their doors and respond to their communities, to modernise, to think outside of the box (or book). And they have to prove that they’re doing more, for less money, for more people, and most importantly for the ones who need them the most.

That’s where I think Tinder Foundation can help. It’s our job to make good things happen in communities with digital technology. Some of the best UK online centres in our network are libraries. They are working tirelessly to make life better for local people, and digital has become a key way in which they are connecting people to the services, skills, and opportunities they need.

To do so they’re making use of our products and services (like our popular learning platform Learn My Way), our Management Information systems to track and prove their impact, and they’re taking part in our projects, pilots and campaigns (like this last week’s National Get Online Week) to engage with new audiences, new partners and new intermediaries. In fact 97% of our partners believe that it is only by working with other community organisations that they can become ‘community hubs’. You can read more about some of those partnerships in action in our recent Library Digital Inclusion Action Research Report.

I believe we can help libraries be better. I believe we can help libraries to be places Lord Bird, Baroness Rebuck and more importantly – local people – would be truly proud of. I believe we can make libraries so strong, so useful, and so essential that no one in their right mind would ever close another one.

But unless we act to change and create the library service of the future – unless we face up to the fact not all of it is working all of the time and cut out the bits that are failing – the vision Lord Bird set out of no libraries, higher walls, more prisons and more shelters, will still come to pass.

So let’s rise together to meet the challenge we’ve all been set.

Calling England’s libraries, the time to plan for the future is now

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Back in October 2015 we launched a six-month project called the Library Digital Inclusion Fund in consultation with the Leadership for Libraries Taskforce, funding 16 library services in our network of community partners to run innovative schemes with the aim of increasing their digital inclusion activities, thus increasing their potential and cementing their place in society. Yesterday we launched our research findings from that project, proving that libraries’ community roots and partnerships can address social and digital exclusion – but that more needs to be done.

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The library sector seems to be suffering an existential crisis. They are facing tough times. This new project has established that libraries can, with help, reach those most in need (the 12.6 million people in the UK lacking basic digital skills), helping to connect them to digital information and skills. They work from the ground up and often have the resources – free-to-use WiFi and technology, such as laptops and tablets – that learners need. This makes them an integral part of communities everywhere and to lose any one of them is a great loss. Libraries need to live up to their enormous potential before time runs out. But what can we do?

England’s libraries need a solid digital inclusion strategy

The library sector needs to look ahead and develop a plan for the future. A key element is securing investment to make sure they have the most up-to-date equipment and services. During this year’s Be Online campaign I visited Leeds Libraries and went with them on an outreach session to visit a lovely lady called Molly. It was Molly’s first day with the project – she was learning about the internet through the Libraries@Home service and borrowing an iPad with a SIM card (which was developed as part of the Libraries Digital Inclusion Fund project). Without the proper investment, services such as this will no longer exist, and those already suffering social exclusion will be worse off as a result.

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We also need to think about how libraries can plug into other services to help communities and individuals to thrive. For example libraries could work together with local social housing providers to bring their outreach services to tenants who are otherwise unable to access technology and the online world. This kind of partnership would benefit libraries in so many ways, not least by helping them to prove their worth to local authorities, funders and the wider world, in terms of social impact and economic, digital-by-default support.

Now here comes the stats bit (you knew it would be in here somewhere). We’ve done a few calculations to work out the potential savings to local and national government in the areas where the library services participating in the project are based. Based on what we know about the way our learners shift from using face-to-face and telephone services to online channels, we would expect potential cost savings of more than £800,000 per year just through the project beneficiaries alone. If similar low-scale activities to those which took place throughout the project were implemented across all 151 library services in England, a potential £7.5 million per year of cost savings could be achieved.

Utilising technology and making plans to advance their digital work shows that libraries aren’t just about books any more – it shows that they’re moving with the times and planning for the future. I believe that libraries are not out-dated and not a thing of the past; I believe that libraries are an essential part of communities all across the UK and that they all have the potential to mould themselves and adapt to the developing technological world.

Our project supported more than 1,600 people to improve their digital skills at over 200 branch libraries. Target audiences included elderly people, families in poverty, disabled people and the long term unemployed, with activities ranging from job search skills to keeping in touch; connecting with essential government services to managing long term health conditions; understanding benefits to following hobbies.

Libraries may be an old concept but they are by no means obsolete. At Tinder Foundation we believe that we can help libraries with investment and strategy and this research very much shows that. The time to start planning for the future is now – let’s do it together.

Read our Library Digital Inclusion Fund Action Research Project evaluation report here.

The important role of libraries in a digital world

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At the end of last week, I was lucky enough to find myself with not one, but three meetings about one of my favourite things – libraries. I attended the CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) MMIT AGM on Thursday to give a presentation about the role of libraries in digital citizenship, and then on Friday I visited Nottingham Libraries where I caught a glimpse of the digital inclusion work they’re delivering, as well as attended a meeting at the Arts Council. All of these visits further cemented something I’ve been talking about for quite a while – just how important the role of libraries is to communities, as well as in the digital world.

The CILIP MMIT Group (part of CILIP – the Chartered Institute of Library Professionals) are embarking on a year where they will really be focussing on digital inclusion, so I thought I’d share what my main recommendations for libraries are, following my discussions with them:  

  • Use existing resources: Become a UK online centre, explore Learn My Way – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when we’ve already done lots of the hard work.
  • Work with partners: Invite local partners to come into the library to support users, or go out to partners to deliver – other UK online centres, health professionals, or other local groups and clubs are all people to think about.
  • Design around local needs: Think about the hooks that work for your audience group. Health always has broad appeal, but things like family history may work well for older people, or employability for young people. Take a look at the resources on Learn My Way for some tips.
  • Talk to each other: Use our Digital Libraries Hub Ning to talk to other libraries who can share some great ideas with you.
  • Read the Doing Digital Inclusion: Libraries Handbook for more inspiration.
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Delivering my speech at the CILIP MMIT AGM

One real highlight of last week’s trip was my visit to Nottingham Libraries where I was kindly hosted by Sarah Coulson, Commercial Library Lead for Nottingham Libraries. We headed over to Aspley Library to see their first ever Discover Digital workshop. It’s a Basic Digital Skills course, which is one of 30 being delivered as part of the funding Nottingham Libraries received from our Libraries Digital Inclusion Fund project.

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Visiting Aspley Library

 

As always, the best part of the visit was talking to the learners. There were ten in all, and they were all very keen to learn about how to use a tablet to access the internet. It was interesting to see how some of them found the touchscreen difficult to use, although it feels very intuitive to a frequent web user like me. I met one man who benefits from the internet already, but only through children and grandchildren, who weren’t patient enough to support him to learn but were happy to do his internet transactions for him. He’s now on the path to learning to do it himself.

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Chatting to the learners and hearing about their experiences was lovely

We then made our way to Nottingham Central Library for a quick look around and to see the digital inclusion work they’re doing on a day-to-day basis, and it was interesting to see their co-location with the benefits team.

It’s not only about lending books

Both of these visits made me think a lot about libraries and their role in today’s society. Towards the end of last year I read on the BBC website that the number of libraries in the UK had fallen by 2.6% in 2014-2015, which means that 105 have closed down (or become community run) in just a year. This really struck a chord with me, as I feel very passionate about libraries and their role in communities. They’re not just places to borrow books, but are social hubs – somewhere you can take your children, a place where you can use a computer if you don’t have access to one at home, and a place where you can learn. It’s really important to me personally that Tinder Foundation do the most we possibly can for libraries to support them in their evolving role in the digital world we now live in.

What we’ve done already

We’ve already done a lot to support this – recently creating an online community for libraries to meet, network and share information in the form of our Digital Libraries Hub, which I have mentioned above and which has really taken off since it’s launch at the end of November. A lot of the original members who joined were part of our Libraries Digital Inclusion Fund Project but we’re now at almost 100 members with people joining from as far afield as Australia! It’s clear that it’s more than just Britain’s libraries who are keen to jump on board the digital inclusion rollercoaster.

Embracing digital

Almost all public libraries in England will have free public WiFi by the end of March, and many have new technology and state-of-the-art facilities, including Fab Labs and 3D printers. It’s clear that embracing digital inclusion is the way forward for modern-day libraries – and lots are already doing so. My visit to Nottingham is hopefully the first of many library visits for me in 2016 and I’m making it my goal for Tinder Foundation to work even more closely with libraries over the next year, and to help further accelerate their digital journey.

Obamacare: Cash poor, health poor, digital poor. Can we help? Yes we can

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A few bugs in the Obamacare website is not the real story here. It’s the fact that, according to Pew Internet, 48 million Americans don’t use the internet at all and millions more can’t do online transactions. Tinder Foundation is a UK non-profit with a proven solution to help millions to get online and use Government services. A year ago I would have said that our success wasn’t relevant to this story unfolding over the pond but now I know that it is – the stats tells the story. In the US and the UK the people who are offline are basically the same demographic and have the same barriers: 50/50 of offliners are over/under 65 years of age; around 40% live in households on very low incomes; and about 50% have a low educational attainment (no high school diploma in the US and don’t have 5 GCSEs in the UK). Lack of perceived relevance and not having the skills to use the internet are the two main barriers. If the problems are the same then the solution could be too.

The correlation between those who are the ‘digital poor’ – who don’t and can’t use the web – and poor health is huge. Just looking at life expectancy is a clear indicator: in London the average age at death ranges from 71 in Tottenham Green to 88 in Queen’s Gate and in Washington DC life expectancy for the poor is 71 years and for the education professional it’s 83 years.

The cost of healthcare is not something we have to worry about in the UK, we’re lucky to have the NHS so much so we often take it for granted. If you fall ill in the US it’s down to you to foot the bill – unless you have health care insurance. It is estimated that between 32-50 million Americans don’t have any cover and with the average visit to the emergency room costing £780/$1,265 it can be expensive. Unsurprisingly the number one reason for bankruptcy in the US is health care costs. So Obamacare is there to help people who are cash poor, and who will in all likelihood suffer health inequality, and will also suffer digital exclusion.

Tinder Foundation is lucky to be working with NHS England to tackle the ‘digital poor’ so that they can benefit in the drive for better health information, health prevention, and more conversations about health – all to be online. Our work with our 5000 hyperlocal partners in the UK online centres network will increase the web literacy for those digital poor so that both have the skills to use it and know that it can improve their and their families’ health. Tie that together with essential tools such as the free Learn My Way online courses helps people to learn as well as local partners to track that learning using the data analytics. I think this is a model that could help Americans to not just register for Obamacare but also to access online information to keep them healthy too.

We’ve helped over 1 million people at a unit cost of £30/$50, and I know our model could work for much higher numbers of people where there is a collective will to make it happen. This kind of effort, at the kind of scale that’s needed, takes time, fantastic partnership building on the ground, and persuasive and focused leadership.

It’s easy to see that the introduction of Obamacare should benefit millions of people. Stop talking about the bugs. Bugs in a website are a temporary problem and I’m sure there are hundreds of programmers busily fixing it right now. It’s the 48 million Americans who don’t use the web that is a more difficult problem to fix.