I recently went into Poole library with poster for a local event. I did a recce. There was a large noticeboard where there were about 18 A4 posters on the wall. I took stock. Not one was time sensitive. They all dealt with NHS or BCP propaganda.
I took my poster to the desk and asked if they would put it up. She said they would consider it. I said I’d like it on the main noticeboard, she said she would ask.
Then I disappeared round a corner. I saw her put my poster in an A4 binder of events.
On the way out I saw another librarian. I took out another poster and asked her if I could put it up. She told me they had a policy.
The policy was familiar to me. I pointed out that I had been in Boscombe Library and they had a good scheme. You could pay for your poster to be displayed if it was for a business activity.
I told her how I had once sat in my local library and watched a young man ask to put up his poster advertising his gig.
Do you have to pay to go to the gig?’ ‘Yes’ he replied.
‘Then you can’t put up your poster.’
That’s how supportive the library is of the local community
I told the librarian that my poster had a claim to be put up because it was date sensitive. It would only be up for a few weeks. The others were just generic.
She reiterated that the library had a poster policy and she would send it to me.
She did sent it to me. I told her that I was asking her to question whether the policy really served the local community. BCP is supposed to serve us. Their noticeboard served BCP. Would they consider introducing the Boscombe policy?
I added that if not, I would be a voice calling for the closure of libraries, because this was in microcosm the problem: they had no interest in adapting to the needs of the community now.
What an unpleasant person I am. My little gripe leads to a call to close all the libraries in BCP. How selfish. How crass. How philistine.
I am a voracious reader and a published writer. My argument is that libraries used to be the only places where you could access the best literature. Books were expensive and difficult to find.
Nowadays you can download most of finest works of literature in the Bodleian library, on your phone, for nothing.
The majority of books that fill the library shelves are available for under £1 on Amazon – that’s a dumbing down problem.
If you go to a public library like Bournemouth, it’s deserted. Gone are the days when 30 people would be wrestling for the magazines and newspapers.
When my children were very young children, I would take them to wriggle and rhyme and there was a super display of children’s books and puzzles.
The crazy COVID restrictions killed all that. It never recovered.
The opening hours of our local library are capricious and ridiculous. They are closed as often at they are open during the week. They have a couple of internet terminals these days, walls of health propaganda and books for middle-class busybodies who could well afford to buy them for themselves.
As a former journalist, it’s been painful to see the demise of magazines and newspapers, but it’s a brutal commercial reality.
In their heyday libraries were wonderful places with stern librarians insisting on silence, card indexes and access to rare books. Nowadays, with their self-checkouts and fine systems, they offer an even more unpleasant customer experience that visiting the supermarket.
Being part of any organisation that is declining is no fun. Constant cuts, redundancies and restructuring.
Libraries are being maintained out of nostalgia and resistance to social change.
I would lock the doors of every library in BCP.
Then we could have a period of a few years where the real needs of the community would emerge.
And some philanthropists, not the dead hand of the council, can endow a new institution which will fulfil those genuine needs.
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