In April 2015 volunteers in the Handpost area of Newport re-opened the former Stow Hill Library as "Cwtsh". In October last year Maindee Library was re-opened by another group of volunteers. There are now many examples across the UK of successful local community action to save local libraries.

Do libraries matter in the digital age?

So why are people coming forward to keep libraries open and do lending libraries really matter anymore in this digital age?

When it emerged in February 2015 that Newport City Council was planning to close Maindee Library, a public meeting was held to discuss possible future uses for the building. Maindee Unlimited (MU) had recently formed and people at the meeting agreed that this new charity was best placed to take the library on.

In July 2015 MU published a plan to re-open the Maindee Library as a "community hub". The plan proposed that, with the exception of books for early literacy, the "holding and issue of paper based books" would not feature in the new service. The rationale given for this was that the large space taken up by books could be used more profitably to generate income to help pay for running costs.

At the first volunteers meeting held in the library in August 2015, plans to get rid of the books were soundly rejected by the majority of people who had come along to offer their services. They saw the holding and issue of paper based books as an essential function and, by implication, a pre-requisite to their volunteering offer. 

To me, the reason so many libraries were closing was because the "general lending library" was rapidly becoming an outdated model. I could see the argument for holding paper books to support early literacy and the reading habits of older people but, surely, not for the general adult population in this digital age?

So I challenged the idea of maintaining a book lending service. This was clearly not what people wanted to hear and several people voiced their disagreement. I mumbled something about "income targets" and "the need to consider all options" and we left it at that.

The library reopened, with book lending, on October 31st 2105. Many of those people who disagreed with me back then are, a year on, still successfully running a general book lending service in Llyfrgell Maindee Library. There are now over 500 members and more joining each week.

I have also now completely changed my position. This revision started soon after the library re-opened. I saw a young man came in to borrow a driving test theory book. He needed the book and had come to us for it. That made sense to me. My position started to shift.

As time went on I began to notice that some people came into the library just to look at books. No-one asked them what they wanted, or why they were there. Often they did not borrow any books. They just wanted to look at them. This led to another shift.

For more regular borrowers, I started to see that the cyclic process of browsing, borrowing and returning books (measured out by our arcane system of date stamps and library cards) formed a sort of rhythmn for our members. A regular ...

to be completed....

Handpost Community Library Association: www.cwtsh.org

Maindee Unlimited: Maindee Library Interim Business Case - July 2015