Deprivation Index

I got sent a link to this interactive map of England today. Dark red shows the most deprived areas of England, dark green shows the wealthiest. 

Consultation in Matson

A Consultation day in Matson has suddenly appeared! 

Thursday 23rd February 10am until 5pm at the Library. 

More Questions for GCC

At a meeting of the Matson and Robinswood Neighbourhood Partnership today (1st Feb) the library was again discussed. It was fed back to our new 'area leader' (not sure what that means) that the consultation process hasn't been well received: the on-line form being complicated where it needs to be simple and over-simplifying 'choices' so that real debate is not included. It feels like a pretend consultation.

No one has yet suggested who might go into the present building as a partner and it was not clear what would happen if no partner came to an agreement with the council. So there is much yet to discover.

One of the issues that a partnership would raise is that of how a Partnership Library would maintain their stock and to what level. I've been sent these questions:

• What proportion of brand new stock will each type of library be entitled to expect and approximately how frequently?
• How frequently will stock be refreshed from other libraries for each tier of the service?
• On what basis will decisions about the nature of stock going to each library be decided?

Library Consultation in Gloucester

There will be only one venue in Gloucester for the library consultation Road show it will be somewhere in the Eastgate Mall on Wednesday 8th February from 10am to 4pm.

You can fill in an on-line survey at the same website here  or try here.

I've just done the survey myself. It's not all straightforward. In some of the questions they give you 10 points and ask you to share them out among a set of priorities. You need to read through carefully.

One of the questions asks you to choose between community-run library or no library. You do not have to answer any question if you don't like the options which are fairly narrow.

If you do not want to fill in an online survey there are other ways to make your views known that are more open ended including attending the consultation day mentioned above.

Elmer the Elephant and You at Matson Library! Yey!

National  Libraries Day

Saturday  4^th February

Come To Matson Library!

11.00 – 12.00pm

Elmer The Elephant

Stories And Crafts

Children Of All Ages Welcome

Unanswered Questions for Partnership Libraries

Here are some questions that have come to my attention. There one's for us all to find answers too before we go too far down the road of being partners:

• what level of qualified librarian support will Matson & Tuffley & Hester's Way have? There is now, I believe, only one librarian per geographical area (Gloucester, Forest, Stroud, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury, Cotswolds). The Gloucester librarian for example, will now presumably have two decent sized libraries added to their workload (unless additional posts are created).

•  What is the nature of the work  expected  of those librarians with regards to the different tiers of the service (main, etc)

• similarly in those areas where community run or partnership libraries are being put in place, how are those single librarians expected to add this to their workloads. I believe there is a figure for the number of hours of librarian time allocated to partnership libraries.Will this  disproportionately affect some librarians' workloads and impact on their ability properly to cover their other responsibilities?

• In Matson, Hesters Way and Tuffley, presumably, new staff teams will need to be appointed? How is this to be done, bearing in mind that other staff were made redundant?

• Who is responsible for outreach / promotional work and what level of outreach will be possible (for each type of library)? 

Facts and Figures (if you like that stuff)

As well as the main document, this time, the council have published a raft of useful raw data. If you like that sort of thing (which I don't). I've tried to distill something useful for Matson library users from it. And here it all is!

The council have published documents online that demonstrate:

Car ownership in Matson is at 67% the equal lowest in the county along with the city centre (which has the central library). This is why when in the last proposals they said everyone would be within twenty minutes [drive] of a library I knew they didn't know Matson.

47% of borrowers at Matson library are 17 or younger. Around 11% of Matson library users are over 65. Which goes to show that even though schools have libraries the public library matters to young people.

The number of people using Matson library over a year seems to have gone up since 2006 (15%) although there has been a dip last year. Perhaps this is due to the uncertainty? The number of books borrowed has gone down (-15%) in the same period. Perhaps people are using the library more for reference because the use of computers at Matson library is low relative to other libraries.

Those who go into the library for homework help are slightly more likely to use the books (51%) than the computers (40%) to support their learning. It seems it really is the books, rather than the PCs that are the focus in Matson library.

Matson library is the cheapest to run in the Gloucester District but the second most expensive per user. This suggests the current site is good value. Tuffley being the most expensive per user in the district. Although they are all within the normal range. There isn't much in it.

If you want to email the county council with your views use this email address:
libraries2012@gloucestershire.gov.uk