By Kirby Porter
Aberdeenshire Council are obliged to provide library services under the provision of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. This Act mandates that local authorities have a statutory duty to secure the provision of ‘adequate library facilities for all persons resident in their area’. Similar, but separate, legislation also operates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland where the appropriate term for the level of service required is ‘comprehensive and efficient.’ Unfortunately, neither term is explicitly defined in the legislation. However, the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), an independent advisory body to the Scottish Government on library and information matters, has provided guidance on the sort of library service local authorities should provide in terms of the following four themes:
- The library has high quality physical and digital spaces that respond to evolving needs
- The library caters for people with diverse needs in sufficiency, range and suitability of resources, services and programming
- The library encourages active citizenship through access to trusted, accurate information that empowers people to make informed choices
- The library has an embedded culture as a principal contributor to developing reading, literacy and numeracy through local and national initiatives.
In other words, libraries need to be housed in a building which is suitable for the size of the community it serves, should be accessible to anyone who wishes to use it with opening times which reflect the varying needs of those users , should be well-stocked and provide access to information that allows them to engage positively in community life.
This is what we have in Stonehaven in the library’s current location. It could be argued that even as it stands the library’s opening hours of 29 over a four-day period should be extended – the library in Wanstead Village in London serving a similar catchment area has opening hours of 49 over a six-day period, for example – but that is an argument for another day.
What is beyond dispute, though, it that a move to Viewmount that would encompass a smaller, less well-stocked library, with possibly reduced opening hours and which a significant number of our current users will find almost impossible to access certainly falls far short of any definition of ‘adequate’ for a library in the fifth largest town in Aberdeenshire.
We must not allow this to happen.
Images of Wanstead Village library courtesy Kirby Porter
Eminent Librarian Challenges Councillors – TheBellman
Lead Petitioner Warns: Stonehaven Library Cannot Be Left to Deteriorate – TheBellman