A week in the life of a library

It’s 8.50am in Huddersfield and the rain is tipping down. To my surprise there are already three middle-aged men standing outside the library. I engage two of them – Mark and John (they prefer not to divulge their surnames) – in conversation. Why are they here so early in this weather? “We come every day,” says Mark. “We’re here for the internet.” They plan to spend as much time in the IT room as they can – in theory users are limited to an hour but unless all the library’s 37 terminals are in use you can stay more or less indefinitely. The real reason they are here, however, is companionship. “It gives us a daily routine,” explains Mark. They get free access to the internet, can buy a coffee from the machine, read the odd book, and above all they socialise.

Routine, structure, socialisation. These are the words I hear again and again in the three days I spend in the library – a large, grade II listed building on four floors in the heart of Huddersfield. John Stubbs, who is 70, is sitting in the lending library looking at two books – I Am Malala and Treasures of China. He is another regular – he tells me he’s been coming for 50 years – and says he enjoys the “enlightenment” he gets from books. But it soon becomes apparent that the warmth in the library is at least as important as the light. His home is cold and he can barely afford to heat it.

Like many of the male library users I meet, he is separated from his wife. The library has become a home from home. “I can’t stand them closing libraries down,” he says. “I see a lot of cutbacks in the library department and that’s sad, because this is the only public Bastille [I assume he means bastion] that remains. Everyone gets treated in exactly the same way and everyone is treated decently.”

When I walk into the lending library on the ground floor on the first day of my visit, I’m met with an unexpected sight: a dozen or so refugees and asylum seekers taking part in a “Meet, Try and Learn” session. All new arrivals to the area visit the library to meet other people in the same situation and do some fun craft work. This session is being organised by Steffi Rogers, who works for a local organisation called Third Sector Leaders, which partners with the library to build the confidence of new arrivals and introduce them to English-language courses.

The craft sessions were started as an activity that demands no English and in which everyone can participate. Later, they will be shown how to use computers and given ideas for eating cheaply – some only receive £5 a day to feed themselves. According to Rogers, the role of the library is crucial. “It is seen as a safe space,” she says. “People trust you. If you say something is going on in the library, people use them.”

English-language teaching is central to the work of libraries in Kirklees, the local authority that runs Huddersfield library and 23 other libraries, large and small, across this part of west Yorkshire. The English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses in Kirklees are run by librarian Maz Iqbal. I sit in on one of his classes, attended by three middle-aged Urdu-speaking women who, despite having lived in the UK for many years, have very limited English. Their children, who used to act as their interpreters, have left home, and without English the women are marooned in the house. “This project builds up their confidence and reduces their social isolation,” explains Iqbal. “They are socialising and also learning.”

Middle-aged and elderly men giving their lives structure; refugees and asylum seekers being introduced to life in the UK; women of Asian heritage being given English lessons to reduce their social isolation; 600 housebound people and their carers being provided with books and audiotapes by volunteers who select material for them and spend time in their homes; a talking newspaper service; a braille transcription service; provision of terminals and free wi-fi for job seekers and for asylum seekers wrestling with all the red tape of making applications to stay in the UK. There is a theme here – and the theme is health and well-being.

The crucial fact about the library service in Kirklees and a reason public libraries here have survived the apocalypse of the past 10 years – 800 libraries (a fifth of the total) across the UK closed, budgets slashed, user numbers and book borrowing plummeting – better than in many other parts of the country is that the library service sees itself as having an explicit social function, helping the marginalised and promoting inclusion. It was an early advocate of “bibliotherapy” – using books and poetry to promote well-being – and works with local GPs on social prescribing, so that patients are referred to books on, say, anxiety or depression.

It is significant that the strategic director overseeing libraries at the council is Richard Parry, whose remit is health. His support and the advocacy of chief librarian Carol Stump and council portfolio holder Graham Turner have ensured the library service has remained more or less intact. Austerity has taken a toll: the budget has been reduced over the past 10 years from £5.8m to £3.6m; 120 staff have been cut (all through retirement or voluntary redundancy), with the gap filled by 1,000 volunteers and members of friends’ groups; the half-dozen mobile libraries were scrapped; and home deliveries have been handed over to the Royal Voluntary Service. But 24 of the 26 libraries operating in 2010 have survived – a far cry from the proposal in 2015 to reduce them to just two in Huddersfield and Dewsbury.

After a 10-year battle which has seen two major reviews of the service and numerous angry public meetings involving residents anxious that their local library was in danger, Stump is ready to declare a victory of sorts. A sustainable budget has now been agreed and last month a tranche of recent cuts was reversed.

“It was a horrible time,” she says of the years when the service was in danger of being destroyed. “I did not sleep for two years.” Did she ever consider quitting? “I didn’t think about leaving until 1 September 2016” – when a compromise budget that had taken four years to establish was ripped up and the consultation started all over again. “I said ‘I can’t do this again’, but then I thought ‘If I don’t do it again, who’s going to do it?’”

Stump has worked in the library service since 1977 and began as a library assistant. She has managed to become chief librarian without having a professional qualification – an example of the way the service has changed in the past 20 years, with the old hierarchies breaking down and, as critics would see it, the service being deprofessionalised. In June she becomes president of Libraries Connected, www.librariesconnected.org.uk the main advocacy body for public libraries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own, more centralised library service. Quite an achievement for someone who started at the bottom of the ladder at 16.

At Huddersfield library, there are none of the old barriers between the people who are called librarians and the customer service officers who run the desks. The irony is that the librarians now spend very little time on the library floor. Most are engaged in outreach – talking to schools and other partner organisations and developing programmes that engage the community, especially children, young people and vulnerable adults.

There are 12 librarians based at Huddersfield, as well as four development librarians whose role is to come up with community-based projects and initiatives. One of those four is Kirstie Wilson, who is currently planning a children’s reading festival in May which will involve pairing up authors with local schools. Other recent projects have been inspired by Holocaust Memorial Day, LGBT history month – there is a collection of related books in the lending library – and International Women’s Day.

It strikes me that in Kirklees librarians are now more like theatre producers than traditional librarians – Wilson is planning to bring pianos into the libraries as part of Kirklees’ year of music in 2023. The library offers boisterous story readings for children – there are several while I’m there – and has a film club, with the films chosen by regular attendees. They are showing Quadrophenia on one of the evenings during my visit, and choose Lady Bird for International Women’s Day. They also organise gigs to bring in young people who wouldn’t usually be seen near the place.

I wonder aloud if public libraries are actually bothered about literature any more, but Wilson stresses that books, digital information and engagement with writers and other artists are at the heart of everything they do. “With books the universe is your oyster,” she says. “We are still books, but it’s books and other stuff,” says Sarah Harding, the development librarian principally concerned with stock.

The budget for new books in Kirklees is £375,000, but the book buying is done by a consortium of libraries operating across Yorkshire, giving them economies of scale that keep down prices, and much of the selection is made by national library suppliers based on profiles of the libraries. In that sense, librarians are more detached from the books on offer than would once have been the case, though Wilson says she can adjust stock levels if she thinks they are out of synch with demand.

There are plenty of customers who are here for the books rather than the film club, gardening club, computers, craft workshops or job advice. Richard Taylor, who is 73, is taking out half a dozen crime novels, which he tells me is what he gets through in an average week. Andrew and Christine Stokes are also scanning armfuls of books at the self-service checkout. Andrew says he enjoys sci-fi series; Christine favours romantic fiction and is clutching a batch of novels by Hilary Boyd. Christine also has a notepad with lists of everything she has read in the past couple of years. “When you’ve read hundreds you need to keep track or you’ll end up reading the same thing again,” she explains.

The over-60s clearly consume books in industrial quantities, and so do the under-10s, who are down in the junior library in the basement. Shams Ali is here with her five-year-old daughter and four-year-old son. She says they love the Moomin books. Ali speaks Urdu, Gujarati and Shina, but she is educating her children in English. They come here to read, do some colouring and attend the storytime sessions. “They love the library,” she says, “especially the big town library.” They have a local branch library, but have today made a special 25-minute trip into Huddersfield, parking their little bicycles inside the junior library next to the door.

Richard White is also here with his six-year-old son Lucas. They have already checked out their books and Lucas is desperate for a milkshake, but they are waiting for the rain to ease. It could be a long wait. Lucas has chosen books about deadly animals, cars and superheroes – “typical boys’ stuff”, says his father. “Lucas is a good reader and likes coming here,” he says. “Libraries are so vital. You’ve got newspapers for adults, computers so people can look for work, and people who are retired or maybe can’t work who like to come in. It’s one of those things you’ll miss when it’s not here.”

There are plenty of warm, inspiring stories in the junior library, and quite a few upstairs in the lending library too. Anthony Roberts, who is 52, is a regular in the library’s IT suite – he doesn’t have a computer at home – and tells me he has just landed a job. He says the library has always been important to him. “When I was going through a bad time 20-odd years ago, I could always come into the library.” The library as sanctuary.

The volunteers are a delight, too, especially 65-year-old Kevin Heeley, who has been volunteering at Huddersfield for three years and patrols the lending library as if he owns it. “I’ve spent a lot of time on my own in my life,” he says, “and I don’t mind that, but I want to be around people as well. It creates a balance; it gives you a sense of worth. You feel valued here. Customers make you feel valued, and the staff as well. I’m not under any pressure. I just put books on shelves, and I meet and greet, which is my main thing. I’ve got a purpose to get my arse out of bed in the morning.”

The fact librarians are doing less traditional librarianship means the role of customer service officers (CSOs) has expanded. Up in the local history section, Carol Hardy and Julie Mahoney, both of whom have worked here for more than 20 years, say they are far more hands on than they used to be. More creative too: Hardy is writing a book on a local memorial hospital which is celebrating its centenary, and they are working together to prepare a public walk in September around old textile manufacturing sites in the area.

They are pleased to be doing the extra work but point out that they have to do it at the same time as serving customers and for little financial reward. CSOs are paid around £20,000 a year, library managers £25,000, librarians and development librarians up to £30,000. This is not a well-paid world, and below-inflation public sector pay rises over the past 10 years have made it worse.

In the lending library, the CSOs also sell tickets for forthcoming shows in local theatre and music venues. I ask one of the counter staff which show is selling best, and she says “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue”, which I find strange until I realise she means the radio gameshow, which is being recorded in the town hall in mid-March. They also have Yorkshire-branded T-shirts, mugs and stationery for sale, but I can’t say the “All Good in the Hudd” merchandise is flying off the shelves while I’m there.

Most of the news we read about libraries is bad. Cutbacks, closures, inevitable demise. There are bitter battles being fought to keep a viable service going in Barnet, Hampshire, Essex and Bradford (which is now also considering a Kirklees-style health-led approach and faces the embarrassment of cutting libraries while bidding to be City of Culture in 2025).

The fragmentation of governance, especially in England where local authorities have responsibility for libraries, has created a postcode lottery, with provision varying hugely from area to area. Some of the 200-plus library services across the UK have been outsourced; others have been turned into charitable trusts. Some rely almost entirely on volunteers; others, like Kirklees, employ a mix of professional staff and volunteers. Some, such as Manchester, Hillingdon, Redbridge and Suffolk (one of the trusts), are still excellent; others have been decimated.

The 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act requires local authorities to provide a “comprehensive and efficient” public library service, but the terms are so broad as to mean almost nothing and are not enforced – why not an Ofsted for public libraries? The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport keeps its distance and lets local authorities cop the flak for reductions in the service. Libraries ministers come and go without making a mark – Caroline Dinenage has just taken over after Helen Whately’s brief and anonymous stint. Let’s see if we ever hear of her again.

“So what?”, say many on the political right. Who needs libraries in the digital age, and at a time when book prices are falling – they are incredibly low compared with 30 years ago – and every title is available at the click of an Amazon button? Well, as I discovered during my stay in Huddersfield, people [ITALS] need libraries, especially people who have neither the means nor the money to click that Amazon button. With much of the public realm hollowed out over the past decade, libraries are often the last community hub left standing. Truly, a bastion in an age of Bastilles.

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