Information for Social Change

Occasional Papers

Systemic Barriers to Library Use: Libraries Engage the Socially Excluded

By John Pateman

Success story or terminal decline, inclusive or exclusive – any of these labels can be attached to public libraries in the UK, depending on which set of statistics you use. On the positive side, UK residents made 340 million visits to public libraries in 2004/05, which is equivalent to 5.7 visits per person. That’s more people than go to football matches each year, or than visit the UK’s top 20 tourist attractions put together. After a period of decline, visits to libraries are on the up. They hosted 22 million more visits in 2004/05 than they did in 2001/02, an increase of 7%. Around 47% of the UK adult population are registered with their library, which is down on the previous high of 60%. Also, only 20% of people are active library users – members who have a library ticket and use it on a regular basis.

Over 330 million books were borrowed from UK libraries in 2004/05 – an average of 5.52 books per person. Children’s book borrowing rose from 86.8 million in 2003/04 to 88.6 million in 2004/05. But adult book borrowing has declined by more than 40% in the last decade, from 442.5 million in 1994/95 to 241.6 million in 2004/05. Libraries spent £95.5 million on new books in 2004/05, which was 15% less than they did ten years ago. Libraries have 108 million books on their shelves, 22 million less than ten years ago. On the other hand, libraries now provide 68.5 million hours of internet access to the public each year via 37,000 computer terminals.

The picture regarding who uses public libraries is also confusing. 46% of males and 52% of females visited a library at least once in the last 12 months. 49% of parents with children visit libraries at least once a month. Ethnic minority groups use public libraries as much as 10% more often than the national average. Around 31% of library visitors come from DE socio economic profile, with a further 25% from C2, 30% from C1 and 14% from AB. This equates to a 56% use by the working classes and 44% use by the middle class. Adults living in rural areas have higher rates of library attendance than those living in urban areas.

The other side to this story is that over half (54%) of the adult population feel that they do not have a good reason to go to a library. Over a fifth (22%) of adults never visit their local library and 42% have not visited their local library in the past two years. Just over a fifth (21%) do not know when their local library is open, and 13% of people say they do not know where their local library is situated. Almost a quarter of people do not think they are like the sorts of people who go to libraries. When asked what types of people do go to libraries, 5% think they are for professionals, 15% think they are for pensioners or people trying to keep warm, and 22% think they are for parents and children. Over half (54%) agree that libraries have an important role to play in the community, only 14% think libraries are dreary and old fashioned and only 4% feel libraries are out of date. So, considering all this evidence, are libraries inclusive or exclusive? You have to go beyond the statistics to answer this question.

Re-engineering the core business

My model of a typical library community looks like an archery target with three rings. In the centre ring, or bulls eye, of the target we find the 20% of people who actively and regularly use their library service. They are our core users and focus of everything we do. We spend most of our time and resources on these people. We ask them what they want (which tends to be more of the same) and we give it to them. This has the effect of both reinforcing the status quo and preventing us from meeting other people’s needs. The library service becomes a self fulfilling prophecy which convinces itself that the only way forward is to improve the core service. The expectation is that this approach will at least retain existing users and hopefully attract new users as well. Research with library users has identified what libraries uniquely offer them: free books – 47% of adults borrow from the library because they cannot afford all the books they want; experimentation / risk – because books are free, 39% of borrowers are willing to experiment with trying a new author or subject; space saving – 26% of users borrow from the library because lack of space at home prohibits them from owning books; trust – libraries are a trusted source of help in choosing books. 20% of borrowers trust library recommendations whereas only 5% of bookshop buyers trusted the advice of bookshop staff.

Of course, we must continue to meet the needs of our core users. I would go as far as to say that we should continue to spend up to 80% of our total budget on maintaining and improving core services. This would include making sure that we have buildings which are fit for purpose and open when people need them. It would also mean that we would have a good range and depth of stock. Core library services these days include internet access, and we would need to ensure that the People’s Network is both maintained and developed. There is also plenty of scope and opportunity for re-engineering the core business. Our most expensive and valuable core service is our staff and here we must develop more inclusive attitudes and behaviour. As Brian Campbell has observed ‘Libraries are organised and structured mainly by middle class professionals who have absorbed the norms of their professions and their class.’

Technology can also help us to re-engineer our core services. RFID and self issue, for example, can free library workers from staffing counters and allow them to promote stock and organise community events and activities. Similarly, if book renewals and telephone enquiries can be automated or redirected to a Customer Service Centre (not a call centre), then library workers will have the capacity to leave their buildings and carry out outreach work. WIFI will enable us to provide greater access to technology and the internet without the restrictions which traditional infrastructures impose. And if we need to keep generating income (though our focus should be on meeting needs rather than meeting income targets) we can use cash management systems to reduce the workload and free up library workers for more productive activities. Re-engineering the core business can also lead to efficiency savings which we can then invest in other parts of the service. This leads me on to the middle ring of the target.

Marketing

Up to 30% of library communities are passive or lapsed users. They may have a library ticket which they used on one occasion for a particular purpose but have not used since. Or they may have joined the library service thinking that it could meet their needs, only to find that it could not. Or the library service may have met their needs in the past but does not do so anymore. If we are to attract these people back into the library we need to let them know that the service has changed and can now meet their needs. We can achieve this via attractive and imaginative marketing campaigns. A recent example of this in the UK is the Love Libraries campaign. The idea is to take three public libraries which are a little down on their luck, and to transform them publicly, in the full glare of national and local publicity, over a twelve week period. The aim of this campaign, which is being led by The Reading Agency, is to remind people what libraries have to offer: ‘Libraries haven’t always been good at telling the world they’re changing and public perceptions are out of step with the major changes that are occurring in the library service. Libraries have developed a strong offer to young readers, and children’s book issues were up last year, But if they are to recapture the mainstream adult reading audience, libraries need to build in and market their unique selling points much more effectively in this changing reading world.’

Love Libraries is about creating models of a future library service with reading at its heart. This is based on research which suggests that people can be attracted into libraries if the book stock and other core services are improved. When asked what would encourage them to go to libraries more often, the research showed: over half (55%) of people said they would go to libraries more often if there was a better selection of books; almost half (47%) of people said they would like to see better facilities in libraries such as coffee shops and longer opening hours; a third (33%) said high profile author events would encourage them to visit libraries more regularly. These responses are perhaps to be expected given that this research was funded by The Future Libraries Partnership, which includes nine British publishers. More books, longer opening hours and more attractive buildings is the most common (and least challenging) approach to improving UK public libraries. But I think that our response to developing more inclusive library services has to be more sophisticated and multi layered, and this is where I come to the outer ring of the archery target.

Outreach

Another 50% of library communities are irregular or non users – people who have rarely or never visited a public library. Some of them may be unable to read or they might be reluctant or emergent readers. They are unlikely to be attracted into their local library by marketing campaigns like Love Libraries with its ‘inspiring new vision of a reading centred library service.’ The greatest needs of people in the outer ring will probably not be library needs. They may have many more immediate needs such as food, shelter, health and education. The core library service, even if it is re-engineered, is unlikely to meet the needs of these people, who are often unhelpfully labelled ‘hard to reach’ or even ‘unreachable’. New approaches are therefore required if the needs of this large group are to be identified, prioritised and fulfilled. The solution lies in a combination of outreach and community development.

Outreach, put simply, is any library service which is delivered outside of a library building and taken into the community. Because an outreach service is just a different way of delivering a core service, I would argue that outreach services should be funded out of that 80% of the total budget which is used to fund core services. To maintain the 80/20 split, I would propose that 20% of the funding for core services should be used to fund outreach services. Here are some examples of typical outreach services: a mobile library which visits villages or housing estates; a story time at a local school; a library stall at a community event; a Schools Library Service which provides project boxes for teachers; a book sale or give away in a deprived area. The common factor across all these examples of outreach is that they are traditional library services which have been designed and delivered by library staff and taken into community settings. The power and control lies in the hands of the library service. It is a take it or leave it approach, although outreach services are often amended and improved as a result of feedback from service users, or receivers. Brian Campbell put it very well when he said that outreach is about ‘working in the community’ whereas community development is about ‘working with the community’.

Community Development

Community development is the more challenging end of the spectrum. It requires a completely different mind set and skills set from traditional library work, both core and outreach. It also needs to be funded differently, and I would suggest that 20% of the total library budget is set aside for community development work. It means, to use Annette de Faveri’s phrase, ‘shedding our culture of comfort’ and being able to see the world through the eyes of the excluded. The starting point is not ‘what can the library service do for you’ but ‘what are your needs and how can the library service, in partnership with others, work with you to meet those needs.’ Community development workers must be able to empathise with and understand the communities they work with. If possible, the workers should be recruited from those communities. This is because, to quote Annette de Faveri again, ‘we often fail to serve communities that do not look, feel or think like us.’

Lincolnshire’s award winning Multicultural Development Service (MDS) is a good example of a community development service. It has recruited staff from the county’s increasingly diverse communities. The MDS Manager comes from the Portuguese migrant worker community and MDS staff include: a Sudanese worker (who works with the Arabic communities); Romanian and Bulgarian workers (who work with the east European migrant workers); and a Romany worker (who works with the Gypsy and Traveller communities). These workers understand the history, culture, language and needs of the communities they work with. Much of their time is spent identifying, prioritising and meeting needs. This is done in partnership with a wide range of organisations and agencies. For example, guest workers who have problems with their accommodation are put in touch with housing agencies; similarly, if the problem is to do with getting a school place or bullying, the guest workers are connected with the education authority. But this is not done by just passing the issue on to another agency – the MDS staff become champions, advocates and representatives of the guest workers. This builds trust and respect between the guest workers and MDS. Word gets around the guest worker community that the library service can help. And, in time, guest workers who have been helped by the MDS, and their friends and families, become library users. The library service must then be ready to receive them.

If this approach is to work, in the long term the whole library service has to become a community development service. At this point the hard lines between the three rings on the archery target become less distinct and start to break down. There are some good examples of this happening in Canada where the Working Together project is: creating Community Development Librarian positions; developing techniques for working with the community; developing strategies to assist libraries in responding to systemic barriers to the socially excluded; and developing a toolkit for Canadian libraries to use in creating community development strategies and working with the socially excluded. These ideas are being tested in Halifax, Toronto, Regina and Vancouver. We need a similar project in the UK which we can use to contrast and compare with the approaches and outcomes of marketing campaigns such as Love Libraries.