howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Can't say that I'm particularly surprised and I feel sure that 37 hours a week is enough for people so long as they keep the one late opening.
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/library-opening-hours-facing-cuts-193264/howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
A year or two back I suggested to KCC that they should levy a charge when they have to retrieve a book from another library and make fines for late bringing back more effective.
They are now charging 80p per reservation and the fines have been raised significantly.
Weird Granny Slater
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,071
Hardly fair to impose a return charge: most lenders return books to the 'wrong' library because they've been forced to reserve a book held by another library that their own library doesn't stock. Charging for returning it at your own library would thus result in a double levy.
To the main point: reducing opening hours will inevitably result in reducing local staff hours and, ultimately, in reducing local staff, and they'll be front-of-house staff too, as most of the backroom stuff (book ordering, processing, cataloguing) is now done centrally, i.e. in Maidstone.
Libraries are a social good and, like other social goods under this insane economic system, they're easy targets.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Unfortunate that there will be inevitable job losses but KCC have performed better than most from the year on year cuts since 2010.
I have no problem with paying a small fee for a reservation as the book has to be posted from one library to another. Yesterday on social media someone complained about getting fined £6 for being a month overdue and added that she had used the library for over 40 years and was often late in returning books but the fines were a matter of pence.
Weird Granny Slater- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,071
I've no problem with fines. If anything KCC's policy is too lenient. If it were up to me I'd block all further loans until a lender paid any existing ones off: library items are a shared asset and no single lender has any right to hold on to one if it's needed by others.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
I recommend using Dover Mobile. The staff couldn't be more helpful. And they have no facility to take payments.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
New one on me.
Dover Libraries
Like Page
20 hrs ·
Want to use the library outside of normal opening hours? With Library Extra you can!
Library Extra is a new free service at Deal Library, allowing customers to use the library before staff arrive and after they leave. This means the library is open 7am - 9pm all week to Library Extra customers.
Interested? Speak to a member of staff at the library to get your membership upgraded to include Library Extra!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Kent Libraries, Registration & Archives
Like Page
23 hrs ·
Join our managers at Dover Library on Wednesday 12 December 9:30am - 12:30pm, and Deal Library 2 - 5pm for an opportunity to ask questions and find out about our draft 3-year strategy for Libraries, Registration and Archives.
There will be drop-in events across the county in the coming weeks, so do come and talk to the staff and find out how you can get involved. Your views are important in helping us to make a final decision.
www. kent.gov.uk/lrastrategy
Captain Haddock likes this
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,931
It is one of the easier targets and been under threat for some time
It's just sad it's a other facility slowly being lost
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Not just books, cds and internet access at our library.
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,102
Just like the High Street, the Library of the future is going to have to provide a different range of services to a different group of people during different opening hours or die.
A Library which just offers 'stuff to read' will no more survive than a street which just offers 'stuff to buy'.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
All well and good Bob but the public sector should not try to emulate the private sector, no point in having a fantasy role-play group when there is a perfectly adequate one up at St Martin's battery.
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,879
I can't remember the last time I went in a Library well over 20yrs ago.
If I want to read a book I buy using Amazon vouchers on my Kindle, or a cheap secondhand one or books that go round the family, while information if needed comes via various ways on the internet.
As an aside when I lived in Beccles I used to visit the local auction and spend £1 on a lot which might include several boxes. We would keep those we wanted and put the rest back in the auction together with those no longer needed. I even made a profit on occasions because our boxed lots were themed.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,102
Absolutely Howard. My money is on provision by the 'voluntary sector' whenever possible though I hear there's an even bigger fantasy role-playing group in Dover who meet regularly in the Council Chamber?
An interesting example of this is the £1,000,000 of other people's money which Deal Town Council has just got its hands on to make Deal a Cycle Friendly Town. Instead of looking for example at signage to connect the off main-road Skylark Trail (fully signed from top of Castle Hill Dover to top of Telegraph Hill Deal but apparently unknown to committee) with the town centre, they seem intent on investing heavily in 'electric bicycles' for hire which will be in direct competition with Mike's Bikes on the sea front.
Still, at least they've already hired a Project Co-ordinator. This one could grow like Topsy!
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/towns-bid-to-become-cycling-destination-194492/
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g503900-d10399899-Reviews-Mikes_Bikes_Deal-Deal_Kent_England.html"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
used the library yesterday to exchange reading books.
Judith Roberts likes this
Dover Pilot- Registered: 28 Jul 2018
- Posts: 346
Captain Haddock wrote:Just like the High Street, the Library of the future is going to have to provide a different range of services to a different group of people during different opening hours or die.
A Library which just offers 'stuff to read' will no more survive than a street which just offers 'stuff to buy'.
Perhaps the 'Library of the future' could offer access to council services
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/people-left-high-and-dry-131735/howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Saved very little money and I have no idea which councillors supported the closure!!
On the plus side we have the Gateway centre locally so from my point of view it's pull the ladder up.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,102
Yup. Remember this well. Protest allegedly used by Labour (again) as a way of collecting e-mails/addresses for future election campaigns (against GDPR?)
Enquiries moved to Citizens Advice office (of which I am a trustee).
First month I believer there were <10 enquiries in total and most of those people asking for extra purple bin bags. Savings C.£45,000 p.a.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
whats purple rubbish eaters have to do with library cuts. captain bob.
Weird Granny Slater- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,071
The last thing we need with the illiteracy, bad taste and bad manners that surround us are libraries that are corporate substitutes, with 'social spaces' and cafes, operated for the noisily uncivil by the charitably unqualified who, for all their 'enthusiasm', are more dewy than Dewey and wouldn't know their Basil Bunting from their Basil Brush. Reading's at the heart of it, and books is the answer.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
