All posts by Chairman

LIBRARY NOW OPEN LONGER – LET’S KEEP IT OPEN

From 4 June 2015, the library will be open on Thursday afternoons from 1.00 – 6.00pm in addition to its normal opening hours. This will allow for greater use, and in particular, give students revising for exams an additional facility for homework, research, computer use and free Wi-Fi.
This is welcome news because for years, Friends of Carnegie Library have been calling for longer opening times following the reduction from 34 to 16 hours a week from 1997 and the partial restoration to 31 from 2003.
With all the events and activities now on offer, and the friendly, welcoming library staff, statistics for membership, visits and loans have been growing by leaps and bounds. Add the recent refurbishment and attractive new furniture, plus a growing demand for yet more activities and it was clear an increase in opening hours was needed.

This extension of our public library hours to 36 a week comes at no extra cost to Lambeth, as it is covered by normal staff salaries. The extra five hours should boost the service and encourage even more visits.
Despite this good news, the entire service at the Carnegie is under threat. The results of the Culture 2020 consultation responses and Lambeth’s reaction are expected to be published within the next two months.
If the council decided to press ahead with its proposals to close two libraries and withdraw all funding from three others, including Carnegie, we would lose our professional library staff. It would then be impossible to provide anything like the current level of service, either in terms of opening hours, number and range of books, other material, events and activities; and the library as we know it would close.
To help prevent this, please lobby your councillors and if not already a member, join the Friends and the library.

YOUR NEW COMMITTEE

Thank you to the 80 members who attended the Friends’ AGM on 18 March. Sorry the Gallery was so crowded; the number was even more than we had hoped for. With only a couple of dissenting voices, the meeting was overwhelmingly in agreement that we must keep our public library professionally staffed and continue all the activities which make it the successful hub of our community.

The following were elected to serve for the coming year:

Chair: Jeffrey Doorn
Vice Chair: Stephen Carlill
Secretary: Nicholas Edwards
Treasurer: Bob Goodrick

Committee members: Elizabeth Ochagavia, Jackie Plumridge,
Helen O’Rourke, Gulnar Hasnain,
Laura Swaffield, Olga Stelmakh,
Gordon Harkess, Dalvir Kaur.

I am grateful to Bob, Nick, Liz and Jackie for continuing to serve. It is a pleasure to have Stephen and Helen back; and we warmly welcome Gulnar, Laura, Olga, Gordon and Dalvir. Their wide interests, knowledge and skills will be invaluable.

As agreed by the meeting, we will press ahead with the arrangements for a consultative body for all library users, working in cooperation with our library staff.

The committee has met informally to sketch out the way forward, the first priority being our submission to Lambeth’s Culture 2020 consultation.

Campaign News

Your committee are keen to see all Friends of the library campaigning to keep Lambeth’s funding for the library run by professional library staff. Our efforts will be most effective if they are coordinated with those of the Friends of the other libraries affected. Discussions on how to proceed are in progress and we hope to have some news in this respect shortly. Continue reading Campaign News

Carnegie Library Usage is Up!

Every month Lambeth publishes statistics of library usage showing the numbers of visitors and issues in each library over the previous month. Figures are given both per hour and overall.

Cumulative stats are also issued covering quarterly and half yearly periods; comparisons can be made between say this month and the same month last year. The picture at Carnegie is of continued improvement. Continue reading Carnegie Library Usage is Up!