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Libraries starting to reverse declines

14.05.08 Benedicte Page

"Work with us: we share common aims, but we have a reach into communities that you can't get to." This was the key message that Karen Cunningham, Glasgow's head of libraries, had for booksellers at the Reading Forces seminar at the BA conference.

She told the conference about the busy programme of activities underway in Glasgow, where the library service supports 50 book groups meeting in workplaces, homes and libraries. It also offers reader development to adults with literacy problems, and to other groups with social inclusion issues. Cunningham's theme of the power of library outreach was echoed more broadly by HarperCollins m.d. Amanda Ridout, who issued a call to action for libraries, publishers and booksellers to work more closely together. She cited libraries' strengths in local community engagement, including their powerful reach into the BME audience.

"There are 337 million visits to libraries each year, and a fantastic audience in the library sector. There are great spaces for authors to hold events and there is great outreach by libraries into communities," she said.

Mixed with the marketing and merchandising expertise of the retail sector, the results could be lucrative, Ridout pointed out, detailing 60 library-based events, attended by 7,200 readers and generating £25,000 in revenue through book sales. She contrasted this success with a "lacklustre and frustrating experience" in bookshops around live events. "We've slightly lost the knack," she said.

Cunningham also spoke about the connection between the current strong performance of Glasgow's library service, and its renewed focus on book reading. She said that Glasgow "took its eye off the ball" in earlier years when it invested heavily in ICT (information communications technology) and "threw out our core business—reading". She said: "If we had put the same amount of planning, time and resources into reading we would not have seen the dramatic decline in issues and membership that libraries have seen over the last 10 years." In Glasgow, that decline had been reversed in terms of children's issues, while adults' had "bottomed out," she added.

At The Bookseller and Nielsen Book library lunch following the Reading Forces seminar, Neil Fitton, head of marketing at Borders, announced a programme of skill-sharing with libraries by the chain. Borders is developing a toolkit, together with the Reading Agency, to benefit libraries; it is also inviting libraries into Borders stores to see how the chain works with merchandising, while sales managers are making visits to libraries themselves.

"Our philosophy is about being local—'My store in my town'—and local outreach is fundamental," Fitton said. "It is about convincing readers in libraries not to be scared of bookshops, and also making buyers aware that there are libraries they can borrow from when they are short of money. It's not about cash, it's about converting readers."

Benedicte Page libraries Booksellers Association Annual Conference

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