HOWLS AGM - Public Libraries Transform Lives

The Hay-on-Wye Library Supporters met in the Library on Wednesday for their AGM.
It's strange to think that the Library has been at the school for a year now, but it's being well used, and it's a great help to have the extra opening hours paid for by an anonymous donor and Hay Festival. Hay Festival also paid to put the dividing wall up between the main library and the smaller space to the rear, which was part of the original plans, but ended up being left out because bookshelves were put up where the dividing wall was going to fit in instead.
The library has a dedicated team of volunteers, some who do general support work and some specialists like Sian who does Storytime and Bernie who helps people with IT. There's also Welsh Conversation for Beginners at 11am on Saturday mornings. This is alongside the two paid staff.
HOWLS also produced a leaflet which was inserted in the June edition of WyeLocal, promoting the library.
However, there are still problems to be faced. In January this year, Powys County Council announced cuts to the library budget of £200,000, to be spread across ten branch libraries, including Hay. After protests, the County Council agreed to defer those cuts for a year - but they're still coming, and it might even be more than £200,000.
Therefore, HOWLS and the supporters of those other libraries need to be prepared, and the idea earlier in the year was that they should form a CIC. The Cheesemarket is run by a CIC, which raised the funds to renovate the upper room into a holiday flat.
A CIC to support the library has now been set up, but the directors aren't doing anything just yet until they know what the County Council's plans are. The idea is for the CIC to raise money to pay for staffing costs if the County Council decides to cut the staff. They would form a contract with the PCC which would be legally binding. At present, when the Hay Festival donates money for the library they have no control over how it is spent. A group of local councils have done something similar in Montgomeryshire, though the County Council then decided to close the library buildings there - Hay can learn from that when a contract is drawn up.
Michael Eccles, who did all the hard work to set the CIC up, was also keen to emphasise a positive vision for the library. It's not just a case of hanging on to what we have, it's about developing the different services the library can offer as society changes. For instance, he wants to take local children on a day trip to a really big library, like Birmingham, so they can see how that works and learn how to use it. They'd also like to encourage more volunteers to come forward to organise one off events like book launches, or to help to take books to housebound library users. There's already a scheme in place that takes books to the residents of Cartref.
There will also be a website, and they want to have short video clips of local people talking about how libraries changed their lives. Their slogan is "Public Libraries Transform Lives".

The meeting was also looking at statistics provided by the County Council, showing the running costs of the library - which will be useful when negotiating with the PCC - and membership figures. It was interesting to see just how many people who use the library come from the villages around Hay, like Llanigon, Gwernyfed, Clyro - and 89 people from Painscastle! Someone commented that must be the entire population of Painscastle! These figures don't include the Herefordshire side of the border, so there will be more from Cusop and Clifford. This is something to bear in mind when campaigning - it's not just a Hay matter; all these other communities need to be included too.

There will be more meetings in September to plan the way forward.