Trip to Brecon

 I needed to look at an article in Brycheiniog journal, and for that I needed to go to the library in Brecon.

When the library was in the older building at the top of Ship Street, I used to use the local history reference section a lot.  Back then it was in a corner of the main library.  

Now it's in a little room upstairs, and half of the cabinets are locked because they've had some problems with theft.  The staff are all very helpful, though, and I was soon sitting down with the relevant volume and taking notes.

Before I left, I made sure that my library card was re-activated, because I haven't used it for a while, because I'm sure I'll be going back to look at other things in the collection.

There's also a Meg Stevens exhibition on, which I didn't have time to see.  I love her paintings of wild flowers and landscapes. 

Having done my research, I just had time to have a quick look round the town centre, dodging the roadworks - they're pedestrianising the centre of town, apart from one narrow lane for traffic - and I ended up in the Brecon Tap with a half of Good Old Boys, which was very pleasant.  I didn't see what brewery it came from, as the price label obscured the pump.  They were pretty busy, and I was pleased to see that they are still doing pies and pints.

I had a brief moment of anxiety at the bus station.  The bus to Hay used to go from the first stand, which is marked T4.  The bus came in at about the time I was expecting - but it was the Brecon to Merthyr Tydfil T4.  The X44 now goes from the second stand - and it came in about five minutes later. 

Nadolig Llawen

 

Happy Christmas!  I thought I'd share two of the magnificent libraries I was able to visit this year.

This is Duke Humfrey's Library at the Bodleian in Oxford, and this is John Rylands Library in Manchester (though his wife Enriqueta did all the work!)

 May the New Year be filled with books!

Day Trip to Ledbury

 I decided to take a chance on the rail network working properly this time, and planned a day out to Ledbury.

Quite by chance, I met a regular visitor to Hay on the station platform, who was heading back to London, and we chatted all the way to Ledbury.

It's quite a few years since I stopped in Ledbury, but I remembered the basic layout - it's simple enough, with the main road running through the middle and a cobbled alleyway leading up to the church from the market hall.

On the opposite side of the road to the market hall is a large and impressive block of almshouses - small flats originally built in the middle ages for poor people to live in, and still in use today.  Behind the almshouses is the Master's House, where the chap who ran the almshouses used to live.  Now it has been renovated, and houses Ledbury Library - it's an extremely impressive setting for a library.  The entrance hall is a very grand medieval hall (according to one of the information panels, at one time fencing lessons were given there!).  Work is still going on around the almshouses, so I didn't take a photo - it would just have been a load of scaffolding.

At the Southend of the town is a big black and white building, on the turning where all the main road traffic goes up to Malvern.  This time I was able to get close enough to read the plaque on the wall.  The building is Ledbury Park, and it was used as Prince Rupert's headquarters when he was in the area during the Civil War.

Heading back to the middle of town, I set off up the cobbled alley way.  There's an exhibition going on in the Weavers Gallery called Spaces to Dream, by Stitch in the Middle, the Midlands Contemporary Quilt Group.  The theme is gardens, inspired by a group visit to Packwood House, and as well as quilting there is some delicate embroidery of flowers and grasses.  The exhibition is on until Sun 1st October, free admission, and from 10am to 4pm daily.  It's up a flight of stairs, so there is no disabled access.

Across the alleyway from the Gallery is a little black and white timber framed house called Butchers Row, which houses the Folk Museum.  It was moved from its original location to here, and is full of interesting things - old cameras, musical instruments, embroidered clothes, and a boot bath!  The chap in charge was a fount of knowledge about the local area, and enthusiastic about suggesting other places of interest around Ledbury to visit.  Sadly I didn't have time to visit the Painted Room.  The museum is also free to enter.  There are some very steep stairs to the upper floor.

The Heritage Centre, once the grammar school, was closed - it opens on Thursdays and Fridays.  Beyond that is a fine Georgian house which was originally the Magistrates' Court, and a small park called The Walled Garden. 

At the end of the alleyway is the church, which is enormous, and has a detached bell tower.  There is a free exhibition in the ground floor of the tower about the bells.  They are fund raising for new bells and clock hammers, and are about half way to their goal.  They originally had 8 bells, but as part of their major restoration project they now have ten, and can also use six of those bells as a separate peal.

Then I went round the church.  New since I was last there is a huge painting of the Last Supper, which has been restored and discovered to have come from the workshop of Titian - the faces of the apostles are thought to be portraits of Titian, his family, and some other artists like Tintoretto.  The painting was brought to Ledbury in around 1775 by a local man who had been on holiday in Italy.

There's also some rather striking modern stained glass - three panels depicting the six days of Creation in dark reds.

I did remember the embroidered seat cushions, which are very well done.

At random, I chose the Seven Stars pub for a break for refreshment, and had a half of Ledbury Bitter.  It was quiet at the front of the pub, but they were pretty busy serving food at the back.

I also picked up a jar of local honey at the greengrocers.

Then I headed back to the station, expecting to have a short wait for the 3pm train - but in fact I caught the 2.24 train which arrived at 2.42!

This gave me an hour or so to run some errands in Hereford before I came back on the 4.25 bus.

This was a mistake - the bus was jam packed with college students going home, and I didn't get a seat until Belmont Tescos!

It was a lovely day out, though, and I'll certainly be going to Ledbury again soon.

Order and Collect at the Library

Good news for Library users - an Order and Collect service is being set up. The idea is that the Library user fills in a form with details of the sort of books they are looking for, and the staff hand pick a selection for them. Library users can phone on 01597 827460 or fill the form in online at https://en.powys.gov.uk/orderandcollect
Ten books at a time can be requested, and if the staff can't find the exact book the Library user is looking for, they'll find the closest substitute that they can. Books are quarantined for 72 hours before collection and after return. With the help of volunteers, they also have a delivery service for people who are shielding at home.
They also have an ebook and eaudiobook download service, which are free during lockdown.
Hay is not yet one of the libraries in this scheme - the nearest library taking part is Brecon.

Plans to Re-open the Library

The Library should be re-opening, on a limited basis, sometime within the next two weeks with a Call and Collect non-contact scheme. This is for library users who are unable to use the online e-books and e-audio service, Borrowbox. Anyone with any queries about this service can contact library@powys.gov.uk
The library user should phone 01597 827460 to request a selection of books in broad interest areas, or they can complete a form on the Council website. Library staff will put the books together, and books will be loaned for one month with automatic renewal, so no fines will be charged if the library user can't get the books back in time.
The Library service will also be working with PAVO to deliver bags of books to people across Powys.
Books will be quarantined for 72 hours after being handled, and members of the public will not be allowed into the library buildings yet.

Good News for Talgarth Library

William Powell, the County Councillor for Talgarth, has a regular column in WyeLocal, and this month he congratulated Michael Eccles for all his hard work in setting up the CIC to help Hay Library, and also mentioned what had been happening in Talgarth.
Talgarth Library is another of the small local libraries that has been under threat of closure by Powys County Council. Now Talgarth TiRC and Talgarth Regeneration Group, together with the Friends of Talgarth Library, have managed to secure a funding boost from Comic Relief Wales, via PAVO. I'm not sure what the TiRC is, because the councillor doesn't say, but it may be the Talgarth Information and Resource Centre, which is based at the Tower Shop in the middle of Talgarth.
The project they have funding for is to improve provision for children at the library, with story telling, something for the pre-school group Puddleducks, and more opportunities for the pupils at Ysgol y Mynydd Ddu and the surrounding area. They are also planning partnerships with the Hay, Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees group, and the mental health charity, the DPJ Foundation, which supports people in agriculture who have mental health problems.

Public Meeting about County Council Cuts - Here We Go Again!

The school hall was full when I got there - several of us latecomers ended up on a low bench by the wall. Most of the Town Council were there, along with Gareth Ratcliffe, James Gibson-Watt, and another local County Councillor who is also on the Cabinet - he's the one who was recently involved in a bit of controversy because he was in New Zealand, but he's back now.
There was a bit of faffing around to start with, because the tech didn't work, so they couldn't show the presentation they'd put together. Instead it was Mayor Trudy Stedman with a sheaf of notes and a microphone in her hand.

And here's a plea from someone who has been in many public meetings - if there is a microphone, USE THE MICROPHONE! And don't just hold it, bring it up to your mouth, and speak loudly as well, so that those of us at the back or with less than perfect hearing can follow what's being said!

So, Trudy introduced the County and Town councillors, and gave a brief run down of the story so far.
Starting around 2015, the Town Council spent two years negotiating with the County Council to save the public toilets and other public assets for the town. This involved the County Council giving the Town 20% of the car park takings, on the strength of which the Town Council took out a £70,000 loan to improve the toilets, which they took over the running of.
Then there was an election in May 2017, and the new Cabinet refused to honour that agreement.
In the September, Hay Town Council had a meeting with the new Cabinet which was described as "acrimonious". They could not come to a new agreement.
In December 2018 the Cabinet finally got round to discussing the matter at County Hall. The Town councillors watched the live webcast of the meeting, which is the only way they found out what decisions the Cabinet had made - there has still not been an official letter telling them the outcome.
The Cabinet decided that Hay would have no car park income.
The County Council would write off the £70,000 loan, which the Town Council were supposed to be paying back at £10,000 a year (no money has yet changed hands).
This looked at first sight to be a good deal, until the Town Council worked out that, under the original agreement, they should have had £95,000, and repaid £45,000 by now, so the Town Council would lose out. They have taken legal advice and been told that they have a strong case against the County Council, as the original agreement has been operational, so the County Council should give Hay the money they originally agreed. However, the cost of mounting a legal action against the County Council has to be considered.

The County Council has given Hay two options about the toilets (at the Clock Tower and Craft Centre). The first is that the Town Council continues to run them, and the second is to give them back to the County Council, but with no guarantee that the County Council would keep them open. Currently the County Council only directly run two sets of toilets - the ones in Brecon and the ones at Ystradgynlais bus station. All the other toilets in the county have been hived off to be run by smaller councils and groups of volunteers.
The toilets cost £30,000 a year to run, and bring in an income of £18,000. This is 90,000 people paying 20p a time (slightly more people than that used the toilets last year, but that's how many paid for it).

This was the first appeal to the public - should the Town Council fight to keep the toilets open?
Alistair Shaw (who didn't need a microphone!) said that a town with no public toilets was crazy - Hay would lose all the tourists who come here.
Trudy also said that the Town Council had considered raising the precept to cover the cost (this is the amount of money Hay Town Council gets to run the town, presently £42,000 a year), but they thought this would be unfair, as it is visitors who use the toilets, not locals.
Sean O'Donaghue asked if there was a Disability Rights issue here? There is legislation to say that a town needs to have a toilet for the disabled, with level access for wheelchairs.
The Deputy Chair of the Chamber of Commerce was also present, and he said that the Chamber of Commerce has no income, apart from a small amount of membership fees, and that most of the money they raise goes towards the Christmas Lights, so they can't really help.

Other areas of concern include the Sports Pavilion. Here there is qualified good news - the town has been offered a 99 year lease of the building, and the bowls club have been given permission to build the pavilion they want. However, without the income from the car park, the Town Council cannot give as much money as they would like to the running of the sports facilities, so the sports clubs have to do more fund raising.

The Council Chambers were also discussed at the Cabinet meeting in December, where it was decided that the Town Council would be given 12 months notice to leave the premises. The County Council were apparently surprised to discover that the Town Council has tenants in the building (from whom they gain income for the town), including Dial a Ride. Apparently someone at the Cabinet meeting said that "We will make sure the tenants are okay," but the Town Council has no idea what they mean by this. They also don't know when the 12 months notice starts from, because the County Council have not contacted them officially yet. Trudy was asked where the Council would meet when they lost the building, and answered: "No idea!"

The Library is also under threat - again, along with the 9 other rural libraries that were threatened last time. However, the big libraries in the county, such as Brecon and Newtown, are not being asked to find savings, even though it is the rural areas that need libraries more. Gareth has asked questions at County Hall about this.

Another loss to the town will be the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. At present they only come (and use an office in the Council Chambers) for two days a week, and this will cease. In future people will have to go to Brecon for this service. The Registrar is also being withdrawn from Builth Wells, Knighton and Llanidloes.

Tomorrow, I'll cover the questions from the floor....

School Clubs and Libraries

The Brecon & Radnor Express made interesting reading this week.

On the front page was the headline "Council says it was 'never plan to axe school clubs'", in which the County Council claim that their original email to head teachers was mis-interpreted, and of course they never wanted to close the breakfast clubs in primary schools.
On page two was a big article about the consultation meeting at the Library, where the portfolio holder for libraries, Councillor Rachel Powell, got quite a rough ride from the people who turned up - Gareth Ratcliffe was there, and he said on his Facebook page that about 70 people came over the course of the morning.
One of the issues brought up at that meeting was the building of the new library and museum in Brecon, which has taken longer than expected, and is costing rather a lot of money. The Councillor said that she was not able to talk about property issues - but, that being the case, it would have been a good idea for her to have brought along someone who could talk about property issues, especially in Hay where the sale of the old library building is so contentious. I bet that similar concerns were raised in Talgarth, where the next consultation meeting was due to be held.
I also noticed that the Councillor was challenged about all the consultation meetings taking place during the daytime. If there had been an evening meeting, I would certainly have gone along to it - but at 10am on a Monday morning, I was at work. The Councillor said that she couldn't commit to evening meetings because she had a "busy portfolio" and a young family.
Nobody was suggesting that she should go to evening meetings every week - but these are special circumstances, and surely she could get someone else to look after her young family for a few evenings, because this is her job. This is her portfolio.
She also said that she was coming during the day because that reflected the usual footfall of the library as the library was normally open at that time - but the library used to be open for longer, and in the evenings, and a lot of people who work during the day would have liked to have their voices heard as well. As the lady in the audience said (as reported in the B&R) there is the wider community as well.

Last night I was at Stitch and Bitch at the Swan, and one of the ladies there had been at the Library meeting. She said there was some talk of trying to make money out of hiring the Library space out at £10 an hour - but there was some uncertainty about whether that money would go to the library service or to the school. And money raised by community groups cannot be used to pay a trained librarian, which is what is needed. Without trained and professional staff, it's just a room with books in it.

Then last night, Gareth Ratcliffe posted on his Facebook page about a press release that the County Council have issued, about how pleased they are to be doing a deal to save Welshpool Library, which cost over £100,000 to run last year, at the same time as they are trying to close the small libraries. Apparently the Library in Welshpool will be relocating to the Powysland Museum. Hay Library costs only around £15,400, and also has a generous grant from Hay Festival.

Library Consultation

Hay Library was the first of the ten libraries under threat to have a consultation period to find out what the people using the library think. The portfolio holder, Councillor Rachel Powell, was there this morning for all of two hours, and about 70 people attended.
Notes taken at the session, and posted on Gareth Ratcliffe's Facebook page, emphasise that a trained librarian is essential for the library service to continue. There is also a Library Review questionnaire on the Powys County Council website. I filled one in as much as I could, but it was very much slanted towards finding other people to pay for the continued running of the library, and with no space for comments other than that about the service.
The other libraries under threat are Talgarth, Llanfair Caereinion, Llanfyllin, Knighton, Presteigne, Llanwrtyd Wells, Builth Wells, Llanidloes and Rhayader.
I can't help noticing that, for most of these places, it's a very long journey to find another library that's open.

New Threat to Libraries

Hay Library moved into the new premises at the school, with some funding from the Welsh Assembly. They got some extra funding from Hay Festival so it could open for longer hours than Powys County Council were prepared to pay for.
All seemed well - but now there's a new round of spending cuts coming up again, and libraries are in the firing line once again.
Powys County Council are proposing to cut the funding for staff at Hay and nine other libraries. They want to make a saving of £200,000. Ironically, the old library building is on sale for around that price.
Overall, Powys County Council need to find savings of £14 million in the coming financial year, and a further £20 million up to 2023. Gareth Ratcliffe has posted a copy of the letter from County Councillor Rachel Powell explaining this, and suggesting that anyone with ideas on how to keep the libraries running should contact the Chief Librarian Kay Thomas on kay.thomas@powys.gov.uk

There's a good team of volunteers at Hay Library, but they cannot run the place on their own, nor should they be expected to. Libraries need professional staff, and they need them more than ever now, when libraries are contact points to find out about things that used to be provided by a dedicated County Council office in Hay, like information on benefits and housing.

Powys County Council are having a consultation process, and as part of this they are holding an drop in session at Hay Library on Monday 4th February from 10am to 12 noon (how they expect people who are at work to attend I don't know).

HOWLS, the Hay-on-Wye Library Supporters group, will be meeting in the Library on Wednesday 20th February at 7pm to discuss this latest threat to the future of the library.

Survey of Library Users

Tucked away on page 7 of the Brecon & Radnor Express this week is a small article about a survey of library users across Powys. The survey can be done online at https://customer.powys.gov.uk/libraries and on paper forms available at the libraries.
There are questions about online library services, and also the various benefits using the library service provides. The survey is only for this week, October 8th to 13th, so there's still time to take part. Users of the mobile library services will be surveyed over the rest of the month.
A library survey was last carried out by Powys County Council in 2015, when over 1,100 Powys residents took part.

Hereford's Chained Library, and a Possible Job for Merrily Watkins!

So on Monday I was being a tourist in Hereford - it's always nice to see a familiar place through new eyes, as I went round with my Young Man.
First we went to De Koffie Pot for croissants and coffee. I took him down the alleyway round the side of the Bishop's Palace, and he was very interested in the architecture of the building which was created to house the Chained Library - he said it reminds him of modern additions to Southwark Cathedral.
So after our snack, we went in to have a look. The entrance fee is £6 each, and the cloister leading to the library is currently housing an exhibition of chests which were used to carry books. There are also electronic displays about the books in the library, information about the Magna Carta and the Forest Charter, and a tactile version of the Mappa Mundi.
The Mappa Mundi itself is in the antechamber to the library, together with the wooden frame that it used to be displayed in.
The Chained Library itself also includes the chained library from All Saints Church.
We had a very interesting conversation with the chap on duty in the library, who came from Manchester originally (his name is George Pendlebury, and Pendlebury is a district of Greater Manchester), so we were comparing our impressions of the John Rylands Library and Chethams Library there, both magnificent examples of historic libraries, from the days when libraries were considered to be so important that beautiful buildings were created to house the books. Chethams is also a music school, by Manchester Cathedral, and was originally a monastery.

And then something strange happened (shades of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins novels here). We were at the far end of the library, where the tombstone of Gilbert Swinfield, once Chancellor of the Cathedral, was displayed - and we both picked up a very strange feeling just in one spot, under the window. Move away, perfectly normal - back to the spot, weird sensation. It wasn't scary or anything, just odd, and so pronounced that we went outside when we had finished going round the exhibition to see if there was also a strange feeling outside the wall - which there was, a bit, but nothing like as strong as inside.
Something that the exhibition didn't mention, by the way, was that the new building was constructed after an archaeological dig that uncovered a large plague pit filled with hundreds of skeletons. I remember going to see it - back then I still had my archaeologist's card from Norwich, and knew the chap in charge of the dig (who never wanted to see a skelly ever again after he finished it!) But that was over the whole area, and this feeling was concentrated in just one spot.

Funnily enough, over the next couple of days two light bulbs in my house stopped working....

Volunteers and the Library Service

At the Library Meeting last week, HOWLS handed out a flyer with all the reasons why a library run by volunteers is not as good as a library run by professionals. I thought it was worthwhile going through the points here.

The first thing is that Librarian is a professional qualification, equivalent to a degree. There's a lot more to it than tidying the shelves and stamping books. Volunteers can be helpful, but a library needs professional staff to run it.

Librarians know all sorts of things about the local community that are best kept confidential. Hand over the service to volunteers, no matter how well-meaning.... and what could possibly go wrong?

That's if enough volunteers can be found to keep the library open long term. Many voluntary projects start with loads of eager volunteers - but come back a year later and there will be only a few left, doing more and more of the work.
And even volunteers cost money - they need to be trained when they start, and there are admin costs and so on.

At present, all the branch libraries and all the libraries in bigger towns are part of one organisation. This would not be the case with a volunteer-run library, which would be operating on its own, leading to wildly differing levels of service across the county.
And what about services like inter-library loans? What happens to them? At the moment, someone doing research on a subject in Hay can ask for books to be sent specially - would they be able to do this in a volunteer-run library?

And, we pay for this already, through our council tax. Why should residents be expected to pay for a service, and then volunteer to run the service for nothing?

Also given out at the meeting was a leaflet about CarnegieUK. Andrew Carnegie was a 19th century philanthropist who decided to use his fortune to provide libraries across the UK and the US. If you look around in many towns, you will see his name carved into the front of libraries, or buildings which used to be libraries.
Andrew Carnegie believed in giving people the opportunity to better themselves by providing them with books, and the Trust carries on that aim.

The leaflet points out that libraries give people access to literature, music, film and theatre that they would not otherwise be able to enjoy. Libraries lend CDs and DVDs as well as books, these days. Libraries widen peoples' horizons - at college, our Gilbert and Sullivan Society were only able to put on a performance of Iolanthe because we could borrow the scripts and music from the central library, for instance.

Libraries help job seekers. Libraries now have computers for the public to use, and this can be essential to jobless people who do not have their own computers - more and more job seeking has to be done online. And libraries contain books about craft skills and DIY and budgeting and how to start a new business, enabling people on a low income to help themselves without spending money they haven't got.

Libraries are one of the few public spaces left that are free for everyone to enter. They help with social isolation, an increasing problem in modern society, and can provide a point of access to a variety of public services.
Remember Library Plus? It was supposed to be a replacement for the County Council office we used to have in the Council Chambers, where you could go to pay your council tax and get in touch with County Council departments to deal with problems. It withered away pretty quickly but libraries could be used to provide services like that - as long as they have a sound proof room for using the phone this time!

And of course, I haven't even mentioned children using the library yet. When I was a child, I practically lived in my local branch library. I had my own coat peg in the staff room, and was a volunteer shelf tidier aged eleven! There is no way my family could have provided all the books I read as a child without access to a public library, even though there was a reasonably good library at school. I want to see that continuing for today's children.

Library Consultation

While everyone is distracted by the struggle to save the secondary schools of Powys, here's something else that's going on.
The situation is that Powys County Council needs to save £250,000 (because of austerity) from the library services. They suggest that the six main libraries, at Ystradgynlais, Brecon, Llandrindod, Machynlleth, Newtown and Welshpool – and the two mobile library services for North and South Powys form the cornerstone of the service. The eleven branch libraries include Hay Library - and there the future seems not so rosy. Basically, they want someone else to pay for library services, whether it's the local council (unlikely with all the other things local councils are now being expected to do that the County Council did before) or other organisations, whatever they may be.
There will be a drop in session at Hay Library on 13th June, between 5pm and 7pm, and there's an online survey to fill in at www.powys.gov.uk/haveyoursay
Paper copies of the survey should be available from the branch libraries.
The consultation runs until the 3rd July.

Cuts to Hay Library

There was a consultation plan going round a little while ago about what members of the public wanted from their library service. The County Council set out two proposals - they could either close up to 11 branch libraries altogether, or keep all 17 open but at reduced hours. There was no option, of course, for keeping the libraries as they are now.
So, they have decided to go for the option of keeping all the libraries, but with opening hours reduced by 20%, and to reduced the mobile library service from once a fortnight to once a month where it visits. This will begin from April 1st next year if the cabinet of the County Council approves it.
Several councillors have pointed out that libraries are not only important for borrowing books, but for people who have no other way of accessing computers - and this is especially important for the unemployed as so many jobs can only be applied for online now. The mobile library is also an important life line for people who are isolated in rural areas. Gareth Ratcliffe has also spoken out against the cuts, pointing out how well used Hay Library is and praising the excellent staff who run it.

Meanwhile, the B&R reports low turn-outs for the meetings which the County Council organised to discuss how to cut their budget by £70 million overall by 2020. Next year the County Council will be receiving £7.7 million less than this year from the Welsh Assembly but they will have to find savings of around £16 million because of inflation and other "cost pressures".
There is an organisation which is opposing the cuts - called Powys Uncut - and they have been having a public meeting in Brecon this evening (Thursday). They plan to lobby the Welsh Assembly before they formally pass the budget in December.

Exhibition at Hereford Library, and Fire Engines

I wasn't only enjoying myself at the Flavours of Herefordshire Festival on Saturday - I also found time to visit the World War One exhibition at Hereford Library, where two little girls were playing at nurses in the military tent that had been set up in the exhibition space. There were lots of exhibits relating the war to the local area, too - Herefordshire was an important place for feeding the nation in a time of national shortages. There's a permanent exhibition of paintings by a local artist who served in the First World War (I'm afraid I forget his name) and I'm sure there were more paintings on display than there normally are.

And, back in the main square, the firemen were collecting signatures for their petition to keep both fire engines for Hereford. Because one fire engine really isn't enough for the city.

Powys Libraries Under Threat

There's a consultation going on at the moment about choosing between the different options to cut Powys Library services. Despite the county council saying that the libraries are being used now more than ever, the only choices on the table are between various cuts to the services. The survey form can be filled in at www.powys.gov.uk, and the main options seem to be cutting opening hours by 20% across the board, closing 5 libraries across the county and closing 11 libraries across the county, with options for the mobile libraries which either reduce their frequency from fortnightly to monthly, or increase their range to fill the gaps left by closing bricks and mortar libraries.
Here in Hay, of course, we're still waiting for the building to start on the new school, which is supposed to be where our library is moving to, at which point the separate library building would be closed down and sold off. I'm not entirely clear on what this means for the Library Plus service, by which council services can be accessed through the library rather than the dedicated council office that Hay used to have.

Threat to Powys Libraries

We watched over the border in Herefordshire as the County Council decided it wanted to close every library in the county except Hereford - and the passionate public opposition there has been there. And now Powys County Council wants to close eleven of the county's seventeen libraries to save money.
They announce this when they're already committed to a big new library in Brecon as part of the Museum complex (and that wasn't in the original plans), and they're spending £170,000 on Llandrindod Wells library this year according to the piece on the front page of the B&R. So that leaves the smaller libraries, in the more rural areas.
We already know in Hay that the library is supposed to be incorporated in the new school building - but they haven't started laying the foundations for that yet, and I won't believe it's actually happening until they start building.

And libraries are not just about little old ladies stocking up on detective novels (which is what my mother-in-law used to use her library for). It's a vital point of access to the internet for people who don't own computers - they do exist, and when Job Centres insist that job applications have to be made online, a library computer can be the only way of looking for a job that some people have. Then there are the school children who increasingly need to access the internet for school projects. They are also vital repositories for information on local history. A little while ago a lady asked for my advice about a pamphlet she owned, which had been written by (I think) her grandfather, and was about local life about a hundred years ago. At one time I would have automatically said she should donate it to Brecon library - but now I don't know if material like that will be safe in the library system.
And it can't all be done by volunteers either. I'm beginning to feel bad about even using the word "volunteer" now, because it's become a sort of code for getting people to do a job without paying them the proper wages for the job. There's a reason that librarians have professional qualifications.

Trip to Hereford

I've been wanting to take pictures of the carvings on the front of Hereford Library for a long time, but it always slipped my mind while I was there until now. Here's a rather jolly crocodile near the front door. If the County Council have their way, of course, this will be the only library left in all of Herefordshire, and there will be no funding whatsoever for the museum part of it.



Here's the Old House in High Town, just behind the bull. It's a great place to visit, and it's in the middle of the town - so are they just going to lock the door and leave it when they stop the funding?
One of the other museums in the county has a regionally important costume collection, which people come to visit from abroad as well as the UK. There are also collections of local importance - finds from archaeological digs in the county have to be stored somewhere, and be available for study as well as display. Are these collections going to be dispersed? Nobody seems to know.
The new protest group trying to save the libraries and museums has calculated that, for every £1 spent on museums, they earn £4 - which is surely worth hanging on to and trying to improve. They've also calculated that the money set aside to pay the councillors' allowances would pay for the museum service for 18 months.

It's not only the libraries and museums, of course. Every single public toilet in Herefordshire will be closed - they've already closed quite a few in Hereford town centre.
As I walked round town, I noticed that Accessorize on High Town seems to be moving into the same shop as Monsoon, and half of Maylord Orchards has been boarded up while all the shops that were there are turned into a big new Wilkinsons.
I did get all the shopping I went for - and I treated myself to a graphic novel from Waterstones (a film noir style story called Blacksad), and a Fairport Convention CD from HMV after I'd done the serious business of getting new ink for my printer. I had a very nice pint of Wainwright bitter in Wetherspoons, too - and on the way to get the bus I noticed some hand carved bowls and spoons outside the little craft shop at the side of the bus station. I came away with a lovely dipper/cup made out of willow by a Romanian lady, which I can use for re-enacting.

Library Protests

There are several protests planned about the proposed closures of the libraries and museums across Herefordshire (I think only the library and museum in Hereford survives unscathed in these plans).
On Thursday 16th May from 12.30 on, there will be a lobby of Herefordshire County Council at their Brockington HQ on Hafod Road.
On Saturday 18th May, from 10am to midday, there will be a rally in Hightown, Hereford.
On Friday 24th May at 9am there will be a lobby of the Herefordshire County Council meeting at Shire Hall.