BARNET LIBRARY SERVICES SUPPORT LIBRARY MOVE
Report from Head of Barnet Library Services supporting the move from our almost 100-year-home was published today in the Hendon Hub Planning Applications report addendum. Reading it absolutely beggars belief.
A note: in 2004 £1.38 million was spent on refurbishing Hendon Library. In 2010, Hendon Library was in the Top 10 most visited in the country: 800,000 visitors a year. This is when Barnet Council started consulting on cutting services. By 2017 Barnet Council had rented out 1600 of 1800 sq metres of the building. Now they’re leasing it all to Middlesex University and moving us to part of the ground floor of a huge hulking accommodation block into what was originally going to be an 800 sqm space but has already been reduced to 675.
“The library service very much welcomes the opportunity to have a new library building and we are excited about the potential that it offers.
Though much loved, the current building was constructed in 1929 around the needs of a 1930s library service. The internal space currently occupied by the Library Service poses several operational challenges which inhibit the range of services that can be provided.
The proposed new library building will have a larger footprint than we currently occupy (this is because Barnet rented out 1600 out of 1800 sq m of our library in 2017) and offers the opportunity to create more flexible and efficient spaces which can be adapted to provide both the traditional library offer and deliver a more dynamic set of services.
Many successful new library buildings across the country have included flexible spaces that can be used by a range of council and community partners to deliver additional services such as technology sessions, adult and community education and career support. It’s these kinds of services that will be facilitated by the provision of a new library building.
The new library also offers an opportunity to significantly improve access to the Local Studies Service also based within Hendon library.
This service holds a wide range of unique resources relating to the history of the borough and is currently housed in a set of small rooms behind the public library footprint. Exhibition space is limited to two small cabinets and there is no dedicated area in which residents can consult the resources held by the service. The new building is an opportunity to remedy this.
Much like retail spaces, public libraries benefit from open frontages that can easily showcase the services provided within and which have the capacity to draw the attention of passers-by including those previously unfamiliar with the library offer.
Whilst the frontage of the current library is architecturally striking there is little scope for outward promotion and library users are required to enter a long way into the building before they reach or can see any library services.
A more open frontage of the kind proposed in the new building would therefore increase both the Library Service’s capacity to attract new users into the building and would improve security during self- service opening hours. Both are factors in increasing use of the library.
Indeed, footfall to a library is generally increased after provision of a new facility, often quite significantly. For example, issues of books and other library materials increased by 38% following the move of East Barnet Library into the new facility in New Barnet (Q3 2018 compared to Q3 2019). This trend is also borne out in other parts of the country.
And finally, in March 2020 the Community Leadership and Libraries Committee considered a report by the Activist Group who had been commissioned to undertake an independent evaluation of the Library Service in Barnet. Their report advocated using development opportunities of this kind to improve the quality of library buildings across the borough. This project provides the opportunity to implement that recommendation in relation to Hendon Library."