The Family Library needs you to voice your opinion

With direct Government financial support ending and COVID affecting everyone financially, the Family Library has not been able to find the funds required to ensure it can continue to deliver its highly acclaimed and vital community services.

As a result, the Library is having to consider all options, up to and including the closure of all existing services which would not only affect its nearly 2,000 subscribers island-wide, but also the jobs of the nine expert and dedicated people employed by the multi award winning Library.

Tracing its roots back over 100 years to the Rural Library, the gov announced back in 2011 that it was cutting the funding in response to the VAT income loss, since then it has run as an independent charity at a cost of about £250,000 per year despite adding new services including direct home deliveries of books and Bibliotherapy, which helps people with memory issues connect back to some of the memories that may otherwise be locked away.

From our oldest outreach client who is 105 years old, to some of our youngest babies, our unique combination of services really do serve the needs of both young and old to be mentally active through books and activities which encourage lifelong learning and ensures that our community is kept fed with expertly curated literary support

When running at full pace, we issue over 55,000 books and resources (audio books, DVDs etc) a year, many to the more vulnerable in society through our outreach services. So, we have always seen the services as vital, which was why they were not allowed to fail back in 2011 and we formed the charity to support it.

In recent years the library has benefited from funding of £125,000 per year from benefactors, and a matching amount from Government, but the Government financial support expired in April 2020 at which point our benefactors paid its full costs to prevent closure. A review by the Library Select Committee of Tynwald has failed to deliver the needed support from Government and as such the library is once again looking at closure.

Our priority has always been our clients. All of our staff worked through the lockdowns, supporting our communities with activities online and even calling up our housebound clients on the day they would normally have had a delivery so we maintained continuity, which can be so important to people in these situations. We also pushed out nearly two months’ worth of books in a week just before the first lockdown to ensure that people had a stock to keep them going. We feel a burden of responsibility in the services that we provide and the people to which we provide them. Hence the review to find a way to service the people who need it, even if we are not able to do it anymore

Please sign this petition to agree that the 5 services the Family supplies are a vital part of the part of the island community and support the Government principle of “not leaving anyone behind”, and maybe consider discussing it with your MHK or potential MHK’s when they come round to visit you to ask for your vote.

For any assistance you can offer or any enquiries that you have please contact us using review@familylibrary.im