We oppose all proposed cuts to our city library service including
- Cutting the opening hours of libraries and hubs
- Bringing in more unpaid volunteers to take over roles previously done by professional paid trained library staff
- Scrapping hardcopies of newspapers, magazines and journals in favour of digital-only provision
- Evermore cramming into library buildings of other services and organisations.

PROTECT OPENING HOURS. 

Cardiff Council proposals to slash library opening times and recruit more unpaid volunteers is a classic technique.

Opening hours are cut, the service is run down, use falls as residents find their local library is not open when they want and does not have what they want, this is then used as an excuse to close libraries. 

The proposals to close some libraries on Saturday's is an attack on children, young people and families. Saturday is a family day when children come in to browse and build a library and reading habit that can last a lifetime.

AUSTERITY

Over 1,000 UK libraries have closed since Tory austerity began in 2010. In 2018/19 almost 91,000 Cardiff residents, around a quarter of our city's population, borrowed an item from a city library. If libraries are invested in, not cut, they remain one of most used, most loved, most popular public services.

COST OF LIVING CRISIS

To cut library opening hours, especially during a cost-of-living crisis, is a backwards step. Public libraries are one of the few spaces in our city that anyone can visit during the daytime for free.

As families struggle to heat their homes due to rising living costs, libraries across the UK are becoming  “warm banks” for people who need somewhere to keep warm. Some even provide hot drinks, free clothes, soup, hygiene products and free sanitary products can be handed out discreetly to combat period poverty.

Libraries are effectively community centres for many underserved residents, essential community spaces, warm and welcoming places where we can meet, read, study, research and write, and where learning and cultural activities can be organised. They are essential for many jobseekers and low income families to use the internet, and also for help and support for refugees.

PROTECT LIBRARY WORKERS

Our city library service is not just the buildings, books, computers, and other materials they house - they are run by caring and dedicated staff. It's our library staff who make sure our libraries open on time, run the events and offer help to those in need.

Cardiff Council's drive to more and more replace council workers and professionals with unpaid volunteers suggest they neither understand, nor value, the role of professional library staff. 

Reducing the overall number of library staff could mean less help, make it riskier to prevent or manage health and safety issues, and maybe even make temporary closures more likely in the event of staff shortages. 

Staff promote literacy in children, and adults who have missed out, know the stock and have read a lot of it, have local history knowledge, they often support and help vulnerable members of the community, including refugees. Library staff are community workers.

Temporary unpaid volunteers will not be able to develop the long-term commitment to community empowerment that staff who have supported two or more generations have.

Volunteers often will not want to do the boring repetitive tasks or put up with verbal abuse from difficult users when are not being paid. Volunteers do only a small fraction of the work of library staff. Some make mistakes so the work has to be done again. They may not be able to attend if they have training or job interviews.

PROTECT LIBRARY SPACE

Cramming more and more services and organisations into every space in library buildings can only come at the expense of the library service and of young adults and others wishing to study in the libraries. A lack of study space is already a problem. 

Bringing in any commercial or business activities into library spaces goes against the ethos of public libraries.

PROTECT NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS

Scrapping hard copy papers and periodicals excludes many who don’t have digital access or capability. Even people who do have that prefer hard copy options. For many of the older generation reading the paper is a cultural ritual. Many cannot or do not want to go digital. Reading luminous screens with text scrolling up is very tiring on older eyes. 

Many printed magazines are struggling to survive and may go under, while many of the small community outlets for these have been lost over the years. We are also concerned about the impact on Welsh language newspapers, magazines and periodicals.

INVEST, DON'T CUT

In 2015 and 2023 hundreds protested across our city for publicly funded libraries with paid and trained, professional library staff.

We are devastated that our council continues to attack our city library service.  Our city's libraries have weathered world wars, the Great Depression and previous recessions and survived intact. Labour councils must not act as local conduits of Tory austerity.

We ask that Cardiff Council drop all planned library cuts and instead invest in our city library service.