This appeared in The Bookseller this week.

Author launches libraries campaign

04.09.08 Caroline Horn

Children’s writer Alan Gibbons is launching an authors’ campaign against library cuts and closures, with 300 writers and professionals pledging their support. Central to the campaign is a planned regional network of children’s authors, teachers and librarians to raise the public profile of local cutbacks and closures.

“There is a grinding, unremitting marginalisation of the book and deep ongoing cuts in library services,” said Gibbons. Some 60 public libraries were closed last year and the number of professional library staff has fallen by 13% between 1995 and 2005, he said. “Lots of people are arguing against this but our response needs to be broader and more active.”

Gibbons introduced a charter, Campaign for the Book, at a CWIG (Children’s Writers’ & Illustrators’ Group of the Society of Authors) conference held last weekend, and it has received 300 signatures so far, including David Almond, Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen and Beverley Naidoo.

Signatories to the charter pledge to campaign for the central place in society of reading for pleasure, the defence of public libraries and librarians from attempts to cut spending, and a recognition of school libraries as key engines of learning. Gibbons plans to bring together organisations already campaigning against cuts and closures, including CILIP and the School Library Association, and to co-ordinate their activities with authors.

He will also work to get celebrities involved in the campaign and will lobby at government level.

“We want to sit down with the government, talk this through and present alternatives,” said Gibbons. “Librarians don’t have the punch of oil [tanker] drivers but there is an embarrassment factor,” he said. “We can shame local councils by arguing publicly for our future and our children’s future.”

Gibbons plans to create a central database of proposed cuts in library services over the next year. A network of authors and professionals in every region will respond to these proposals by mobilising public meetings to protest against cuts and lobby local government.

The author launched the campaign after becoming active in Doncaster’s Save Our Libraries campaign. “I kept receiving emails about cuts in services and libraries elsewhere,” he said. He was told about one school librarian given two weeks’ notice that her school library was to close, and another who saw her salary cut by £7,000. “There are so many cases but so far there has been no overall co-ordination between all the people who care about reading for pleasure,” said Gibbons.

Gibbons’ Libraries Charter

We, the signatories of this charter commit ourselves to campaigning for the following:

1. The central place of reading for pleasure in society

2. A proper balance of book provision and information technology in public and
school libraries

3. The defence of public libraries and librarians from attempts to cut spending in a
“soft” area

4. An extension of the role of the school librarian and a recognition of the school
library as a key engine of learning

5. The recruitment of more school librarians. It is a national scandal that less than a third of secondary schools has a trained librarian

6. The defence of the professional status of the public and school librarian. Opposition to downgrading. In some places this has reduced librarians’ salaries by up to half

7. The promotion of reading whole books in school, rather than excerpts

8. A higher profile for reading for pleasure in schools, including shadowing book awards, inviting authors and illustrators to visit, and developing school creative writing magazines

Authors Caroline Horn libraries children’s

Campaign for the Book latest

September 1st, 2008

The Campaign for the Book received a terrific response at the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Conference at Robinson College, Cambridge this week-end. There is now a huge list of signatories to the initial statement.

I aim to give it two to three weeks before launching the statement. This will give everyone a chance to suggest amendments. It will also allow as many writers, illustrators, librarians and teachers, who are only just returning after the summer break, to add their names. I have also approached the comedians’ circuit and will be circulating the teaching and public sector unions.

What you can do

*if you haven’t signed yourself, please email your name and position if you want it quoted (if you signed the Doncaster petition, please email me anyway. I can’t take your support for granted)

*email the Charter to friends and colleagues. We want the most credible statement we can manage but I don’t want to go beyond September 20th before launching.

*if you have media or industry contacts, please mention the Campaign with a view to getting it covered

*if you are willing to speak at meetings against library cuts or generally about the campaign, could you email me your name, contact details and the area to which you are able to travel.

If I remember my conversations at CWIG, Linda Newberry has offered to cover Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, Ann Turnbull London, Steve Barlow Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Gillian Cross Warwickshire.

We need as many people as possible to offer. It would give a great boost to local people to have an author, illustrator of poet give their support. Where we can, we will send more than one representative. We really need people in every geographical area.

*Send the statement, on September 20th please, to your local MP and ask them to support its aims. Please report any success back to me: aagibbons@blueyonder.co.uk

What’s going on?

The Bookseller is carrying an article this week in the Children’s News section and Reading Zone has a piece, reproduced at the bottom of this email. I have been invited to attend four conferences so far, starting with the YLG in Lancaster. I will report back on each event. Here is the article on Reading Zone:

Author-led campaign to save libraries

Author Alan Gibbons is launching a campaign to raise the profile of public and school library closures and cut-backs.
Last year some 60 public libraries and a number of school libraries were closed and specialist children’s librarian positions lost, he said.
Gibbons also heard from a school librarian whose pay was cut by £7,000 and another who was given two weeks’ notice of the closure of her school library.
Is your school library being expanded or facing cutbacks? Emailinfo@readingzone.com with your news to help build a national picture of school library closures or expansion.

Gibbons is raising support for his campaign with a Charter, ‘Campaign for the Book’, whose signatories pledge to campaign amongst other things for: the central place of reading for pleasure in society; a proper balance of book provision and IT in public and school libraries; the defence of public libraries and librarians from attempts to cut spending; and a recognition of the school library as a key engine of learning.

Gibbons is now creating a regional network of authors, teachers and librarians. When a local library is threatened with cuts or closure, the local team will be mobilised to campaign against the cuts.

Gibbons plans to bring together organisations already campaigning against cuts and closures, including CILIP and the School Library Association, and to coordinate their activities with authors. He will also work to get celebrities involved in the campaign and will lobby at government level.

“Librarians don’t have the punch of oil drivers but there is an embarrassment factor,” he said. “We can shame local councils by arguing publically for our future and our children’s futures.”

Gibbons added, “There is also a lot of very good work being done in schools and libraries around the country and we want to make sure that those high standards are carried into all institutions.”

I have just received the following letter on behalf of the Mayor of Doncaster.

Dear Mr Gibbons

Thank you for your further e-mail of 13^th July 2008 and your further comments about Doncaster Libraries.  To answer each of your questions:

1.      Figures for efficiencies relate to the Customer Services department as a whole, not just libraries.  They also include £150,000 efficiencies from 2007/08 that were not delivered and have been carried forward.  £188,288 is being saved in library management and £293,134 will be saved by paying for less hours worked.  That is the total savings from the service.

2.      The true figure is 0% cuts in the book budget.

3.      In the last year, only 45,290 people have been active members of our library service (only 16% of the population) – so the minor changes in opening hours will not truly affect 60,000 residents. It has now been agreed that the Central Library will stay open on Saturday afternoons, drastically reducing the 60,000 footfall figure you state will be affected.

4.      Efficiencies were agreed at Full Council for 2008/09 for Customer Services to be achieved by:-

·              Rationalisation of the management structure

·              A minor reduction in opening hours for libraries and Customer Service Centres, to match opening hours to demand

·              Reverting 9 of the 12 Customer Service Centres to libraries, to match demand

·              Vacancy management

The review is not being made solely as an efficiency exercise, it has also been based on very detailed interviews with 25 key members of Library and Information Staff.

These views have been used to inform the reorganisation to produce a more focused leadership role, with improved management skills and with an emphasis on progress and innovation.  The service needs to re-invent itself to modernise the service and provide the technological and entrepreneurial drive to engage with communities, to encourage greater participation and take-up of library activities, as well as introducing new activities to attract different customer types.

Our modern approach which concentrates on meeting peoples’ needs rather than recycling stale, out of date procedures and practices, will produce an improved Library Service.

5.      A guarantee has been made that every effort will be made to avoid compulsory redundancies.  The posts being deleted are library management and customer services staff and the people in these posts will be subject to our extensive and successful redeployment process, as well as having the opportunity to discuss the possibilities of voluntary redundancy.  In fact, may people are taking the opportunity to go down this route, meaning that the number of jobs left is more or less equal to the remaining number of people. 

6.      There is much misinformation being touted about this service.  Whilst I have my own views on the reasons for this and I think they are obvious, I do not consider it appropriate to commit these to writing.  In fact, current visits by one of the Chief Officers to speak to all staff individually reinforces this view.  Many have been upset and scared by the rumours, rather than facts, and the delay in the process due to the disputes.

7.      The Council responds to Freedom of Information requests in accordance with the guidance offered by the Commissioner for Information.  These inquiries take up a huge amount of time and resources from the Council.  Therefore the Council does not offer additional information over and above answering the questions asked.

8.      The so-called provocative statements quoted on your Blog have obviously been taken out of context. We understand your apprehension about possible deterioration of the quality of the service.  However, I assure you and reiterate that it is our commitment to improve the Library Service to better meet the needs of our customers now and in the future.

Thank you, once again, for taking the time to contact the Mayor’s Office and for your comments.  As to your campaign, my responses to you are designed to properly inform it – not to stop it.  

Alan Gibbons

My writing tips…

First things first, you learn to write by reading. Immerse yourself in quality fiction. Instantly, you are absorbing the key skills almost by osmosis: tension, metaphor, simile, description and dialogue. To most people who want to write, this is like teaching your granny to suck eggs. Why would you want to write if you’re not an avid reader anyway!

Scribble down bits of writing that appeal to you. Work out how the writer does it. Is it syntax, the order in which the words are organized? Is it the musicality of the rhythms? Is it the nature of the vocabulary? Once you have worked out what makes it good writing, try to incorporate some of those tricks into your own.

Next, and very important, don’t trust ‘experts’, especially me! You might be told to write about what you know. Really? So you think J.K.Rowling swoops round Tesco on a broomstick, I suppose! What really matters is emotional truth. Whether you are writing something familiar, a story set in your own neighbourhood, or a fantasy story in the Kingdom of the Golden Rivers, your characters have to be real, living human beings, not cardboard cut-outs.

Get a response from your reader. Make them jump by having your character glimpse a silhouetted figure behind them in a mirror. Make them squirm by having them experience the world’s most toe-curling date. Just make them feel, for goodness’ sake!

Most of all, be passionate. Fiction is about empathy, making your reader see through somebody else’s eyes. Nobody writes a good story by being half-hearted. Give your all. Your readers deserve no less.

Doncaster Council appears determined to force through the £622.000 cuts package imposed upon its Library Service in the face of fierce opposition.

The Save Our Libraries campaign is refusing to abandon its opposition to the cuts. At this week’s well-attended meeting campaign members voted to support the following measures:

Initial draft for discussion

Campaign for the book

Charter 2008

The 2008 Year of Reading has been a great success. There have been many exciting initiatives such as the Boys into Books campaign. In many ways, reading has never been more popular. Millions of books are bought and devoured by a huge reading public. Many authors are major figures in public life.

These successes can disguise very serious problems however which are undermining the place of the book and reading for pleasure in national life. Here are some of the challenges we face:

*public library closures- sixty last year and more planned

*a loss of professional library staff- down 13% between 1995 and 2005

*more untrained volunteers instead of qualified library staff

*fewer books in schools, a 15% reduction while there has been 28% rise in spending on education

*a shift from books to computer services

*the closure of school libraries to make way for IT suites

*the sacking or down grading of both public and school librarians

*the closure of school libraries

*the marginalisation of reading for pleasure and the reading of whole books in many schools as teaching to the test replaces the pleasure of acquiring knowledge for its own sake

Given the present economic difficulties, many of these challenges are likely to become more pressing.

We, the signatories of this Charter commit ourselves to campaigning for the following:

1.      The central place of reading for pleasure in society

2.      A proper balance of book provision and Information Technology in public and school libraries

3.      The defence of public libraries and librarians from attempts to cut spending in a ‘soft’ area

4.      An extension of the role of the school librarian and a recognition of the school library as a key engine of learning.

5.      The recruitment of more school librarians. It is a national scandal that less than a third of secondary schools has a trained librarian

6.      The defence of the professional status of the public and school librarian. Opposition to downgrading. In some places this has reduced librarians’ salaries by up to half

7.      The promotion of reading whole books in school rather than excerpts

8.      A higher profile for reading for pleasure in schools, including shadowing book awards, inviting authors and illustrators to visit, developing school creative writing magazines

Supporters of the Campaign for the Book do not see themselves as competitors with professional associations, trade unions and existing library or school campaigns. We seek to create a national network to help coordinate the efforts of all who want to protect the status of the book and reading for pleasure. We will offer our support to local campaigns and initiatives.

It is time to stand up for reading.

It is time to campaign for the book.

For further information contact Alan Gibbons at: aagibbons@blueyonder.co.uk

This is my letter published in the Times Educational Supplement on August 8th, 2008.

This is a recent review of The Demon Assassin in The Bookseller. My latest novel was chosen as the top title in the Thrillers and Horror section.

A genuinely scary time-shift novel, set in a well-realised London at the time of the Blitz. Lots of period details build up the setting: in the films, the billboards, the old Morris Oxford, the house costing £1,300. Yet it’s also a world of werewolves, demons and a curse that means adolescents may develop supernatural powers.