Update on Plans for Surrey Libraries

Surrey County Council held a Cabinet meeting on 27 September 2011. During this meeting the future of Surrey’s Public Library network was discussed and the following recommendations were made. 10 libraries to be provided via Community partnership and to be run by volunteers. 9 more libraries may be run in a similar manner if the [...]

Mobilising The Library Website

A few weeks ago a discussion was going on via Twitter about the possibility of creating an iphone app for library websites using Bloapp. The benefits of using this service were that it was quick and easy and provided another way to offer a service to library users. Put simply, Bloapp takes an RSS feed [...]

SurreyCamp Event and Digital Surrey

Last week was Digital Surrey week, part of the “Future Surrey” initiative. What is Future Surrey? The following quote taken from the Future Surrey site will explain… Surrey County Council is working with FutureGov to design and deliver Future Surrey: a programme that combines service design and social technology to bring about organisational change. It’s based on [...]

Surrey Libraries Campaigners Lobby At County Hall

Issues surrounding Surrey County Council plans for the future of the library service have been raised at County Hall twice in the past two weeks. Last week (19 July 2011) a motion was raised by Councillor Eber Kington at the Council meeting (2hr 35mins), requesting that “the Council Leader and Cabinet… halt the current plans [...]

Proposed Motion to Halt Changes to Surrey Library Service

Residents in Surrey have sent an open letter to all councillors in the county, questioning the validity of the study proposing the closure of some libraries. Issues of concern around the study include wrong and inconsistent figures, incorrect rankings of some libraries, incorrect proximity measurements (ie distance between libraries), illogical comparisons, lack of consideration of specific [...]

Save Surrey Libraries Meeting

A UNISON meeting was held yesterday in Guildford, to discuss concerns about proposals for changes to Surrey Libraries. The proposals included the handing over of 11 libraries to volunteers and the removal of the mobile library service (more details can be found here). This was the second meeting that had taken place – the first [...]

Surrey Libraries Review Goes With Original Decision

On March 1st 2011 Surrey County Council Cabinet debated ”Safer and Stronger Communities Committee” request for Cabinet to rethink the decision to turn eleven libraries into “community partnered libraries” (increased use of volunteers) and remove the mobile library service. The original decision was upheld by Cabinet and the full webcast of the meeting can be viewed here (15:56 – [...]

Surrey Library Service Review Recommends Rethinking Cabinet Decision

On 22nd February Surrey County Council’s Safer and Stronger Communities Select Committee raised a challenge to the proposals for changes to the library service, as follows… “To review the decision by Cabinet on 1 February 2011 to implement the recommendations of the Libraries PVR to close the mobile library service and transfer libraries into community [...]

Surrey Library Service Review

Surrey County Council are planning a £60m reduction in budget next year and are expected to provide services without increasing council tax. I work for Surrey County Council Library Service. The Library Service recently underwent a public value review. (Full documents here & here.) As a result of this recommendations were made as follows to a Cabinet [...]