October half term: there is an extensive programme of activities running in Haringey for children and young people during the half term break.

Your Libraries - Your Views

Haringey Council is committed to keeping all of the borough’s nine libraries open.

We have undertaken a review of our library services to ensure we continue to provide services that local residents both need and want.

The review

The review was carried out by consultants Activist and did not consider:

  • out-sourcing
  • reducing the number of libraries in our borough.

The review has explored possible new investment and resource opportunities, and how to best to improve facilities and services. We want to encourage even more people to use our libraries. We do know how popular our libraries are. Wood Green Central Library alone is one of the top 20 most visited libraries in the country!

The review has helped us capture your aspirations for the borough’s libraries; to examine what the service should look like in future years - to develop a vision for our libraries and to set out how we will achieve this vision.

The Haringey Library Review is now available for you to read:

The full report is over 200 pages long but there is an executive summary available on pages 6-11 in the Part 1 Main document below

Nearly a thousand people contributed to the review, through workshops, focus groups, a survey and one-to-one interviews.

The library users we spoke to told us that the most important aspects of the service are:

  • 91% said range of books
  • 87% liked friendly and helpful staff
  • 79% liked the proximity to home
  • 69% liked attractive and well maintained buildings

Meanwhile, the people who don’t use our libraries at present told us they wanted to see more of the following:

  • 46% interested in art, music and culture
  • 43% in adult education
  • 42% would like cafe facilities
  • 40% wanted a better selection of books

To summarise some of the key findings, the review found that:

  • Library buildings – need to be improved, updated, rebranded
  • ICT infrastructure – better managed and part of corporate IT
  • Stock (books etc) – is under-invested, out of date, and poorly presented
  • Opening hours – need to be reviewed and explore options for sharing space with other services to optimise the space
  • Staffing – needs to be restructured completely
  • Branding – we need to develop the vision for the service within the Council and use this as basis a to transform services

What happens next

A report looking at the outcome of the review and further recommendations on the future of our libraries will be presented to Cabinet during Autumn 2014.

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