Redesigning libraries for today's climate and tomorrow's needs

The financial pressures facing libraries today are arguably the most challenging for years, with cuts and closures making the headlines. What is less evident is the way that libraries are tackling the challenges they face through radical new ways of working: merging services across authorities, forging new partnerships, and moving into community management.

Peers and colleagues working in library services across local government represent a huge pool of untapped knowledge. Finding a way to access this knowledge is an essential plank in the foundation of a new age of libraries.

While individual library professionals have been generous with their experience for years, some library authorities have put this on a more formal footing by setting up library consortiums; 15 London boroughs make up the London Libraries Consortium, and five west of England councils have now formed the LibrariesWest Consortium.

These groups save time and money by jointly procuring essentials such as IT systems and a common library catalogue, popular items from eBooks to DVDs, public Wi-Fi and terminals for self-service check out.

Typically, teams are formed within the consortiums to spearhead new projects. These could involve identifying useful new technologies, providing stock in other languages for minority groups, or increasing use of the councils' large shared reference library.

The findings are then cascaded back to the rest of the consortium. Typically a pilot authority trials the project before it is refined and rolled out to the whole network of libraries. Staff across the library service benefit from working with colleagues and in situations they would not otherwise encounter, and libraries benefit from sharing knowledge with colleagues across council boundaries. An expert member of staff can be called on to offer training to others across the whole group.

Library visitors, meanwhile, benefit from faster, better services and the innovation driven by the group. Both the London and west country consortiums let customers use their library card across all members of the group, online and in the library. You could borrow a book in Enfield, where you live, and return it to Lewisham, where you work.

Using a shared library management system also allows library members to borrow stock from any branch within their consortium – generating a pool of over six million items for London's borrowers and two million through LibrariesWest.

The two consortiums are very different in terms of the geographical area and demographics of their customers. But both are pace setters for new ways of working, and they are now planning a closer working relationship with each other to gain more knowledge and faster speed of development.

Consortia Conference 2012 will take place on 3 May 2012 in Bath. Led by speakers from LibrariesWest and London Libraries Consortium, it will tackle shared services, efficiency and training

Jon Scown is development officer for LibrariesWest

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