Libraries crisis set to get 'much worse' this year

The bleak situation for the country's public libraries will get "much worse" this year, according to experts, with sweeping cuts already on the horizon in Sheffield and Islington.

As writers including David Almond and Billy Elliot author Lee Hall line up to protest the planned closure of 10 of Newcastle's 18 libraries, government budget cuts have forced Sheffield city council to appeal for help from the community to save 14 of its 27 community libraries, and Islington council has warned that all 10 of its libraries are potentially under threat.

"We need your help," said councillor Mazher Iqbal, Sheffield city council's cabinet member for communities and inclusion to locals, as the council faces a £50m budget gap for 2014 and announced the need to save £1.6m from its library service. "We want to hear as many ideas and proposals to help us to save as many libraries as possible, so the service has a viable future. I want to be clear that we want to keep libraries open but the scale of the budget difficulties we are facing mean things have to change."

Iqbal said it was "particularly unfair that whilst we and many other councils in the north are facing cuts of such a scale that we are having to look at the future of our library service some of the wealthiest areas in the country are receiving almost no cuts at all. This is deeply unfair and says everything about the values of this government."

In the London borough of Islington, meanwhile, government cuts mean the council is having to save £100m between April 2011 and March 2015, and officials have warned that libraries may have to be dropped altogether if the fall in funding is pushed through. Council leader Catherine West said cuts could mean "that we would just have to stop doing certain things. There are things we have to do by law, such as social services and schools. But there are other things we do that we decide to do, such as run libraries, children's centres, youth clubs and offer help with employment. All of that is at risk."

Islington has already cut opening hours in its branches in order to keep all 10 open, but West stressed: "We are committed to keeping libraries open".

The news comes as the influential libraries website Public Libraries News put the number of libraries currently under threat of closure, or closed since April 2012, at 317, out of 4,265 in the country. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) has predicted that in 2013, more than 1,100 library staff will be lost, 1,720 opening hours a week will be cut and £22.5m will be cut from public library spending.

"I don't think that 2013 is going to be any better than 2012 was to be honest. In fact if anything it's going to be much worse. The postal lottery of library provision will continue to get worse, with some councils still doing their best to provide a good quality service according to their legal requirement, while other councils will continue to attempt to impose shortsighted cuts on their communities," said CILIP president Phil Bradley.

Like the Women's Institute, which issued a report this week warning that "volunteers cannot continue being used as sticking plaster in the library service", as they do not receive adequate support, Bradley expressed concerns about the proliferation of community-run branches in the year ahead.

"Those libraries that are currently run by volunteers (and I would question the extent to which they can be called 'libraries' since they are unable to provide a full range of services) will come under increasing pressure, and volunteers will not get the support that they were promised. This will lead to the gradual or not so gradual erosion of what they are able to do for their communities, leading to more closures, through no fault of their own. Councils will discover that volunteer-run services do not save the money they were expecting, but by then the damage will already have been done," he said.

Bradley also predicted that visitor numbers would continue to fall, as people are unable to get to libraries in the centre of a city, and as decreased budgets lead to second-rate book collections. "I very much fear that this decrease will be used in an 'I told you so' manner, justifying the closure of libraries," said Bradley.

The CILIP president issued a call to arms to library lovers to support their local branches, particularly on National Libraries Day on 9 February. "Let us be quite clear – a library is far, far more than a glorified bookswap," he said. "An attack on a library service is nothing less than an attack on the community that it serves, and a closed library reduces the ability of people to empower and improve their lot."