There may be trouble ahead....

I admit as library staff we all thought this when Devon County Council, who I'm just going to refer to as the council from now on as its less to type, made the 'no libraries will close' announcement. We all felt a sense of disquiet as libraries are traditionally a soft target for spending cuts and we expected that the suggestion of no closures would come with some sort of enormous 'but' attached to it. We were right.

The first sign of the impending storm was the decision over the Devon Record Office staffing. It was announced in January that the Record Office would lose a third of its staffing, something which stirred up anger and apathy in equal measure. Amongst those who knew the service and understood what it provided, anger was widely expressed at the seeming disregard that the council had for the preservation of Devon's historical record. Apathy reigned elsewhere with comments such as 'surely this is something which should be pushed as far into the voluntary sector as possible?' and 'how many of us have ever had cause to contact a record office?' being made. Sadly the latter view is the one which is likely to prevail.
We knew in libraries that this initial insight into the way in which cuts were to be implemented didn't bode well. We waited for the storm to break.

On 3rd March, a month later than initally intended, the new structure for libraries in Devon was announced. It became clear quite quickly that this wasn't a restructuring, it was a demolition.  The worst part was that it was being done in such a way that from the outside it wouldn't seem that bad, that if we complained we could all too easily be branded as 'whining public sector workers who need to get real'. We were also told that we were not allowed to discuss the restructuring with the public. The library service looked like it was being brought down from the inside, and we were being told that the very people who used the service and gave it a reason for being there weren't allowed to know the changes that were to be made and how it might affect them. Why? Because the council remember all too well what happened last time it tryed to shut libraries - the public spoke up and made it such a huge issue that the council was forced to back down and only four of the proposed libraries were shut, with one being forced to close due to condemned building and one due to a site redevelopment which didn't allow for a new library.
We need your strength again to help the service through the lastest threats and the only way we can work together is if you, the public, know exactly what is happening.