The recent decision of Herts County Council to site the new incinerator at New Barnfield has had many side effects. One of the most important is the future of the Central Resources library with its unique collections.
Until recently, a new building was to be built in Broadwater Road WGC to take the entire library and all its activities. Now the Tory-run council is to sell the site it so recently bought, and spread the library collections. The reference library – books and documents that you can browse but not borrow – will go to the Campus West library in WGC – assuming there is room.
However, the remaining collections that can be borrowed:
Fiction
Non-fiction
The sheet music collection
Playscripts
will be transferred to a warehouse or several warehouses. There will be no public access. All you will be able to do is browse a list of titles and place an order, then go to the warehouse to collect (and return) them.
This fundamentally and drastically undermines the principle of accessibility. It also raises the question of whether the conditions in a warehouse will damage the collections.
When county councillor Malcolm Cowan raised this at meetings of the council, the councillor then in charge of libraries said ‘Malcolm is right’. He then lost his job.
If you want to save the library collections and want them available to the public, then please sign the petition here and encourage your friends to do so. Thank you.
We the undersigned are concerned, outraged by and opposed to the recently announced plans for the relocation and dispersal of the New Barnfield Central Resources Library collections of performing and research materials and equipment to a warehouse with limited public access, as a result of the plans to build an incinerator on the current site.
This move would be extremely damaging in terms of access and use by an extremely wide range of performing arts groups, schools and individuals in Hertfordshire who use these materials for research, teaching and performance, and who need access to the materials themselves.
We are also concerned that, in initiating such a move, there appears to be no plans to find/build suitable accommodation for valuable and historic collections that require special storage conditions.
We believe that any move to break up and relocate these collections into warehouse storage facilities flies in the face of Hertfordshire County Council's commitment to preserve libraries and public access.
As an integral part of this access, we believe these unique collections must continue to be open to readers to browse and peruse the material on the shelves.
