Sydenham Library - Pass or Fail?

[LivesNearby]

There is an interesting thread over at Brockley Central on the success or failure of the transition of Crofton Park library to Eco Computer Systems.

What has your experience been at Sydenham?

[mikej]

There is only one answer, as I see it - the volunteers manning Sydenham library are clearly doing a great job! There has been years of neglect by Lewisham - just look at the awful state of the building - paid for by Carnegie originally - and Darren T and Nasrin (who runs the library) are urgently pursuing all possible sources of finance to sort out the leaking roof, put in photo-voltaic panels on that roof and open up a little cafe too.
Sadly Lewisham do not support the library (other than supply books) so they may well prefer it to close.
Go in there and see how high the % usage is of the computers, and how many are using the books, and the job service (I don't know the offical name) round the back.
It is a no-brainer as far as I can see.

[stuart]

I am getting groans from my family. It is about the integration (or rather lack of) IT systems or ability to use the Lewisham Library systems in Sydenham Library. Hence they have switched to using FH Library (who still managed to send us a £9 fine for a book long returned and on their shelves!)

I am unclear what the problem is and whether it is ongoing. But if we want Sydenham Library to be a success it is a issue that needs to be disappeared.

I have to say we find Bromley Library (Penge & Beckenham branches) to ones to beat.

Stuart

[Tim Lund]

The Cabinet Member for Community Services was happy to help on this at the Mayor and Cabinet meeting last Wednesday:



The question asked was "What are the monthly returns of borrowed books from the various libraries in Lewisham for October 2010 and October 2011. This should include both libraries retained in Council control and the four libraries outsourced to other operators?"

The response came in a table which I struggle to format nicely here, so instead I offer this image



with the table downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet, including percent changes, here.

Perhaps not too much should be read into these numbers, since, as is noted, there has been some initial difficulties with the data collection from the community libraries.

[mikej]

Tim, your download doesn't work - it leads back to the document that you copied inj your post.

[Tim Lund]

Tim, your download doesn't work - it leads back to the document that you copied inj your post.

Apologies - I'd left the extension as .png - I needed to change it to .xls

[Tim Lund]

Private Eye today catches up with the Sydenham Town Forum, with a "Library News Special" including

In Lewisham, handing over control of three branch libraries to a computer recycling firm last May resulted in what looked like a catastrophic drop in book lending. At Grove Park library, now run by Eco Computer using volunteers, October's monthly borrowing figure dropped from 3,764 books to just 722, which local campaigners feared would be used as proof that library services aren't wanted after all. The council now blames technical glitches, saying it doesn't really know how many books were borrowed from the new provider at all.