Fostering a love for libraries - July 9, 2003

Your leader of June 28 ("Revamping libraries") touched a number of important points for which people in charge of libraries and the reading public should be grateful. Much has been said and written in the last 10 years about the need to improve the reading habits of the Maltese and, yet, the general impression is that not much headway has been made.

Admittedly bringing about such a cultural change takes time and one cannot expect exciting progress in the short term. But after 10 years one hopes that we have achieved at least a small qualitative and quantitative leap. Have we or have we not?

It would seem that, in the first place, we lack the necessary statistics. It is said that the Maltese do not read enough and are not great book buyers; but it is not known whether readership is on the increase or decreasing. One would have to collate data from various sources.

Neither do we know what kind of books the various categories of the reading public prefer; how many never read a book in Maltese, or in English, or in a foreign language; what percentage of the community has never visited a library (and perhaps does not even know where the local library is); how many have not acquired one book in the last year, etc.

The Central Public Library has no doubt answers to some of these questions and so do the branch libraries regarding their particular zones. But there are a number of important questions they cannot answer and problems they cannot address.

The Dun Karm Schembri Mosta Regional Library, for example, has in the past two years conducted two surveys which give an interesting, albeit very partial, picture of the situation which suggests a number of steps necessary to address some of the problems highlighted by the questionnaires.

Yes, availability of attractive books is a prime consideration, and books do cost money.

The annual allocation by the Central Library is of a mere Lm240. And this for regional libraries; for branch libraries it is much less. Yes, local public libraries are rarely exciting. Is anyone surprised?

And yet, regional and branch libraries survive, and in some localities thrive, thanks to the allocations of the local councils. At present, however, at least in some libraries, these funds cannot be spent exclusively on books. In some cases half of these funds, or more, go to pay for extra supervision by the librarian/s. And this when people are clamouring for new books, more books for children, more books on this and more books on that.

Why is this so? Because recruitment for new staff by the Central Public Library has been stalled for over a year. For a long stretch the opening hours of some regional libraries had become very capricious: on certain days, without any notice, the library would open at 11 instead of at 8.30 a.m. or not open at all because the sole librarian was on sick leave, or because he was availing himself of his leave entitlement. And finding a replacement was difficult. This obviously had its toll on library users. So one had to recruit help for the librarian. And that is paid out from the local council's allocation.

In spite of these drawbacks, libraries are making progress, even if this is slow. The real trouble is that not many people visit their local library. If they did I am sure they would be pleasantly surprised.

The questionnaires carried out by the Mosta regional library reveal, for example, that only 10 per cent of its users have a tertiary education. Surely one should expect more. I am convinced that these people would spend less on books and read more if they were aware of the fact that in this library there are several books which meet their tastes. What is more, as users of the library, they can even make suggestions on what books they would like to find.

The same goes for children under 10. Very few ever visit the library. In most cases, it is their mother, very, very rarely, their father (understandable? In some cases perhaps, but a pity nonetheless), who comes to choose the books for them. The children are rarely brought along to foster in them from a young age a love for libraries.

Males are notorious for their rare presence in local libraries. In the case of the Mosta library, only 16 per cent of the users are males. These seem to have abdicated from sharing the duty of guiding their children's education with their wives. Work constraints are a reality, but they do not have to lead to this unhappy situation.

These financial and cultural problems do not make life easy for library committees.

Funds are not the only problem, and perhaps not even the main one, but a major one nonetheless. Given the shortage of funds, I feel there should be more cooperation between schools and local libraries.

In some cases, this is easy, indeed in places it already exists, because the library is housed in the school itself. It happens less often with other libraries, particularly regional ones.

As the leader of The Times rightly said, some schools have built quite attractive libraries. This is one good reason why there should be more synergy between the people responsible for the running of these libraries, for example, in the acquisitions of books, organisation of events together, formation of clubs, etc. Funds could in this way be stretched and occasions increased to reach more readers.

Greater synergy among the operators at the national, regional and branch libraries would also be an important factor in this national drive. I am sure these people can draw up a national policy with ideas on strategies and initiatives which would be of great help to all the people involved in this sector.