Friday , 24th October

Today Ernie took me up to the London Borough of Enfield Libraries, http://www.enfield.gov.uk/nav2/200062.asp where he works.
At the Palmers Green Branch I met up with Liz Hart , who I had gotten to know at the Sydney IAML conference. she had previously been the music librarian for Enfield , but this position had recently been abolished and she now works part-time as a Lending Services Librarian. The previously well-reputed music collection had been relegated to various store rooms and it was very sad to see this dispersement. They still provide a lending service for sets of scores etc, but other services had been scaled down. It appears to me ,that Local Authorities, supposedly for economic reasons, in London are no longer valuing libraries as much as they have done in the past, or as we do in Australia and Scandanavia. It will be interesting to see the USA libraries, but they have the advantage of 'benefactors' in a lot of cases.
I had a look around the rest of the branch, which did not particularly differ from ours, but yet again, it was old and not a purpose built library building so... The staff , however, seemed very committed and friendly..
Then we caught the bus to Edmonton Town Branch , where Ernie usually works and I had a good look around there. The library is in a shopping complex and the area is extremely multicultural . The bookstock seemed reasonable ,as did the music/audio collection, but the bank of free public PC's seemd to have overtaken things. They also have a shop across the aisle devoted specifically to internet access ,for which they charge a small fee,(20p) as it is a condition of renting the shop. Although some of the Pc's in this shop are available a majority of people will wait and wait to use the free ones in the actual library. There is a staff member rostered to the desk in the 'shop' so it is labour intensive.
At 5p.m. we retired to the nearby pub 'The Lamb' and were joined by several of Ernie's colleagues, including Liz Hart. We had a great night and as is almost always the case, social interaction with colleagues, provides valuable insight into our profession.