Fight for Our Libraries

Tweet to Save Libraries on this Hashtag #CFTB

My school library rescued me. It gave me companionship at a lonely time in my life. And it transformed my future.

Reading the dismissive comments left by readers on Catherine Bennett's piece about library closures in the Guardian made me sick to my stomach.

There is another discussion to be had about how libraries should change because times certainly are a-changing. But close them down? "They might as well start book burning," writes Bryony Pearce, author of Incarnation.

If you care about libraries, join The Campaign for the Book founded and led by author Alan Gibbons.

If you blog, blog about libraries. Make a fuss. Name names. Here are a few:

Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP - Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport
John Penrose MP - Minister for Tourism and Heritage
Hugh Robertson MP - Minister for Sport and the Olympics
Ed Vaizey MP - Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries (joint Minister with Department of Business, Innovation and Skills)

Highlight these names, mention them in your blog posts. These people have the power to change things and they should know it. Their Google Alerts on their names will be crammed with our anger.

Already, the blogosphere is buzzing:

Lucy Coats decries culture minister Ed Vaizey's fair weather support for libraries. "Where is his passion for libraries now?" she asks on her blog Scribble City Central. (I have enlarged Mr. Vaizey's name so that he knows we are laying a lot of this at his feet)

Thanks to Tracy Baines who reposted my piece on the Tall Tales and Short Stories blog.

And Philip Ardagh, author of the Grubtown Tales, who started out being funny and ended with an impassioned plea.:

LIBRARIES MATTER. HELPING TO STOP LIBRARY CLOSURES MATTERS. As for Mr Spock with a goatee beard? That has something to do with ANTIMATTER, but there's no room for that here. We all have to act NOW before it's too late, so what are you waiting for? He also posted this on Facebook and got amazing comments

Here's Nick Cross from Who Ate My Brain, who despite admitting that he doesn't get to his library much, says:

I don't know what the answer is to saving our libraries. But I do know that they are a vital public service and we need to make a hell of a lot of noise about their potential demise. Read the whole essay

And Jon Mayhew, author of Mortlock:

... if it weren't for this humble building, its contents and staff, I wouldn't be a writer now. Next year 250 libraries are set to close.

Don't let them close your library down. Read Jon's piece

And Nicky Schmidt, who lives in South Africa, contributed this on the Absolute Vanilla blog:

...  It strikes me as the most short-sighted move imaginable. It strikes me doubly, living in a place where libraries are in short supply and books are not a priority for children because they're too expensive. The UK has something we do not. It has a cultural love of books and it has produced some of the most remarkable storytellers and fiction writers in the world. It has something which has shaped the both the British and Commonwealth cultural landscape and continues to do so. The UK has, through its library system, something so precious to give its young people, something we do not have. It has a culture of reading, where we do not. UK libraries serve the entire populace, we have considerably fewer libraries and ours serve only a minority. So when I read that the UK is planning on cutting its libraries, I want to smack my forehead, bang several heads together and ask if the UK government has taken leave of its senses. Read Nicky's post (I so get where Nicky is coming from - In my native Philippines where libraries are an unaffordable luxury, people would be shocked at how casually the UK government can throw away something the rest of the world can only dream of) 

And Philippa Francis on the KM Lockwood Blog, wrote an open letter to people like Ed Vaizey who can actually influence policy - warning them that NOT doing anything about library closures shows that  ...

• you don’t care about children who have no books at home, in fact, you don’t care about anyone who has no other access to books
• you think the excitement and specialness of entering a physical world of ideas isn’t important for lots of children or adults
• you want children to see reading as only something you do to fill in worksheets at school Read Philippa's letter

Keren David, YA author, blogged this brilliant piece (which is almost a poem) about Who Uses Libraries

And Kathryn Evans wrote about Why You Should Care About Libraries

And Nina Killham was enraged when someone told her libraries were old fashioned.

Keep blogging, keep shouting. 

Sometimes it's the only way to make people listen.

Bye Bye Libraries. Bye Bye Civilization.

That's the gist of Catherine Bennett's piece for the Guardian, listing all the closures expected in the coming government cost-cutting exercise.

THINK! Kill a library and live with the consequences.

Anyone who loves reading (or writing) will want to bang their heads on the wall if they read the comments below the piece, such as this one from someone calling themselves Taxpayer555:

Close all public libraries ASAP . University and schools already have library. With the internet and ebook readers, ipads, cheap second hand books online and in charity shops, their is no need for libraries. Libraries are nothing more than glorified internet cafes and DVD rental shops. You have to move with the times, Whether librarians like it or not. Shut them all down and use the money for something more useful.

Somewhere down below all the trolls was a comment from Michael Rosen, our Children's Laureate for 2007 to 2009. And I thought it would be a public service to highlight it here.


Readers, if you care and if you blog, or have an online profile, please repost this!

I hope Margaret Hodge, Ed Vaizey, Ed Balls, and Vernon Cloaker have google alerts on their names so that they can read this and blush (I enlarge your names in case you're as short-sighted as your policies). Shame on you.

Here is Michael Rosen's comment:

Michael Rosen

Books have become optional extras in schools. They've been sidelined by ITC and worksheets. There is now a generation of young teachers who have been through teacher training with no more than a few minutes of training in children's literature and little or no work on why it's important for all children to read widely and often and for pleasure.

So, what we have is the notion that there isn't time to read whole books, there isn't time to help all children browse and read and keep reading - but there is time to do worksheets on different aspects of 'literacy'. And yet, the people running education know full well that children who read widely and often and for pleasure find it much easier to grasp the curriculum as a whole. There is an international study showing this.

What does this have to do with libraries? If the government (or the last one) had felt willing, all they needed to do was formalise the link between schools and libraries. They could have required every school and every library to lay down some fixed, timetabled sharing of time and resources, which would involve turning the present voluntary arrangements into certain ones. In one fell swoop it would guarantee library-use and massively enhance the children's progress.

I put all this in a document in Margaret Hodge's library review where it was immediately ignored. I sent it to Ed Vaizey (because he asked me to), and he too has promptly ignored it.

Ed Balls and Vernon Coaker both refused to ask schools to develop their own policies on the provision and reading of books. Neither Ofsted nor schools' 'Self Assessment forms' require schools to make the provision and reading of whole books something that they monitor.

In short, education and library ministers aren't really very interested in the idea of everyone reading whole books, and they're certainly not very interested in the idea of every child reading whole books. I even gave them a 20-point blueprint or outline on how to turn every school into what I called a 'book-loving school' (based largely on the TV programme I did 'Just Read'. And that' blueprint is now available on various websites. The ministers I met weren't interested in sending it out, either as it is, or in any adapted form.

It's clear that they think 'reading' is about 'doing literacy' ie learning how to 'decode' print. What they don't seem to understand is that literature is one of the main ways in which we can engage with difficult and important ideas in an accessible way. It offers children a ladder between their own personal experience, the apparently 'personal' experience of the protagonists in any given text, and the ideas that are thrown up during the adventures, scenes and feelings that the protagonists go through. So, the reader encounters the protagonists' feelings of, say, pity, anger, fear, guilt, envy and the like but in a school context (or indeed many social contexts) those feelings become talk about those feelings as ideas...eg what is 'pity'? what is 'guilt'? ie through reading, the young reader starts to generalise the particular or put another way, discover abstract thought.

Children who read widely, often and for pleasure are the ones who can make the transition between particular experience to abstract thought that all education asks of children between the ages of 8 and 13. The more you read, the easier that transition is. The kids who fall behind don't fall behind because they haven't done enough worksheets. It's because the education curricula haven't helped them discover a wide range of texts through being regular readers.

Michael Rosen's message:
It's about READING, stupid (not 'doing literacy).

Thanks to Teri for the heads up

How to post a podcast/recording on your website

By Candy Gourlay

This is a quickie tutorial on how to put a podcast (a.k.a. a sound file such as you reading aloud from your book!) on your website or blog.

Yes, this could be you!

I've just posted a recording of me reading from Tall Story on my other blog (it's on the sidebar, helpfully titled "Listen to me read an excerpt from Tall Story"). Do let me know what you think.

What you need to create a podcast:

1. Your raw sound recording. It might be you talking plus ambient sounds or commentary from other sources. You will need to record to a digital form - WAV or MP3. How? I am the proud owner of an H4N Zoom Recorder - a kind of high-tech version of the old tape recorders we hacks used to carry around. Most computers will have built in mics and basic recording software. You might even use your mobile phone. Mine does great recordings with a tiny bit of  hiss.You can also record yourself using a camcorder and extract the sound using Quicktime Pro (I've always thought it's worth the price - I even use it to download youtube videos). There used to be a free way to do this online called Vixy.net but I think they've turned to capitalism now.

2. A way to assemble/edit your recorded sounds and music. If you work on a mac, you can use Garage Band to edit your recording, adding music and voice. Never used Garage Band? Watch this video tutorial. If you work on a PC there is a lot of software for this but you might find the free-to-download Audacity a good way to mix. Here's an Audacity tutorial

3. Additional music or sound effects. Some tasteful music does make for a better end product. There are a lot of places online to find royalty free music (Google and listen). Garage Band comes with music loops from many instruments AND sound effects (do try not to be too annoying).

4. Webspace/server to host your MP3 online. Once you create your recording, you need to upload it to a server online. This might be your own host (I much prefer 1and1.co.uk to the other ones out there). It might even be free webspace provided by your internet service provider (BT Internet, Virgin, they all give you free webspace - I couldn't find straightforward info on BT's free webspace, a bad sign). You can also sign up to the many podcast sites that provide hosting for a fee or free with ads. These sites are a lot like Podcast People and Podbean

5. Software to upload your MP3 to the server. You can use proprietary software such as Dreamweaver or a free ftp client like Filezilla . Ftp means 'file transfer protocol' - and the software is just a way of putting your file on the server. Here's a step-by-step for Filezilla

6. An mp3 player widget to put on the website. You can, of course just link to wherever you posted the sound file. But it's far cooler to have a button to press. I used this free flash mp3 player.

7. Oh and I am presuming you've already got a website or blog to post the thing on.

Here are the not-so-quick and no-so-easy steps to posting a sound file on your website (personally tested by yours truly):

1. Create the sound file. No, I'm not telling you how to do it here. My advice is: listen to Radio 4 for inspiration. Edit sharply. The shorter the better - my new reading is more than four minutes, probably too long.

2. Once you've edited to your heart's content, export as an MP3 file using your editing software (on Garage Band it's the 'share' button and on Audacity it's the File>export as) . This is what I did. Someone more widgety than me might advice using a higher resolution file such as a Wav but you'll have to ask them what to do next because I didn't do that.

3. Upload the MP3 to your webspace. How to upload? Use the aforementioned FTP software. This means you might have to teach yourself how to use it. How do you teach yourself? My personal favourite is googling "How to use (name of ftp software)" Always works for me.

4. Make sure you know the url by which to access your file. Url means uniform resource locator - it's the address of your file on the web or the link. You need this to link to from your website, or to input into the MP3 player in step five.

To find your url you need to know how your chosen webspace is organized. If you go on one of those podcast sites they will give you a link. I put my file in a folder called mp3 and uploaded it to my webspace on http://notesfromtheslushpile.co.uk. So the url of my file is http://notesfromtheslushpile.co.uk/mp3/tallstory.mp3 How do you know your url? Ask your webspace provider.

5.Select the model of mp3 player you want on this site. There are other sites of course but this is the one I used. Some of the podcast websites that provide you with webspace might also provide you with the player. I couldn't be bothered to research all the podcast sites so I decided to host mine on my own own webspace (under my domain notesfromtheslushpile.co.uk) and just find some pretty buttons to paste on my blog. There were many sizes to choose from but I chose the maxi - which allowed me to control the sizes of the buttons and the colour. On the right, there's a menu - go straight to 'generator' where you can enter your desired settings. The page will generates all the code you need to style the player.

6. The mp3 player website was not very forthcoming about how to make the thing work so I followed this tutorial which walked me through posting onto my website. The tutorial happened to be in French but on my browser Google Chrome a message appeared asking if I wanted it translated to English. I clicked Yes, and the translation was surprisingly good.

The potentially confusing bit: the process does involve creating two more files - an xml and a text file. Don't panic. Take a deep breathe and do this:

1. The MP3 player generator page gives you the text to paste into the xml and text files (be careful not to close the browser page as you will have to start working on the settings from scratch).

2. Create the xml and text files using the free text editor that comes with your computer (Notepad or Wordpad or Textedit on Mac) - don't use Microsoft Word because it will just add its own code. Paste the text generated by the website into a new file and save with a .xml or .txt extension.Note: To make an xml file, you need to have an xml declaration at the very beginning of the page as described in this article, before you paste in the text provided.Just copy the declaration in that article.

 3.  Upload it into the same webspace as your sound file using your ftp uploader (eg Filezilla). I uploaded my files into the same folder as the sound file. 

7. Once you've uploaded your xml and text files, you can paste the html code provided by the generator into your website. (you have to paste it in 'Edit HTML' or 'code' mode on online website builders like Blogger or Jimdo).

Confused?

It only sounds confusing when you're reading it and not doing.

Just do it.