Libraries

Another depressing meeting this morning. This meeting of all the people in charge of branch libraries, plus the team at HQ, used to be a lovely occasion to catch up and chat, be creative and plan events, inspire each other... Today instead we were told of the financial situation which is dire, of employment freeze and it's impact, of possible reductions in opening hours.... We were told that we need to have all our figures ready to demonstrate our value and that we might need to reduce what we do... I totally understand the need to be accountable and demonstrate how we spend taxpayers' money, also to be able to use our stats for advocacy, but when I asked if there could be a way of demonstrating how we help the council to save by being a sharing resource - for example by providing each primary school class with boxes of books each term for their topics and general reading, rather than each school having to buy these books. I was told that it was a good idea but hadn't been done....Is that not obvious?  Value can't always be quantified. Libraries are warm spaces, fight social isolation and poverty, reduce anti-social behaviour, .. I could go on. 
As a result, I was a bit downcast in the evening and glad when SparseRunner suggested going out - we had a good chat and that helped a lot.