Wembley Library as a Successful Example of Co-location

One of the trendy topics in Libraries at the moment is co-location.  I suspect one of the most successful examples of this in the UK is Wembley Library in Brent Civic Centre, so I thought I would do a post why.

The most obvious indicator of success are the visit and loan figures.  The first graph shows the monthly visit numbers for the first three quarters of operation (in red, with a comparison to the old Brent Town Hall library monthly figures for the previous year in pale green).





That is an overall 307% increase for the period.  The overall increase in book loans is 80%, and the relevant graph looks like this:





The success strikes me as pretty undeniable, so what are the factors behind it?

Outside the Civic Centre
The first is the area outside the Civic Centre.  The London Designer Outlet, including its cinema, opened in late 2013.  Wembley Arena and Wembley Stadium were already in place, and more and more people are moving into the area as housing gets built.  I hope that Wembley Market Square will also become an attraction (right next to the Civic Centre) that could also bring visitors.  All these attract extra footfall quite outside the attractions of the Civic Centre itself.  If the logic of having a High Street location, which was one of the ideas underpinning our Libraries Transformation Project, holds true, these should all increase the footfall in the Wembley Library.  Of course the Library itself is an attraction that should help bring people to the other attractions, creating a positive feedback loop.

The design of the public realm in the area is also an important factor.  The path from Wembley Park station is deliberately designed to draw people towards the library area.  Similarly, the route from Wembley Triangle over the White Horse Bridge draws people from the Wembley town centre end.

Civic Centre Design
The placement of the Library on the ground floor at the corner of the Civic Centre seems pretty crucial as well.  This probably makes it the most prominent part of the building. 

The library is immediately under the Revenue and benefit service that featured on the recent BBC Panorama programme.  It is opposite the Registrars office, which would be helpful if Brent were to adopt a version of some of the recent ACE pilots.  It has a café actually in the library and is near the other commercial facilities in the Civic Centre including eateries and the other café across the atrium.  Some of the retail space in the Civic Centre is due to be rented to a supermarket chain, which should also attract further footfall.

The library is also close to the area used as an art gallery by the Brent Museum service, and various artist exhibitors. 

The Design of Wembley Library
The library itself has been designed with flexibility to hold events either in itself, or in the atrium space.  It also has a variety of provisions for computer use ranging from old fashioned deskbound computers to tables for people to bring their own equipment and soft furnishing for ipad users.  The Library also has a specific story telling space in the childrens area and extensive displays areas.  Some pictures can be seen here. 

UPDATE

I have added a couple of pictures to this post.  I have also published figures for the graphs here.  

Of Fire Drills and Library User Numbers

A comment on my post of a couple of days ago tries to account for the rise in user numbers in Brent Libraries by arguing it is all down to passing traffic in Wembley Library.  I find this far fetched. 

Firstly the numbers refer to all six Brent libraries, not just Wembley.  They include, for example, a substantial rise in usage at Kilburn Library.

Secondly, the big rise in visits is very hard to explain simply through fire drills at Wembley Library.  Wembley Library certainly can be accessed en route from the main building to the outside, as could the old Brent Town Hall Library, and I dare say for a fire drill you would use all available exits from the building.  The Civic Centre, like the former Brent Town Hall, has such exists on all four sides.  In both cases I imagine the library formed a route in and out of the building for fire drill purposes.

The Brent Town Hall Library in its last full year of operation had 200k visits.  Wembley Library this year had 1,170k (rounded).  I just can't see a serious of fire drills making up a gap of 970k visits.  The old Town Hall had about 2,000 people working there, just as the Civic Centre now has.  If we assume that a quarter of the employees leave through Wembley Library during a fire drill, which I would think a pretty generous measure, that means 500 people leaving through the exit per fire drill.  Assuming they go back in the same way at the end of the drill, we would need Brent to hold about four fire drills every working day in addition to whatever was the practice at the Town Hall to account for the extra Wembley Library numbers.  I would imagine that would take several hours out of each day, and does not strike me as plausible.

The determined opponents of Brent Libraries really do just have to accept that Brent libraries are better used than they were in 2011. 

Brent Library London Comparision

I have been slow to publicise the CIPFA comparison of library data which is now available for 2018.  Those who like to attack the Library service in Brent have previously used this information to suggest that the Libraries Transformation Project failed despite the rise in numbers and user satisfaction. 

I particularly notice that Brent is now the second most visited service in London comparator group it is in.  It is also has fairly low spend, low reliance on volunteers, and is low in terms of numbers of libraries.

It is also at the higher end for number of book issues (although fairly low for numbers of book stock).  This argues that the book stock is well chosen since it is being well utilised.  Indeed by concentrating the facilities in a smaller number of libraries in easy to access locations, all of them become better used since there is inherently less downtime.  If you go to, say, Willesden Library, and many of the computers are in use you can still find a vacant one.  If you went to a smaller library with fewer PCs the chances of them all being occupied or of standing empty would be higher.

A More Negative Take
I had already started writing about this subject when I noticed that Martin Francis has beaten me to it.  As usual, his take is extremely negative.   He ignores the CIFPA comment that "Brent is within the higher quartiles suggesting that the library service engages well with the population when compared to the other authorities", and instead concentrates on the lower number of libraries. This is unsurprising given having fewer libraries more efficiently used was one of the key points of the successful strategy.

Wembley Library
He also has a specific objection to Wembley Library as people go through it to access the Civic Centre, which is true, as it was also true of the old Brent Town Hall library, and is a key feature of any strategy that tries to benefit from co-location.  That is one reason why I would reject his take that the increased number of visits at Wembley are an invalid measure.  The other is that the sheer scale of increased usage.  An increase of 787% in visits cannot be attributed solely to the provision of a side door, which in any case was also present in the predecessor library.  Finally, it is worth noting that Brent Town Hall library was a relatively small library even within Brent; the new Wembley Library is actually one of the best used in the UK.

Home Delivery Service
Martin also suggests that there should be a service for delivery of books to the housebound, apparently oblivious to the fact that there already is one.   Wembley Library has long had one of those irritating continuous loop films advertising this service.  One of the benefits of the transformation was the increase in usage of this service.

Book Stock
His stricture on book stock also seem curiously negative.  He omits mentioning that book loans have gone up, even though the spend is relatively low.  This suggests that he is not particularly interesting in the efficiency of spending, and hence ignores that Brent spends an unusually high proportion of its libraries budget on materials.  He also seems to ignore Brent's membership of the London Lending Consortium, which allows a reader in Brent to access the book stock across roughly half the Boroughs in London.

Library Fines
One thing that simply surprises me about his reaction is how laid back he is about the increase in charging that came in April.  This doesn't make much money, and some libraries are abandoning fines entirely. 

National Decline in Libraries
Martin also doesn't seem to appreciate that libraries in general are declining in usage across the UK.  This includes in terms of book loans.  Brent has done remarkably in seeing visits go up, loans go up and satisfaction levels go up despite the national decline.  That this has all been achieved on a much lower budget is a strength not a weakness.I think the fact that all Brent libraries are now open seven days a week is key to this achievement. 

Cllr Paul Lorber and the Downgrading of Wembley Library

The success of the new Wembley Library, Brent's first new library for twenty five years, causes me to reflect on how hard it was to achieve.  One of the striking things about the controversy over libraries was the deep seated hostility to change, even when it was obviously beneficial.

I have blogged before on Paul Lorber's numerous reversals of policy on the subject.  However I didn't mention that he actually proposed scaling back or perhaps entirely removing the new Library in Wembley in a letter to the then Chief Executive.

After criticising the new Wembley Library for being bigger and better than the old Town Hall Library, he goes on to say that:

"It is clear to me that the smaller local libraries are being sacrificed to fund the new and substantially larger Civic Centre Library which for many years will not be situated in a residential area and which will require a journey to get to.

This is not an approach that my group can support.  If existing libraries are under threat of closure then the size and capital and revenue cost of the proposed Civic Centre Library must be substantially scaled down. 

The Civic Centre Library must therefore make a contribution towards the £1 million revenue savings target being set for the libraries by substantially scaling down the new library proposed for the Civic Centre both in terms of revenue and capital costs."

I find the psychology at work here interesting.  Of course, had we followed this course, it would almost certainly have cost money rather than saving it.  The architects could have done a redesign, and the contractor rescheduled the building works, but they would no doubt have asked for compensation for the extra work involved.  Assuming the Civic Centre building remains the same size, I am not sure there would have been any saving in the overall running cost, we would have ended up with a much worse library.

More seriously, Cllr Lorber appears to be objecting to the very quality of the library, which we now know is one of its great attractions.  Granted, he made the unwarranted assumption that people would not travel to the Wembley Library, which we now know to be untrue.

At roughly the same time I recall him suggesting that Kilburn Library should be closed so I suppose one should not be surprised that headlines seem more important than reality.