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General principles
Local studies play a vital role in fostering community awareness and identity. By maintaining and broadening a shared interest in our common heritage the local studies service can actively promote the principles of equality and diversity.
Users of local studies libraries come from all areas of society, irrespective of class, colour, religion, ethnicity, educational background, gender, age or disability. All users’ needs should be served with equal care and attention. Some people are less able to explain their needs and requirements so library staff must be prepared to spend time with them, helping them to derive full benefit from the library’s resources.
The first step is creating and maintaining a welcoming atmosphere that is available to all. This includes providing extensive opening hours, a comfortable reading room and an easy to use online presence. Libraries Connected provides some guides which are aimed at lending libraries but include some useful hints – https://www.librariesconnected.org.uk/resources (especially Talking to customers and The reader experience).
Equality, diversity and inclusion
Local studies libraries have a proud tradition of reaching out to communities and the various groups within them and this tradition should be maintained and further developed. Further details will be found in the Community Engagement planning section of the Toolkit.
Many people still believe that local studies libraries are “not for us” so special efforts have to be made to attract users from all backgrounds. An understanding of the principles of equality and diversity is essential.
The Archives and Records Association has a useful section of diversity and inclusion resources in the resources section of their website.
Consultation with users and non-users is another tool to make services more relevant to all. The National Archives has some guides.
Keeping statistics which record information on users’ backgrounds can show which communities are not being reached. With this information in hand, you can then find ways to reach the more elusive parts of the community.
The Local Studies Librarian as the facilitator
The task of the local studies librarian is to assist users by providing the resources for research, alerting researchers to relevant material and providing guidance in use of the material, both within and beyond the immediate collection.
Requests for moderate amounts of subject information should be accommodated. Though users should normally carry out their own research, the amount of help an individual researcher will require will vary from case to case. For example, users who cannot visit through distance or disability may require special consideration.
Staffing levels are not always sufficient to deal with the demand so guidelines allocating time and resources should be established. Enquirers should be given clear information about the level of service they can expect free of charge. Some local studies libraries limit this to half an hour and some charge for additional support.
Building and maintaining relationships with users is essential. Use of social media and e-mail lists is essential to promote library events, put people in touch with one another, provide speakers for talks, facilitate consultation and assist in stock selection by providing information about research priorities.
An informal atmosphere and interaction with users is invaluable in building up the collection, increasing use, providing volunteers and reacting to demand.
Types of researcher
It is essential for the local studies librarian to develop an understanding of the full range of users expecting service.
Use of collections has expanded enormously and readers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and professions while demand from traditional areas such as family and local historians and educational users has also increased.
Family historians
The massive expansion of interest in family history over the last twenty or thirty years has led to genealogists becoming a mainstay of all local studies libraries. Some family historians are people with no tradition of library use and perhaps limited formal education. The group will also contain some of your most enthusiastic users.
Library staff will need knowledge of the practice and principles of family history and referral skills to point users to other relevant collections.
Support through guides, information sheets and possibly courses and workshops will be necessary though the active and supportive family history community may provide volunteers who can help with this. Close liaison with family history societies benefits the society and the library, with many now manning information points, helping to run Ancestry drop-in sessions and family history courses in the library.
For many the fact that the library holds material relating to their family is a matter of pride and creates a sense of attachment. This often leads to family history users becoming volunteers and donating interesting material to the collection.
Local historians
There has been a similar expansion of interest in local history. The story of your area is no longer just a tale of the rich and powerful of the distant past, but is a rich tapestry of experiences of everyone who has lived within your collection area. It attracts a wide range of people, some without a tradition of library use, but including many retired and unemployed people who may feel they are denied the opportunity to contribute to society in other ways. Local history is a rare area of study where amateurs can produce work of equal value to professionals but newcomers may need guidance in using resources and possibly in research, analytical and evaluation skills. The development of these transferable and life skills often leads to a growth of self-confidence and can only benefit people, especially in an era of “fake news”.
House historians
People are fascinated by the history of their houses and the full range of local history resources can be used to discover more about the history of a property and the land beneath. It is a good way of getting non-users interested in the collection and the wider history of their area.
Teachers
Schoolchildren are now expected to use primary sources and the combined expertise of library staff and teachers is needed to make the most of complex materials. Liaison with local teachers is vital but can be difficult to achieve, though links with colleagues from schools library services and children’s teams can often help.
Though primary school children in Key Stage 1 & 2 are often given local history projects, our resources can be used for virtually any area of the curriculum; though links to citizenship and geography are more obvious, English teachers can examine changes to language contained in materials from different eras, maths teachers can use maps to teach scaling and art teachers can find inspiration in anything and everything.
Our resources can also be used by all ages, from Reception-aged children doing colouring to A-Level Geography pupils investigating how a local high street evolved over the decades. Less academically inclined pupils can also share an interest in their locality which can help to build community awareness.
Creation of online lesson plans linked to the curriculum can be useful. Examples can be accessed at https://www.tameside.gov.uk/archives/educationalresources. Examples of other services for schools linked to the curriculum appear at http://www.archivesplus.org/schools/. Walsall & Merton have also produced a guide to their services for schools.
A good introduction to a local studies library is thorough class visits and INSET sessions for teachers. The provision of materials for class-based activities can be the spark which leads to a lifelong interest in local history.
Children
Children can be reached through more leisure-orientated events such as craft sessions or local history treasure hunts, especially during the school holidays. Again, good contacts with your children’s team are essential.
Researchers, undergraduate students & postgraduate students
Academics probably need less help than other users but will draw heavily on your stock knowledge, making an awareness of other relevant regional, national and specialist collections especially helpful.
Many researchers, both professional and amateur, will be interested in a wider field such as economic or social history, transport history, the history of photography or science etc.
As with teachers, though historians are likely to use your collection in greatest numbers, researchers in virtually any field will come through your door. Geographers, geologists, archaeologists, folklorists are all likely to use local studies libraries at some point as they may need access to your maps, photographs, statistics, reports, grey literature, music, folk tales, dialect writings and speech. Some of this will be of a technical nature and unique to the local studies library – presenting cataloguing and indexing challenges.
The reports these researchers produce can be useful additions to the collection, especially any unpublished materials.
Black and Minority Ethnic community
The contribution of people from Black and Minority Ethnic groups to the history of the locality needs to be recognised and recorded. Without relevant materials in the collection people from these communities are not likely to use the library or consider depositing materials and this could result in an increasingly partial and irrelevant local studies collection and service.
Depending on the circumstances of its development, a local studies collection may need to be pro-active in engaging with the BME community and may even involve the creation of sources, for example, through oral history projects. People from minority ethnic communities have lived in the UK for generations and it is sometimes possible to harness the energies of the army of family historians to highlight any early references they may come across in their research in a “recovering history” project. The Black and Asian Studies Association has useful material on its website.
LGBTQ+ community
In a similar way to the BME community, materials should be sought out or created to make sure the contribution of LGBTQ+ people is recognised and collections are made relevant for them. Cataloguing and indexing of this material should be sensitive to the community and use terms which they find acceptable. A similar “recovering history” project can pick up references to the hidden history of these groups. Manchester Archives+ holds material relating to the local LGBTQ+ community – https://manchesterarchiveplus.wordpress.com/category/radical-manchester/.
Other under-represented groups
Local Studies collections need to reflect and attract the communities in their collecting area. Local Studies Librarians should be aware of the different groups in their community and how they are represented in their collections and be proactive in filling the gaps in their collections. As well as groups such as BME and LGBTQ+ groups discussed above, it should also look at groups such as women, class and migration from different areas of the UK. Most authorities will have members of library staff with ‘inclusion’ as part of their remit and making the most of their knowledge, experience and contacts should be advantageous. Visit the Collection Development section of the toolkit for more information.
People with disabilities
It is rare for public buildings not to be fully accessible, but there may be other ways of providing the local studies service to people with disabilities. Attempts can be made to take resources and exhibitions out to groups who cannot visit, materials can be made available through digitisation and loan boxes. Audio material and podcasts can reach people with visual impairments. Bringing people together for talks, workshops or as volunteers can have beneficial effects on combating isolation and mental health problems.
Elderly people
Local history has a particular appeal for older people. Nostalgic interest in the past can often lead on to more serious study, involvement as a volunteer or in a specific project. Links with Age UK and similar groups help promote the library to older people. The local studies collection includes a range of resources of great use for reminiscence work with older people and those suffering from dementia. Old photographs, adverts, oral history materials, music, dialect writings can all be useful. Many elderly people are unable to visit libraries. Local studies services should consider visiting residents of care homes and sheltered housing. There may be activities coordinators based in these locations who can assist in the organisation and delivery of sessions. Your authority’s home library service may have some useful contacts.
Projects can be as simple as printing-out carefully selected images from your collection in loan boxes or, as North Somerset has done, placing them on tablets. Examples of oral material recorded by the East Midlands Oral History Archive can be heard online. There is a good introduction to reminiscence work for those in care homes can be found on the Social Care Institute for Excellence website, whilst tips can be found on the oral history pages of the toolkit. Lincolnshire also ran an interesting lottery-funded project combining reminiscences and craft activities.
Commercial interests
Businesses need to use local studies libraries for building community profiles and for publicity materials. Pubs and restaurants often want old photographs for display. All forms of media – radio, television, print media, social media and websites can use library resources. Commercial interests are entitled to a basic free service and there may be additional opportunities for income generation. With media use a balance may have to be struck between promotion of the service and charges – see the Budgeting section of the Toolkit.
It is always useful to impress on commercial users that the library will benefit from material they publish such as reports, trade catalogues and brochures.
Community groups
Many community groups such as churches, trade unions, amateur dramatic societies, civic societies, women’s groups, leisure organisations and, of course family and local history societies use local studies libraries for a variety of purposes – such as enquiries, commemorations of events in their history, talks, exhibitions etc. This can be mutually beneficial as the societies can promote the library and may have material which can be added to the collection.
As with researchers, these groups create histories of their own organisations and it is important to collect the fruits of their work once they have been published.
Tourists
People may visit for information about the locality such as museums, places of interest, even existence of hotels and places to eat, especially in areas without a tourist information office, but the local studies library can also attract heritage tourists from all over the globe as people come to visit the homes of their ancestors. It can be useful to collect information about the proportion of visitors from outside the area and whether they are staying in hotels, shopping or using cafes as a way of indicating the service’s contribution to the local economy.
Tourist information services may benefit from input from the local studies service – for example in creating historical trails, information for blue plaques and other interpretive displays.
Local government officers and other officials
Planners, engineers, environmental health, legal officers, health workers may need to consult maps, reports, previous local authority publications, old newspapers and similar sources. General historical material may be needed by country park wardens, museums staff, events and publicity people. Local studies input may be required for the preparation of grant applications. This can be helpful to show the usefulness of local studies to the local authority as a whole – and may help in the collection of material produced by other departments.
Local Studies materials can also be used at Civic events to show guests that the Council has pride in its area and its history.
General library users
General readers may contact the library for one-off queries such as background for planning applications or disputes, other legal disputes, rights-of-way, local byelaws, checks of old voters lists, quiz questions, trivia etc. They may be searching for long lost acquaintances, looking for information about adoption, checking whether a relative’s old friendly society book is still valid, trying to establish whether a garden boundary has been moved. Surprising enquiries will always turn up and some have to be dealt with very sympathetically. It can be possible to build up a quick reference file which provides the tools to answer some of these queries. One of the joys of manning a public library enquiry desk is that you never know what the next question will be.
Remote users
Many people will only have contact with the local studies service through the website or social media. They may make direct contact with the library with an email enquiry or comment on social media or they may just browse an online photograph or oral history collection. It is important to record this use, which is just as valid as someone visiting the building to browse the collection. See other relevant sections of the Toolkit for ways to reach remote users.
Future users
Unlike many other areas of the library service, local studies libraries have to consider very long-term future users and their interests should be regarded as of equal importance to those of present patrons. Storage and conservation are important issues here and are dealt with elsewhere in the Toolkit.
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