In April Marlborough Library celebrates fifty years in its present High Street building

 

In December 1964 Marlborough’s Library moved out of its old home at 1 Silverless Street on The Green, and the new Library in the old St Peter’s School building at the corner of Hyde Lane and the High Street was officially opened in April 1965.

Marlborough Library’s staff will be celebrating this fiftieth anniversary and they hope you can join them –
    
•    On Wednesday, April 8 with tea, cake and memories. Come along and capture your memories in the Memory Book.
•    On Thursday, April 9 for four to eleven year-olds there will be a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory morning of fun and games.
•    And that afternoon from 2:30 – 4:00 pm there will be a Birthday Tea Party.

Can you imagine this sort of celebration happening in the Library of fifty years ago?

“Our Library has changed so much in 50 years,” says Carol Moylan one of Marlborough’s library staff who can (just) remember being a borrower in those early years.

Then the Library held 15,448 books compared with today’s stock of 13,617. The services the library offered then were very different:  remember encyclopaedias?  Fifty years ago school children could be seen in the Reference Section looking for information to help with their homework, today they’ll be online using, perhaps, Wikipedia.

Surprisingly there are many more users registered now. Some 6,500 compared with 2,000 at the opening. A customer today may, however, be a computer user rather than a reader. But there are 2,400 borrowers, which demonstrates the Library’s success in the face of competition from Kindles & eBooks and cheaper books.

Research shows that 29 per cent of Marlborough Library’s borrowers are under 14 rears-old. Often this is a result of parents returning to “their library” once their children are old enough.

In early days activities were centred around books and little else. Using the Browne Issue system with tickets and manual issue was challenging enough. Today our Librarians are asked – and want – to do so much more. 400 plus children join the Summer Reading Challenge and the Rhyme Time events for the very young are always fully subscribed.

For some of those 50 years the Library also hosted the Marlborough Tourist Information Centre and, although this is no longer available due to funding cuts, several of the team can still givee much of the detailed information about the town that the TIC previously offered.

The biggest change has been the installation of four computer terminals for registered users and (by arrangement) the public to use. Funding for these and all Library activities is from Wiltshire Council as it was 50 years ago.

As more and more information and services – such as applications to government departments comes on-line – the Library computer system will be even more essential. How else will you be able to handle your Tax Return, your Universal Credit or your housing problems?

Our Library will continue to face new challenges and evolve accordingly. Who could have predicted the following quotation from Wiltshire Council’s Cabinet member for libraries, Jonathon Seed?   “Last month saw the 75,000th eBook borrowed [from Wiltshire’s libraries] since the service started in 2012.  In 2013-2014 29,509 eBooks were read, compared with 17,022 in 2012-2013, and that figure has already been surpassed this year.”
 
”Library users can download books electronically at any time of the day or night from a selection of more than 3,500 titles.”

Despite the pressure on funding and the recruitment of volunteers in libraries across the Wiltshire network, it is very clear that Wendy Beaver, the Area’s Senior Librarian, and her team in Marlborough will continue to be at the core of the town’s community.