NEWS FEATURE Staying professional in a storm
What happens when a library is attacked by far-right rioters? Denise Jones, Acting Customer Services Manager, Liverpool Central Library, explains how the library service and the community reacted to events at the Spellow Library Hub in Liverpool.
THE mass stabbings and deaths of three children in Southport led to online speculation and misinfor- mation about the identity of their killer and then to riots, with prem- ises being attacked and looted. One of these was the Spellow Library Hub in Liverpool, which was target- ed on Saturday 3 August. Denise Jones, Acting Customer Services Manager, Liverpool Central Library, said: “My colleague Mark Wareing, who manages the community libraries, and I are both on Liverpool City Council’s business continuity plan, so we found out pretty quickly, late on the Saturday evening. I didn’t quite believe it at first and the question is always ‘why?’
“Staff began to WhatsApp me with images and questions, particularly those staff who worked at the library hub. They were very distressed having worked so hard for the previous 12 months to develop a popular and well- used community library service.” Pressure for information was coming from all directions, and “as line managers our priorities were to assume a staff support role as well as liaison with sen- ior Council Officers, Directors, Council- lors and our Communications Team.”
Prepared for the worst Denise said she turned to the plans that were already in place, explaining:
“Local authorities do have disaster and business continuity plans in place that cover many scenarios and I’m sure that’s the same for academic and health sectors. We also have a lot of corporate training around this. “As a City Council service, we have robust business continuity plans and disaster plans that are invoked if there is a crisis. We work with the public and manage staff and buildings so senior library managers are used to dealing with serious issues as they arise. In some ways this means we don’t panic; we just work through processes that have already been tested on previous occasions and we know our roles. These are skills all senior managers in public libraries would recognise.”
Sudden role changes
What did following these pre-planned processes mean in practice? Denise says that having a plan helped, but speed and flexibility was still very much needed. “I work within the Ser- vice Management Team as Customer Services Manager as does my colleague Mark. We had just lost our Head of Service to retirement, so Mark, the Spellow Library Hub Manager, Deborah Moore and I found ourselves very much at the forefront of communica- tions and logistical planning to relocate services. For my part I worked with our communications and press teams
Denise Jones.
to get the right information out to the public via out library social media channels and websites.”
She added that “because there was a lot of focus on replacing books, I also led on managing donations of new and used books and devising a plan and timetable for this. Again, another area where Librarian training, knowledge and experience comes into play.” At the same time, she said her colleagues were focused elsewhere: “Mark and Deb found themselves in the middle of logistical planning to relocate services, programmes and events, building management as well as suddenly being in the middle of a media storm. They had to develop interview response skills at a pace.”
Biggest challenge
But Denise says one of the biggest challenges as a leader during a crisis is uncertainty. During the riots this was meant now knowing whether the crisis was over. She said: “Our primary concern has always been supporting the library staff through challenging times. The attack on the library was a shock to many of our staff and of course the situation was ongoing with rumours spreading of potential new
12 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL September 2024
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