Anton Schultz's blog

Have you ever wondered what your local area was like in the past? Or how people in your community used to live? The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is launching a new £1m small grant programme designed to help local communities answer these and countless more questions about their past.

We are pleased to now be working with a number of local authorities and community organisations across the country to establish the network in earnest.

Library service managers all over the country are being forced to radically rethink the configuration of library services – both to reap unprecedented efficiency savings and to evolve services that are fit for the 21st century. Related to this, many are now looking at library asset and service transfer to communities, but ‘all community offers are by no means created equal’.

There’s been a lot going on with community organisations and residents all over the country coming together to save their libraries since my last post - here’s a quick roundup to reflect some of the activity.

It’s great to see the Community Knowledge Hub finally come to fruition. During the past few months I have been working with colleagues and Locality members, and talking with Local Authorities and Community Organisations all over the country to develop support for a new wave of emerging community managed libraries.