The London Library AGM | 26 November 2024

Director’s Speech Notes 

Thank you, Simon and good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us. It is wonderful to see so many of you here this evening and joining online.

2023/24 was the sixth and final year of our Strategic Plan. Back in 2018 the Library’s membership had been declining for six consecutive years and was at a 33 year low. Financially, we were running an operating deficit of over £600k per year. The Library was under serious threat of closure, or at the very least a radical reduction in the scale of its collection and operations. In response, we launched our 6-year plan which had two key goals:

· Substantially increase awareness of, access to and engagement with the Library (increasing its reach and impact), and to

· Remove the annual operating deficit by the end of March 2024, placing the Library on a sustainable financial footing for future generations.

In support of those goals, our plan set out 8 strategic objectives, and I shall take you through each of those in turn. The first was to:

1) Raise our public profile to drive increased awareness, use and membership of the Library, while giving an additional focus to attracting and welcoming younger people here.

Awareness of the Library continues to rise. In the last year, our social media engagement was up with an average increase of 26% on all platforms. In particular, our growth in followers on Instagram rose by 90% along with 12-fold increase in engagement with our posts. The number of people subscribing to our email newsletter also increased to over 18,500, up from 17,000 last year and only 600 back in 2018.

Borrowing of our printed book stock has been steadily decreasing over the last 30 years. However, we bucked that trend this year by lending 60,000 printed books, up from 57,000 in the previous year. This is now at its highest level for

four years. In addition, we processed 33,000 requests to retrieve and set aside material for members, showing strong use of the book collection within the Library itself.

We had 62,000 member visits, up from 55,000 in the previous year and, again, our highest for four years.

20 years ago the Library loaned out 85,000 books per year, had 13,000 visits and provided 55 reader spaces, compared with our 62,000 visits and around 170 reader spaces. This shows how, over the last couple of decades, Library use has developed. Much greater use is now being made of the facilities here at St James’s Square.

Overall, our membership grew by 82. This was our sixth successive year of growth. In that period we have increased our membership numbers by over 1,000, from 6,509 to 7,540, our highest since 2008.

We saw a slight reduction in Young Persons Memberships in the year, from 829 to 806. However, the number of Young Persons Memberships has grown significantly, from the 321 we had in 2018. The Library’s long-term future sustainability rests with it continuing to be relevant and useful for future generations and this strong interest amongst the under 30s is very positive indeed.

Objective 2, was to:

2) Create new ways to access and engage with the Library including introducing:

· a high-quality programme of events and outreach activity and

· new ways to join or use the Library aimed at less frequent visitors and those for whom the membership fees are a major obstacle.

Our public programme continues to be very successful at raising awareness of the Library and attracting new members. Over the last six years this has included writing workshops, talks, panel discussions, poetry events and plays, and we have held three of our own biennial Lit Fests. This year we reached 2,200 people online and in-person.

We have been delighted with the ongoing success of our Emerging Writers Programme which started its fifth year in 2023. With over 1,700 applications for the 40 available places each year, this scheme has proved extremely popular, and it is wonderful to see so many participants becoming published authors.

Our schools membership is also growing, thanks to our Subsidised Schools Membership Scheme. By the end of the year there were 79 schools in membership, up from 66 last year.

In 2019, we made the Library more accessible by introducing new forms of membership. Our Remote and Associate Membership types have proved popular, and we now have 648 Remote and 281 Associate members.

We continue to offer subsidised memberships for those who are on low incomes, via our Supported Membership Scheme.

Our third objective was to:

3) Deliver new spaces at the Library to accommodate:

· our growing programme of events, outreach activity and private venue hire;

· more reader spaces; and

· comfortable, catered spaces where members can meet, share ideas and work in a less formal environment.

As you know, we have now developed proposals for how to achieve these building aims and we shall be discussing those at item 5 on the agenda. I shall therefore move straight on to our fourth objective, which was to:

4) Find a new model for our library collection that allows for continued acquisition and maintains the accessibility and usefulness of the collection, while working within the twin constraints of available storage space and cost.

We said we would explore moving some of the collection off-site, the removal of duplicate content, increasing our digital offer and focussing our on-site resources on the content that would be most beneficial to existing and future users.

Matthew Brooke will be speaking about aspects of this in more detail very shortly, so, again, I won’t say too much now except that we are committed to continuing to provide members with an excellent collection of both printed and digital material. Our total investment in our collections content increased this year by nearly 20% from £276,000 to £329,000 as we added 4,300 printed books and continued to strengthen our digital collections.

Our fifth objective was to:

5) Increase our revenue fundraising

(To clarify, by revenue fundraising we do not mean fundraising for capital projects such as our building project, which is separate to this.)

We succeeded in expanding our Founders’ Circle in the last year from 82 to 87 members a third successive year of growth. The Circle delivered £245,000 in funding, up from £198,000 the year before.

Our Library Fund Appeal was to help us refresh and restore the collection. We raised approximately £140,000 to that end and a further £180,000 for other Library collection projects.

We raised £70,000 towards our schools programme, £150,000 in support of our Emerging writers, a further £105,000 for other access and engagement projects.

As member subscriptions only cover two thirds of our costs, fundraising of this sort is vital to our continued operation. I am very grateful to all those of you who have helped support in this way.

Objective 6 was to:

6) Launch an immediate capital fundraising campaign to finance the creation of new spaces, and a longer-term campaign to deliver a substantial endowment for the Library

This is, of course, linked to the new building project, so has only recently begun. We have made good progress and I will comment further on that as part of our discission of the building project a little later on.

We did not commence an endowment campaign. It makes most sense to do that after the completion of a successful campaign for the building changes and as we look towards our 200 year anniversary.

Our seventh objective was to:

7) Develop new ways to increase our income from other sources, such as private venue hire

Our income from private venue hire increased to £180,000, up from £80,000 in the previous year.

Other income-generating initiatives include improving the range of products we sell in Reception, which delivered £15,000, and working with commercial partners on the digitisation of some of our collection material, which should deliver income in the year ahead.

And finally, objective 8 was to:

8) Restrict cost increases, finding more ways to work more efficiently and seeking to minimise the impact on members.

Our Treasurer will speak in more detail about our costs. However, while cost pressures on the Library have been substantial we have limited the impact on members by keeping our fee increases, on average below, inflation over the last six years,

We have also sought to maintain excellent standards of service to members, investing in our collections, our technology infrastructure and our premises. We note that members continue to give us a very high satisfaction rating in our member surveys and we aim to exceed those expectations in the years ahead.

That concludes my report on our last year of our 6-year strategic plan. This year we have been working on a new plan and look forward to launching that in due course, probably in the next financial year.

I will now hand over to Matthew, who will speak in a little more detail on some aspects of our collections work.

Thank you.

Building Project

Hopefully everyone is aware of our building project. When you came in and sat down this evening, you should have found one of these brochures on your chair. These booklets were posted out to all members in May. We also sent out information in our email newsletters that linked to our website pages on the project, and we also highlighted it in our last magazine. So, I am not going to go through the entire project in detail. My focus will be to explain what we are seeking to achieve and how we are approaching it. We have a scheduled discussion on Phase 2, but I am, of course, very happy to take questions on any aspect of the project and look forward to hearing the discussion shortly.

As I mentioned in my earlier presentation, our key goals are to extend access and become financially sustainable. We want to make sure that the wonderful resources of the Library are developed, well-used and here for the benefit of many future generations. To do this we have to be alive to the way in which members use the Library and how they tell us they would like to use it in future. 

Back in 2005, the then management team and trustees concluded that the premises should be developed so as to provide, amongst other things, more reader spaces, an event space, and a Members’ Room and Terrace that would (and to quote from the 2005 brochure “Securing the Future”) “offer dedicated and informal spaces for members to meet and exchange ideas”. The aim was to “meet the expectations of a larger wider membership…to retain the best of the past and at the same time prepare for the future.” 

So, 20 years ago, a four-stage building project was launched. Planning permission was obtained for all aspects. Stages 1 and 2 were completed (that was the incorporation of the newly acquired TS Eliot House, the redesign and refurbishment of spaces such as the Issue Hall, The Reading Room, The Stoppard Room and The Art Room, and the creation of The Foyle Lightwell Room. Sadly, the Library did not raise sufficient funds to deliver stage 4 – which was the members’ room and roof terrace. 

When we revisited this in 2018, we re-tested some of the ideas behind the plans. For example, in relation to the catered members room, 35% of all respondents to our 2018 membership survey told us they that they would visit the Library more if there were a spaces to eat, drink and talk with other members. This increased to 44% for those aged under 55, and 50% for all those under 35. 

We asked members again, in our 2024 survey, whether they would be interested in a catered members’ room. We received similar results to the figures in 2018: a third of responding members were interested, rising to 47% of under 55s, and 54% of those under 35.

The data also told us that 44% of members who had joined in the last five years, regardless of their age, were interested in a catered members room.

Our project is divided into two distinct phases and the aim is to have completed both phases by April 2028.

Phase 1 is a really exciting opportunity to create a dedicated space for our growing events and outreach programme. The main room will seat up to 50 people theatre style and around 24 in a classroom or meeting format. It will accommodate various types of activity, including sessions for our Emerging Writers, school groups, writers’ workshops, member-led special interest groups, as well as talks and occasional displays. It will have excellent AV facilities to support presentations and hybrid meetings and will also offer us the opportunity to raise some additional funds from venue hire.

Also in Phase 1 is the creation of a basement kitchen. This is necessary to support the events currently happening in The Reading Room. At the moment, caterers have to use the adjacent Study, which is far from ideal for them or the Library and the basement is the best solution for this. As Matthew mentioned, we shall take the opportunity to create a dedicated archive and rare books area in the basement along with a dedicated invigilation area.   

In Phase 2 we will see the creation of a lift to improve accessibility of the building. As I mentioned earlier, we now have about five times the number of visits per day that we had 20 years ago. The existing lift is prone to failure and when it does fail it seriously affects everyone’s use of the building. The new lift will be larger, making it more suitable for wheelchair users and will also offer an additional evacuation route in the event of a fire.

In terms of the renovation of the 6th floor and the creation of a roof terrace, the aim here is to provide members with a catered space to take refreshment, meet other members, share ideas and work in a more informal environment, should they wish to. 

In the new members’ room we shall be able to provide simple but good quality food and drinks. There will be comfortable seating in an attractive space where talking and using phones will be permitted. We shall provide new spaces outside, including a balcony and beautifully designed roof garden.

In addition, we shall add a new reading room, purpose-built, sound-proofed phone booths and new toilets. The spaces can also be used for events out of hours, providing additional income to help support the running of the Library. The result will be a long overdue upgrade to our existing facilities, which will support longer and more frequent visits to the Library and use of the collection.

As I mentioned earlier, we launched a consultation process with our members and neighbours in May. We included in that process an online survey to gain feedback. 59% of responding members were positive about the building project overall, with 22% neutral and 29% negative. Members were particularly keen on phase 2, with 64% positive, 12% neutral and 24% negative. When asked what element of the building plans members liked the most, the catered members’ room came out on top. 

We also invited all members to two on-site consultation meetings, with our architects, trustees and senior managers in attendance. Feedback from those sessions was also positive.

Of course, some concerns have been raised and I would like to take a moment to address those now:

On Funding
The project will be entirely funded from donations. We have a fundraising campaign underway and it is going very well with around £2.5m already donated or pledged. We are confident of raising the funds we need. Membership subscriptions will not be increased to fund the project. Our forecast is that by adding the new facilities in phase 2 we shall grow membership by 800, within three years of opening. This will add substantial, additional income to the Library, enabling us to run at a healthy financial surplus. Even if that level growth does not eventuate, existing members will have the benefit of much improved facilities.

By approaching the project in phases, we are able to take each step of expenditure as and when it is clear that funds are available. This makes it a very low risk approach – if we do not have the funds, we do not complete the project.

On possible disruption
The Library will stay open throughout the building works. This was the case throughout the last major building project which involved works to key parts of the building, such as the Issue Hall and Reading Room. We will schedule noisy works out of hours and will carefully select considerate contractors familiar with working in a live environment. We are using the same architects we worked with throughout the last building project and who understand cultural venues and in particular the Library.

On use of the Members’ Room
The food and drinks we serve will be reasonably priced. Members will still be welcome to bring their own food and drinks from home to eat there. It will not be open to the public. We have assumed that we will continue with our existing rules about members bringing guests into the Library but we shall be seeking your feedback on this point in future.

On our charitable objects
Finally, a question was raised as to whether the proposed plans are within the Library’s charitable objects. We can assure you that the plans are either within our charitable object or ancillary to it and therefore permitted. The trustees have confirmed this with external legal advice.

I hope that many of you share my enthusiasm for our building project and our efforts to increase access, improve member facilities and build a sustainable financial future for the Library.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts this evening.

Thank you.

Director of Collections and Library Services Speech Notes   →