Issue - meetings

The Chairman introduced the item, which related to Barnet’s future Library Service.

John Hooton, Chief Operating Officer, provided a statement to the committee which outlined the information provided in Appendix L.

The Programme Director, Education and Learning, informed the committee of the main changes that have been made to the future library service proposal since receiving responses from the residents’ consultation:

-       That live, monitored CCTV would be installed in libraries where Technology Enabled Opening (TEO) applied to help reassure residents regarding safety and therefore increase confidence in the new system. This would come at a cost of approximately £75,000 per annum.

-       That the age for unaccompanied children attending TEO libraries would be lowered to include pupils in Year 11 who were aged 15

-       That Partnership Libraries would be given more funding in the first two years of their opening. In year one, funding would be £35,000, in year two it would be £28,000 and then in year three £25,000. Whilst this would have a negative impact on saving proposals, it was considered that additional funding would be appropriate to better support the start-up of Partnership Libraries.

During the course of discussion, Councillor Helena Hart noted that she was pleased that the options before the committee would see the retention of all 14 libraries should the recommendations be approved. She further noted that she had been encouraged by the trial of TEO technology at Edgware Library, which is in her ward.

The IT Director, CSG, proceeded to clarify the failure of the pre-existing library management system, the detail of which was outlined in Appendix L. The committee were informed of the following in relation to this:

-       That the failure of this software was unrelated to TEO software, and was due to hardware failure.

-       Some hardware parts were up to nine years old.

-       The failure of this hardware was compounded by the fact that the backup system was located on the same server as the core hardware. It was noted that it is not uncommon for a hardware failure to take place or for the backup to be on a local mirrored system. However, a corruption of both the main disc and the backup was less common. CSG have taken several actions to mitigate this risk, notably the following:

o   That an extra, off-site, back-up system has been created which is located a remote, cloud-based location.

o   Notifications about server limit will now be sent to a shared email address so that all relevant staff will be aware when server space is running out. 

o   That the system is now categorised in the ‘Platinum Tier’, which adds several more layers of security to the system.

o   A lot of old hardware will be – or already has been – updated and replaced. 

-       It was further noted that if a hardware failure takes place in the future, system downtime would now most likely be a matter of hours as opposed to an undetermined period of days,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7