22/10/2026
'Speaking outside [BRISTOL] City Hall before the meeting, Liam Mason, a library worker at the Central Library and Unison rep, said: “We do have volunteers in the library service at the moment and they do a number of really useful, valuable things. But they’re quite bounded roles. What it isn’t is anywhere near the amount of work it takes to run a library service from a staffing perspective.
“A volunteer might be asked to come in and spend an hour or two, maybe running a children’s activity or doing some local press cuttings. Compare that to paid staff, who are there for the entire shift, eight hours, dealing with enquiries, booking reservations, and taking customers’ data down.”
The librarian added: “We find that a lot of the public sometimes assume their local libraries are run by volunteers. The level of experience and the service the library provides to the people of Bristol is so valuable because it’s done by paid staff — people who are trained, they have experience, some of the staff have been there for decades.
“That isn’t the sort of experience you gain from volunteering. Volunteering might be something you do for a couple of days, a couple of weeks or months, and then you think ‘actually this isn’t for me’ and then you stop volunteering. There’s not going to be any consistent skill base that’s built up over years as is done with paid staff.”'
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/librarians-warn-safety-risk-plan-11207173
