Introduction
Hampshire County Council’s Library Service is part of the Culture, Communities and Business Services department and one of the largest library services in the country. Â There are almost 600 staff are employed in 45 libraries, 3 Discovery Centres, and 1 prison library. Â There are also 5 community managed libraries. Â Hampshire Libraries hold over 2 million items of stock and receive around 6 million visits a year. Â In an increasingly digital era, over 15% of issues and renewals are carried out online. Â Self-
Strategy to 2010
With fewer people ready physical books, the role of the library is ever changing. Â You are more likely to see a coffee shop in libraries, you will have access to free Wi-
Mobile libraries are being phased out as they are costly to operate. Â The Hampshire villages that were benefiting from this service probably do not have a good Broadband service since there are too few houses to justify an Internet Service provider installing a telecommunications cabinet that costs in the order of ÂŁ100,000 each. Â Nor do these villages have regular bus services. Â Maybe, the large house-
As part of the library service strategy to 2020, the libraries have been categorized into one of four tiers.  A Tier 1 library would be one of the larger libraries that are known as Discovery centres.  Eastleigh’s library in the Swan centre is a Tier 2 library.  If it were in a higher profile location, it has been estimated that it would have sufficient visitors to upgrade the library to a Tier 1 library.  The library in West End is a Tier 3 library.  That is a library managed by Hampshire County Council with community support.  According to the Library Service Transformation documentation, the viability of all Tier 3 libraries will be reviewed starting 2017.  Therefore, West End’s library will be under review from this date.  Some Tier 3 libraries will be downgraded to Tier 4 libraries, but in West End library’s favour is the coffee shop initiative Hatch Café, introduced by the Parish Council in 2014.