Small specialist and regional news libraries face different and often more extreme challenges than their larger, national cousins. At times they are at the sharp end of change, their size making them vulnerable to conglomeration and developments in the industry. Conversely, they sometimes miss out on the technological investment and upgrading which leads to restructure and adjustment in larger organizations. In this chapter, Colin Hunt describes the reinvention of the library at the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, a local newspaper read by and reflecting a famously characterful and active local population. His story covers more than three decades of struggle, change and innovation.

As he illustrates, regional news libraries are united by their diversity, as their holdings and activities closely reflect their geographical location. However, local news librarians across the world will recognize the opportunities presented by holding niche, specialist collections and the challenge of surviving in an increasingly globalized world. In the UK at least, regional news libraries have closed outright at an astonishing rate in the past ten years. The author's experience shows that with good ideas and strong leadership, they can not only stay open, but the collections and local knowledge held by their librarians can be an important means for their parent organizations to learn about and celebrate the local communities they serve.

Introduction

Newspaper libraries are different. I just didn't realize how different until a summer afternoon in 1973 when I walked into the Dickensian rabbit warren that was the old Liverpool Daily Post and Echo building.

My career until that point had followed the prescribed path for budding librarians in the 1960s: a spell as a junior in the local public library, study for my ALA with day release, sandwich courses and finally a spell as a fulltime student at a commercial college. Then followed the move into industrial libraries (as they were then known) with a period at Lucas Aerospace, where Def-Stans (Defence Standards) and the Official Secrets Act ruled. After two years it was on to Imperial Metals, part of the giant ICI group, an information unit at the cutting edge of librarianship in the early 1970s.