Assessing the impacts of changing public service provision on geographical accessibility: An examination of public library provision in Pembrokeshire, South Wales

Gary Higgs, Samuel Jones, Mitchel Langford and Jesse Heley

Environment and Planning C, 2018, vol. 36, issue 3, 548-568

Abstract: Public libraries make an important contribution to the wellbeing of local people often acting as community hubs by reducing the isolation felt by vulnerable members of society through promoting social interaction and supporting the wider needs of local communities. However, access to libraries is threatened in Wales, as elsewhere in the UK, by uncertainty stemming from changes in local government service delivery models, austerity-driven cuts in public spending, changing demands on the service from the public and the potential impacts of new developments in digital services and technologies. Drawing on network-based analysis of changes to library services in a predominantly rural authority in South-West Wales, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate how Geographical Information Systems can be used to monitor the impacts of alternative models of provision currently being considered by library authorities. By examining the spatial impacts of changes in services following a period of re-configuration in this library authority, we point the way to methods that enable levels of provision that meet community needs to be sought during times of budgetary pressures and proposed changes to the delivery of public services.

Keywords: Public service provision; library service delivery; Geographical Information Systems; accessibility models; spatial inequalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399654417715457 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:36:y:2018:i:3:p:548-568

DOI: 10.1177/2399654417715457

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().