Wales, which already has the highest proportion of active members of public libraries in the UK, has begun a campaign to drive up membership by offering incentives to existing users to promote libraries to their friends and families. A quarter of people in Wales are members but research by libraries has found that about 70 per cent of them go to the library at least once a week.
The promotional campaign will run for the rest of January in each of the country’s 332 public libraries. 

The Society of Information Technology Management - Socitm - has launched a pilot project in ten local authority areas to create a generic version of the Aspire software system. Aspire was developed in support of the Skills Framework for the Information Age and the pilots will take place in county, district and metropolitan councils and run until March. 

Communities and Local Government have updated the 2004 deprivation indices, which present a picture of a range of economic, social and housing issues at local authority district level and county council level.
In the most deprived 20% of areas across England just over a third of people are income deprived and one in five of men and women are employment deprived. Just under half of children live in families that are income deprived and more than one third of older people are income deprived.