Just over a month ago Ian Anstice was named as IWR Information Professional of the year. The judges – all previous winners– gave Anstice, a branch manager of a public library in Cheshire, the honour for his work in documenting the changes taking place across the public library sector as a whole. He started the blog Public Library News in October 2010 to highlight the threats taking place to the public library in each local authority in the country. Anstice said: "In a time of cuts to library services and being aware that knowledge is power, I was surprised to see there was no publicly available site to show what was going in each authority. I started the blog in October 2010. This includes all news articles on public library cuts, doing a map of the cuts, and producing tally of cuts and proposals by authority."
Presenting the award at Online Information, I commented: "Ian's work is a stirring story of how much can be achieved and how knowledge and information really is power. A well deserved winner. I would urge you to go take a look at his work."