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April 29, 2006
Shush : you might wake up a librarian
I wrote this piece for the Camden New Journal; our excellent local paper that probes the local politicians
"Shush: you might wake up a librarian"
It's exam time. Whether you have 9 GCSe's, your bar finals or your archaeology test at the evening class of the Finsbury Institute, London does its revision in April and May. Nerves are on edge, notes are thumbed and essays are learned off by heart. We have the three bank holiday weekends to provide some extra time and then the day comes and it's all over.
There isn't a public library in London open on any bank holiday and hardly any of them are open in the evenings. Few of them have the books and other material that are recommended or discussed on the thousands of study courses that are available in London. London is the learning centre of the world, but our public library service is an international disgrace. The public library ought to be the place that everyone needs at exam time, but such is the low standard of service that is offered that no one even thinks of them as a place to use. Somewhere you can get out of the house, or your flat and a bedsit and make a little corner with your books and notes in a quiet well lit place. That's what a library should be.
We pay £200m each year for the public libraries of London. For that money there should be one membership card, one library catalogue, one website which shows you where your local library and all of them should be open until ten o'clock, every night of the year. Some of the big ones should be open 24 hours, in the same way that the big supermarkets of central London are. Wake up librarians: people in London work all the time, you know, and they need to study when it fits in with their other commitments.
After years of moaning about the state of libraries and watching them steal our money and give nothing in return, there is some effort to clean some of the buildings. It's pleasing to hear that Westminster are renovating the beautiful Victoria library in Buckingham Palace Road. But clean safe well laid out buildings that allow private dignified study are only part of the story: the libraries have to be open and above all they have to have extensive and comprehensive collections of books, in abundance and available. Camden boasts about the Swiss Cottage library, because they have washed the windows, but the book shelves are pitiful. I looked the other day for Marquez and Laurie Lee, for a course that a friend is doing; the Swiss Cottage library had nothing on its shelves by either of those authors.
The councillors of the London Boroughs do not demand the service on our behalf that their highly paid library professional officers should deliver. They need to get a hold of the situation and do some banging on the table. Shhhh- you might wake them up.
Posted by Perkins at 8:05 AM | Comments (2)
April 28, 2006
Lost £4.7m per annum in Buckinghamshire libraries
Those of you who are in "Friends of libraries" groups will know how hard it is to get a local council to listen respectfully and sensibly to what one says and to take reasonable actions, if they can.
The saga of Buckinghamshire libraries that I described on 26 April is an awful example of the way local people and indeed local councillors are misinformed and rendered unable to participate in the activities of their council.
The truth in Buckinghamshire is that the people of the county pay £8.6m each year for the library service and the libraries cost £3.9m to operate. In no document anywhere does the council explain what happens to the missing £4.7m . Perhaps they really don't know.
Since writing on 26th I have called publicly for the officer responsible to be replaced and the council to reverse its decision to close its libraries. I argue that if councillors were not aware that there is £4.7m expenditure to examine, they may well have found the meagre £200,000 budget saving in another way than closing 8 libraries. It was difficult to lodge these suggestions because the officer responsible immediately went on holiday.
I shall however persist, but I need the ladies and gentlemen of the press to help me.
Posted by Perkins at 9:25 PM | Comments (1)
April 27, 2006
Bank holidays and libraries
The next few weeks will be exam time for people at all stages of learning.
It's also the time when there are several bank holidays which give chance for some final revision and study.
It should be a good time for public libraries to show what a really useful place they can be: a quiet corner to bury yourself in your course notes and your books.
Are there any libraries open on a bank holiday in the whole country? I've never found one.
Posted by Perkins at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2006
Little Chalfont library
Buckinghamshire are proposing to close 8 of their libraries. Across the country we have now heard of more than a 100 proposed closures.
It is frustrating that, in my view, there is no need for any of these closures. If they do take place, a service which took 150 years to accumulate suitable useful properties in which to operate will have gone and will never come back. In the UK it is really hard to find a collection of buildings of this kind and it took enormous resilience and creativity to establish them. Those who are now ending their days seem to have no feel for the irreversibility of what they are doing.
In Buckinghamshire, as elsewhere, when seeking a budget saving the council appears to have preferred to cut service to the public rather than council overhead. Personally, I would have sold the county hall before closing a library
The BBC today filmed a news item showing the people of Little Chalfont protesting nobly against the closures and fighting hard to meet the needs of the strange proposal that has been made by their elected council. Bucks County council appear to be saying that - having already paid £90,000 per annum for a library- the people of Little Chalfont will forfeit both the library and their own money unless they stump up a further £40,-50,000pa; and they will have to run it themselves. The same idea has been put forward in seven other villages. I can't believe that a barrister or a district auditor, or even a trading standards officer would allow such a scheme to proceed, but that is what, if I have understood it, is to happen. It is like the awful occasion when a cowboy builder takes your money for mending the sink and then demands more to stop the waste from leaking all over the floor.
Perhaps I have got it wrong, but anyhow I have written to officers of the council with some suggestions about how we could find another way forward. I do hope we can at least have a meeting. If we do meet I shall suggest ways in which they can manage their "back office" operation with less cost and allow more funds to the operation of the libraries themselves. There are ways to bring this about and I would do the same anywhere.
Posted by Perkins at 9:46 PM | Comments (0)
One library card for London
Maxine from Kingston upon Thames writes again to support the idea of one library card for London. She says that she will ask campaigning councillors to make this part of their election manifesto.
Good for her- thank you Maxine.
I should like to hear from the suppliers of library lending systems (Galaxy, DS etc) if any of them see this. There is a view that is their reluctance to work to a common standard that is preventing this improvement in customer service. Let's get this out into the public arena.
Posted by Perkins at 7:34 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2006
Prizes
From the long lists below this entry I feel confident in awarding
A prize to Haringey (Labour)for the restoration of their service
and to Westminster (Conservative)for doing the right things and restoring Victoria library (and several others)
I'm afraid dunces caps have to go to:
Croydon (Labour)
Leeds (No overall control)
Merton (Labour)
Redbridge (Conservative)
Thurrock (Conservative)
for not realising that 75% of visitors to libraries are looking for books
Posted by Perkins at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
Council elections
The other councils up for election that I have not yet mentioned, with their change in book lending over the past 5 years are as follows
Blackburn with Darwen: fall of 14%
Bristol : fall of 24%
Derby : fall of 19%
Hartlepool : fall of 28%
Hull: fall of 18%(although Hull achieved an increase of 10% last year)
Milton Keynes : a fall of 19%
North East Lincolnshire : a fall of 32%
Peterborough : a fall of 34%
Plymouth : a fall of 27%
Portsmouth : a fall of 29%
Reading : a fall of 15%
Slough : a fall of 4%
Southampton : a fall of 27%
Southend : a fall of 26%
Stoke on Trent : a fall of 33%
Swindon : a fall of 22%
Thurrock ; a fall of 37%
Warrington : a fall of 8%
Wokingham: a fall of 27%
No respite here then.
Posted by Perkins at 9:49 PM | Comments (0)
Gloom in our cities
If you think that the library figures for outer London were depressing, there is worse to come. These figures show the change in book lending in the past 5 years in those Metropolitan Councils that are holding elections next week.
Bolton: a fall of 29%
Bury : a fall of 13%
Manchester: a fall of 31%
Oldham : a fall of 29%
Rochdale : a fall of 23%
Salford : a fall of 30%
Tameside : a fall of 20%
Trafford : a fall of 29%
Wigan : a fall of 26%
Knowsley : a fall of 29%
Liverpool : a rise of 1% (but Liverpool produced a fall of 26% last year by closing their libraries in the evening).
St Helens : a fall of 21%
Sefton : a fall of 20%
Wirral : a fall of 19%
Barnsley : a fall of 28%
Doncaster : a fall of 28%
Rotherham : a fall of 30%
Sheffield : a fall of 9%
Gateshead : a fall of 27%
Newcastle : a fall of 28%
North Tyneside : a fall of 31%
South Tyneside : a fall of 32%
Sunderland : a fall of 21%
Birmingham : a fall of 25% (John Dolan worked here)
Coventry : a fall of 23%
Dudley : a fall of 29%
Sandwell : a fall of 19%
Solihull ; a fall of 17%
Walsall : a fall of 26%
Wolverhampton : a fall of 11%
Bradford : a fall of 33%
Calderdale : a fall of 23%
Kirklees : a fall of 27%
Leeds : a fall of 37%
Wakefield : a fall of 28%
If you believe David Lammy when, at the launch of his "Love Libraries" programme, he said that books are at the heart of the library service and 75% people using libraries do so for the books (and there has never been any market research anywhere which would contradict him) then these figures are extremely disappointing.
One thing that is clear - - if book borrowing is going down, and people still want to do it, then the worst thing in the world you can do is to reduce book stocks and concentrate on other things. That, unfortunately is exactly what we have done- and what the MLA are asking us to do even more. It can't be right.
Posted by Perkins at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2006
The cost of your library service pt 2 : Outer London
There is a message from Maxine to say how much she likes her library service in Kingston. Kingston is an outer London borough and the decline in book lending has been much more dramatic in these than in the centre. In the past 5 years loans have fallen by 26%. In fifteen years there will be no lending libraries at that rate
The change in each borough has been
Barking and Dagenham: a fall of 19%
Barnet : fall of 27%
Bexley : a fall of 31%
Brent: a rise of 2%
Bromley : a fall of 31%
Croydon : a fall of 40%
Ealing : a fall of 20%
Enfield : a fall of 27%
Haringey: a rise of 26%
Harrow : a fall of 18%
Havering : a fall of 22%
Hillingdon : a fall of 20%
Hounslow : a fall of 27%
Kingston : a fall of 22%
Merton : a fall of 49%
Newham : a fall of 23%
Redbridge : a fall of 44%
Richmond: a fall of 6%
Sutton : a fall of 27%
Waltham Forest : a fall of 32%
Figures like that tell a pretty sad story. In Croydon last year the residents paid £6m for their library service and just 2% of that was spent on books. Is it any wonder there is nothing left to borrow? Merton spent 6% and Redbridge spent 7%.
Congratulations again to Diana Edmonds in Haringey.
I would have just one library service for all London, with one catalogue, one membership card so everyone can use all the libraries and one website for the learning centre of the world. That would just need one small well run expert management team.
Why not?
The Department of Libraries and Archives ("Delay") say they can't arrange that because all the boroughs have different systems. Thank goodness these people aren't running the London Underground. Every borough would have a different guage of track.
Posted by Perkins at 8:52 PM | Comments (1)
April 23, 2006
The Cost of your library service
The cost of a TV licence last year was £121. The cost of the public library service for a family of 4 in central London in the same year was £119.
If you live in Camden, the public library service cost £156 and in Islington £148 for the year.
I have to justify those figures by explaining how I have calculated them- so I have put that explanation in a footnote to this table. The full list of costs for the central London boroughs is
For a family of four, the cost of their library service last year was:
Camden £156
Greenwich £87
Hackney £114
Hammersmith/Fulham £87
Islington £148
Kensington/Chelsea £126
Lambeth £83
Lewisham £88
Southwark £102
Tower Hamlets £139
Wandsworth £99
Westminster £109
When you compare these costs with that of a BBC TV licence, do you think your library service is providing value for money?
Calculation :
The source of the data is CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance) figures for 2004/5. The total costs expended in the year are (with Greenwich as the example)
Revenue cost (excluding capital charges) £4,376,416
Capital charges £665,661
Visitor payments (fines, fees, rentals etc) £435,029
Capital items £nil
total £5,477,306
Population of Greenwich 225,700
'Enhanced' population- London Boroughs 250,527
have an additional 11% daytime population
(Westminster has an extra 68%)
Cost per person = £5,477,306/250,527 = £21.86
Cost per 4 people = £87.45
75% of visits to libraries are for books*. The use of libraries for finding and reading books is therefore its most important use. If book borrowing declines that is a reflection of the quality of the collection of books available and the whole service. It also indicates whether the resources available are being used correctly.
In the past 5 years, book issues, or loans, in central London fell by 12%, but decreases are not inevitable.
The change in book lending in the central London boroughs in the past five years was
Camden fell by 22%
Greenwich fell by 32%
Hackney fell by 22%
Hammersmith/Fulham rose by 8%
Islington fell by 17%
Kensington/Chelsea fell by 19%
Lambeth rose by 7%
Lewisham fell by 17%
Southwark fell by 17%
Tower Hamlets fell by 10%
Wandsworth fell by 10%
Westminster rose by 8%
I apologise in advance and sincerely for any errors in these figures, which I shall correct immediately if needs be. The data has been taken in good faith from CIPFA statistics.
*This figure was quoted by the minister responsible for libraries at the launch of Love Libraries on 22 March 2006
Posted by Perkins at 9:10 PM | Comments (1)
April 22, 2006
A perfect library
An interview in The Bookseller this weekend, reports that John Dolan who is the head of government library policy at the Museums Libraries and Archives council
"... continues to focus on equipping libraries with multimedia resources: "We have to move on from the period of books versus computers. It's a banal concern in the present day. It reflects little understanding of the social, educational and technological drivers in the world around us," he says.
His three key words are range, relevance and currency. "It's about providing the right mix of media, combined with access to global resources,"
A way to maintain "relevant" stocks is by weighting titles towards the interests of particular ethnic or social groups. "They are often not reflected in the mainstream publishing cannon," Dolan says. However, ensuring such relevance means some classics will be pushed off the shelves. "Just like bookshops, most libraries have got to take something out to put something in. A library has a social and cultural purpose in the community that a bookshop does not have to fulfil. That dimension is often overlooked." Accordingly, he argues, they should be modelled "as animated spaces, not as warehouses".
He vehemently rejects calls for libraries to model their managerial and physical set-up more closely on book chains. "A library is not a bookshop." Any argument to the contrary "is based on the erroneous notion that a library's main purpose is to house and stamp out books".
My three key words are Book-stock, opening-hours and lovely-buildings. By coincidence, today in an email, I was asked my view of what a good public library should be like by a member of the Scottish Parliament. I said
"A wonderful library service means really extensive stock in every library; buildings which are safe, welcoming and suitable for private study and long opening hours for a population which wants to learn and study throughout their lives at times which suit them. It also means staff who know about and can enthuse over what the library carries and be helpful to all who visit. Such libraries provide a sense of place and make a huge contribution to the communities in which they stand."
These are two completely different views, I think.
Posted by Perkins at 7:41 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2006
Westminster Libraries
Great News from Westminster. Following my call on 15 April, an unnamed person has written this. Nameless or not, it is great to receive and certain to be true
A beautiful Library is indeed a gorgeous thing and that's why we are decorating Victoria library at this very time. This is a grand Victorian building - with many of the problems that are associated with being over 100 years old - leaking roofs and skylights and a well worn shabby air. Well the roofs have all been mended and architects have defined a 15 colour palette to emphasise the architectural aspects we are so proud of - and to show off the oak shelving by Gillow.
The excellent and indeed famous music library Tim mentions is in fact on the first floor of the library with specialist staff to help users - only the store is in the basement. This library has an amazing coverage of music and is a valuable and well used resource both for serious musicians and for those who play or make music for pleasure. We are currently applying for Heritage Lottery Funding in order to improve access to the collection for all music lovers.
Victoria closed on 3 April for redecoration and will reopen on 15 May. We recommend a visit to see this and any of the other 11 libraries in Westminster We have nearly 3 million visits a year to our library (including 200,000 to Victoria) and lend over 2 million items.
Posted by: On behalf of Westminster City Council at April 21, 2006 03:13 PM
Congratulations Westminster, can you tell us what the new book stock will be like? Opening hours? Can you be open all hours? A chance to tell everyone here. Fantastic.. Indeed can we find you some more sponsors to make it all wonderful? I think I could help with the stock-- can anyone else pitch in with funds to restore the beautiful basement. We can send this to music lovers round the world. Westminster shows the way.
Are there plans for other libraries?
Posted by Perkins at 9:02 PM | Comments (0)
Councillors and friends of libraries everywhere
I beg the permission and the pardon of Mr Gilbert and the Edgware Times for reprinting this letter exactly as it has been sent to me this morning. ------
Edgware Times
Promise us you’ll try to conserve valuable libraries
Barnet libraries are now into the second consecutive year of severe budget cuts. Here are some of the results so far: The central fund for books, magazines, DVDs and other materials has been slashed by £259,000; the budget for each library has been reduced by 25 per cent; more than twenty front -line posts have been abolished; one of the two mobile libraries has been withdrawn; Totteridge library has been shut down and South Friern library is under threat; the staffing and opening hours of East Finchley library have been cut back (an ill omen for all except the biggest libraries?); and reference books are being withdrawn because their information is on the internet'. Even if that were true, not everyone is an internet expert.
Councillors need to appreciate the importance of a good library service, not just for leisure, but also for education and lifelong learning. As a Friend of Barnet Libraries I urge all who care about the future of our libraries to ask their candidates in the forthcoming election to promise to try to ensure that there are no further cuts in the library service, and that the cuts already imposed are reversed as soon as possible.
Leslie Gilbert Chandos Road, East Finchley
Posted by Perkins at 10:12 AM | Comments (1)
April 20, 2006
Friends of Libraries
Hello to everyone in the Friends of Carnegie Library in Herne Hill, London Borough of Lambeth!!
Posted by Perkins at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
No more secrets
"One of the underyling causes of the collapse of the public library service is that it has lost contact with the people it is there to serve". Those aren't my words but they are taken from a focus group discussion among younger people in Oxfordshire about 4 years ago.
I agree. Secrecy pervades the service from the presentation of performance data in most councils to the discussions which go on in the highest levels of the profession and in government. It is impossible to find out what is being planned and plotted and for the people who pay for the service to contribute. At the moment there is a really important review of efficiency and I and others were astonished to find that it is effectively going on behind closed doors and only involves a small number of people who have both vested interests and limited experience. That has to stop.
The efficiency review came about because, having looked at some councils in detail I identified possible savings of £300m pa from the way the service operates. That was a long list of inefficient or wasteful practices that I showed in a presentation in the summer of 2002 to Tessa Blackstone who was then a Minister of State. The bookseller also published that list. Since that day no one has been able to refute or deny any of the points that I made. Therefore "doing nothing" has already cost us all a further twelve hundred million pounds. (Wow) Of course no one would take my word and so the best way to avoid taking action was to employ a succession of consultants and then throw their reports, secretly, into the bin. That is what is happening now.
If "the powers that be" won't be open about their discussions then one has to rely on the press. In the past few years both the trade and the national press have played a key role in uncovering the secret behaviour of those who operate the library service.
This week we can see a very fine example of that. The Times discovered that publishers charge a higher price for a book if it is supplied to a library than if it is supplied to a book shop. There's no reason, other than that they can get away with it. The technical language makes it all very complicated, but that's what it boils down to. Here is Katherine Rushton in the Bookseller and here is Ralph Baxter in Publishing News
The original article was by Dalya Alberge in The Times and I calculated that simply by publishing this, The Times added £30m to the purchasing power of the national public library book fund. That is good journalism. Here is Dalya's piece in the Times
Posted by Perkins at 9:09 PM | Comments (0)
Non governmental
I referred yesterday to the Ministry of Common Sense, and the Minister of Story Telling. Today it is time to reveal the Department of Libraries and Archives, DLA, or Delay as it properly known. Their role is, as their name says, to delay progress for as long as they possibly can. Of course they are experts.
They embarked on their programme to renovate the library service 5 years ago and so far their achievement is completely zero. Out of three thousand libraries, as the Minister of Story Telling would say, we can count the progress on the finger of one hand.
I have in mind particularly today, firstly, the review of efficiency and methods, which was certainly called for four years ago by the Audit Commission (more about them in a separate piece!) and then again and again by successive ministers, from which not one jot of progress has emerged anywhere. And secondly the review of the state of library property, which one would have thought was prerequisite to the whole programme, but they forgot to do anything about that until Parliament asked them last year. Nevertheless, in their true style, using all the skill and huge amounts of money at their disposal, they have still not managed to produce the report-- the answer to which anyone of us can guess -- will say we need "More than £600m" I bet you.
Posted by Perkins at 4:34 PM | Comments (0)
Resistance to change
I have become used to fairly fierce dislike of my call for improvement in the library service to the public. (Libri website)
The resistance comes from some, but not all, members of the library profession and those who have positioned themselves in places of influence in government and defend the library status quo.
Rarely has it been more clearly put than in a message I received yesterday. A senior member of CILIPS, the librarians' professional body in Scotland invited me to Scotland a few weeks ago and we had a very agreeable and positive discussion with some others about how we could contemplate analysing the situation and planning changes. He suggested the next stage would be a private meeting with Elaine Fulton who is the head of the Scottish governmental and professional bodies for public libraries and he offered to approach her with the idea. I was delighted to agree- I thought it was a very sensible step.
Yesterday's message was:
"Tim, Elaine Fulton, Chief Executive of SLIC/CILIPS completely rejected the idea of meeting you or involving you in discussion about Scottish libraries."
I have never met nor talked to Elaine Fulton in my life! All she could know in anticipation is what she has read and what others have said. So much for trying!
Posted by Perkins at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
Richard Charkin
The idea for starting this site came from Richard Charkin. Richard is the head of Macmillan publishers and he invited me a few weeks ago to guest a blog on his site. He is at Richard Charkin.
As Richard very generously said we have known each other for a long time through the years when book chains emerged from being the cause of sleepless nights for a few of us to the dominating presence in book selling that they are now all over the world. If you believe, as I firmly do, that for all the problems and questions that still arise, on balance the public is better served by having lots of bookshops in lots of towns competing to carry excellent stock and provide brilliant service then those endeavours have been worthwhile. Reading and the tradition of giving books as gifts have grown in this country as a result of all that hard work and investment. Where 40% of the population in 1980 had read or bought a book in the past 3 months, that figure is now over 60%.
In order for those changes to take place there had to be a number of extremely enlightened and brave publishers who shared the risks and the anxieties. These were the people who supported the movement and made it not just possible but demanded that it be done properly. Richard was one of the most important of all those who played that role; I am sure that he still is.
Libraries should buy copies of Richard's new edition of Wisden, not only in the famous traditional format but also in the new Large Print format that he has introduced this year.
Posted by Perkins at 9:42 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2006
Municipal elections
In a few weeks many of the councillors in England's largest cities will be up for re election. On this site I shall reveal the performance of the libraries in those councils since the last election. Sadly many of the libraries have fallen more deeply into dereliction during that time. There are only a few books left that the thieves have not felt worth taking, or in which even they were disgusted by the age of the tomato sandwiches that lie within their covers. If I can find them I will give the names of the councillors responsible, so you know not to vote for the same people this time round.
Of course there are some excellent exceptions. Haringey library service, under the intelligent management of Diana Edmonds and her colleagues thrives and grows every day in popularity. Westminster City Council also has addressed some of the harder problems about long opening hours and buying more books. David Ruse, their experienced head of service has already contacted me about the comment I made a few days ago about Victoria Library next to Victoria Station. David and I share an ambition to regenerate this great old building and we need the Councillors and the people of Westminster to join in and find and remove the obstacles to this work.
In the meantime I shall start digging out the performance figures for the councils coming up for election. Councillors need to find out more about how the money they allocate for libraries is spent, and this rather public analysis of their results might persuade them to do that.
Posted by Perkins at 8:46 PM | Comments (0)
Ministers and Mysteries
In our country, as everyone knows, we don't have a Minister of Literature and Libraries, but we do have a Minister of Story-Telling. He resides in the Ministry of Common Sense which is situated underneath Victoria Station (just next to the Victoria Library and Buckingham Palace). He is called Mr Woolly Jumper.
He sent a message to me today by our normal means of correspondence, which is top secret, in which he asked me to stop sending out press releases about the state of the British Library service. While I consider his request, I shall continue to inform everyone on this blog of what is going on in our libraries, or not.
My favourite author of the moment is the Turk, Orhan Pamuk. We share the experience of publishing books about Kars, which is a city in eastern Turkey. Mine is called "The seige of Kars" and is about an event in 1855 in which a wonderful old general called William Fenwick Williams had to concede defeat to the Russian army. Orhan Pamuk's book is called "Snow". Reading his books is like climbing into a bowl of sweet apple crumble: you never know where you are heading but everything is delicious.
Orhan Pamuk was arrested last December and charged with insulting the Turkish parliament because of a story he told about an event that took place 90 years before. We should take our own writers that seriously.
"Snow" by Orhan Pamuk is published in an excellent translation by Maureen Freely by Faber and Faber. ISBN 0571 218318. On this blog we will advertise books, book shops and public libraries. Contact me on tim.coates@yahoo.com
Posted by Perkins at 7:47 PM | Comments (1)
April 15, 2006
A beautiful library
Look at the photo on the book jacket to the left. It is the interior of the public library in Great Barrington in Massachusetts, America. I like it; I would happily go there and look things up, or read for an hour or an afternoon. That's what this blog is about. For many years I have campaigned in England for improvements to our public library service. I hope talking and writing about libraries will help them get better.
I am grateful to Karen Christensen and her daughter Rachel who have created this site so the discussion about libraries becomes open to everyone. Karen is the publisher of "The Good Library Guide" of which this photo is the front cover. She also has a very literary pedigree which we will discover as this blog progresses.
I thought I should start the blog with a challenge. There is a library just next to Victoria Station in London which must have been built about the same time as the one in Great Barrington. They both have the same fine windows and high ceiling. The Victoria Library is in Buckingham Palace Road which is in the City of Westminster. It is a most beautiful building; but sadly nowadays it doesn't look at all like the library in our photo. I won't describe it, that might be hurtful; but it is interesting to know that in its depths it carries a famous and wonderful music library and the private collection of the English Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The task is to help the Councillors of Westminster bring about the transformation that their building needs; to make it as evocative and attractive as the library in Great Barrington. Let's open the discussion to the wherefores and the whynots and the whatdoyoudo's and the can'tpossiblies; and remove all the obstacles. My challenge is to all the people who live, work and study in Westminster and their council to make this library into one of the best in the world- and a good candidate for Karen's book.
Posted by Perkins at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2006
About Tim COATES
Tim Coates is a former bookseller who has become a well-known advocate for improvements in public-library service. He was the first U.K. bookseller to open an all-night bookstore with a cafe, sofas, and the comfortable style we now associate with bookstores around the world. In his current work, he strives to bring the same customer orientation to libraries.
In the 1980s most bookstores, except for those in the major university towns, were dingy; stocks were poor, and it was quite frightening to ask for a book if you weren't sure what you wanted. Across many countries, there was a movement to improve, to open the windows and turn on the lights. Tim Coates was at the forefront of that movement. In England he was managing director first of Sherratt & Hughes and then of Waterstone's bookshops and of the English book chain WHSmith in Europe.
Active on a wide stage, Tim worked closely with the Czech writers who brought about the downfall of the Communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia; back in the United Kingdom, he also earned notoriety for being among those who brought about the end, in 1997, of the British Net Book Agreement, a price-fixing agreement between publishers and booksellers that had determined the prices people paid for books since 1900.
Since 1999 Tim has pursued library improvement at the local and countrywide level by urging improved book ranges, longer hours, and more welcoming buildings. He is the author of "Who's in Charge? Responsibility for the Public Library Service," a report which is used now in many countries to assess public-library services, and he is working on a training guide for library managers as well as an updated edition of his “Who’s in Charge” report. He is a consultant who provides guidance to local councils and to departments of government.
Tim is also a writer, published by Bloomsbury, and he publishes his own series of historic papers. His elder son, Sam, is political correspondent for the Times in London, and his younger son, Olly, is a cellist with an international solo career. Tim and his wife, Bridget Cave, live in London.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:53 PM | Comments (3)