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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 Tim Coates at April 22, 2006 7:41 PM