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May 8, 2006
Bloggington on Sea 4 : the library service in each Ward
Mr Grimsdyke's first budget sheet is a list of the wards in the city. Against the name of each he asks each library to tell him how many "active members" use their library. (He defines an "active member" as someone who has used the library service in the past year) From this information he can tell how well each ward is served by the library service. He can see which libraries the people in the ward use. This is information he can pass to the ward councillors (and the opposition parties) so that they can discuss the service with the crew of each library.
He also makes sure that each library is given the addresses of people who are added to the electoral register. These people are given pre-completed library membership cards: once a month each library arranges a delivery to the addresses on the new arrivals list.
Each of the libraries has a friends of the library group which meets every month or so and one of the items on the agenda is always to identify special needs in the local area and to make contacts with organisations like care homes, nurseries and other groups for whom the library can offer special assistance.
For the budget Mr Grimsdyke records the population of each ward, the active membership of each library, divided into children, people over 60 and all other adults. He also keeps a track on his sheet of other measures like book issues and satisfaction scores from polls that are taken. He wants to know if a ward is not getting good service.
Posted by Perkins at May 8, 2006 9:16 AM
Comments
Thought this might interest you:
http://bookswordswriting.blogspot.com/2006/05/unusual-libraries.html
Posted by: Lynne W. Scanlon at May 8, 2006 6:45 PM