The Good Library Blog

Libraries and the National Lottery

In January one would have expected the announcement of £80m Big Lottery money for public libraries to be greeted with cries of delight. In fact it achieved the headline in The Times "£80m for libraries, but not a penny for books".

"How ungrateful! " was the cry from the Minister onwards.

I confess to being the person who raised the alert about the lack of books and drawing it to the attention of the newspapers. I am not at all ungrateful for the money, but I am concerned about how it will be used. For too long developments in libraries and attempts to modernise the library service have ignored the essential role that books and reading play and as a consequence the collections of books in libraries have become very poor. Indeed there is a lot of market research evidence that the poverty and consequent lack of usefulness of the books in libraries is the most serious contributor to the decline in reputation of the service.

There is an argument that in order to become attractive once more libraries should do something different: they should augment their traditional role in providing books and information and a place for private study. They should, in the words of the Big Lottery announcement "transform the space into something more interesting and useful. Yet market research does not support this approach and nor does reasoned logical analysis of the problem. Libraries are failing because they have poor offerings, they are dowdy and they are not open long enough hours. They are not failing because the space needs to be changed to be used for something else; or because people have gone off the idea of libraries. That is what market research and actual examples have for a long time made clear. Public libraries have always been useful in their local community for far more than their collections of books, they have always offered evening classes and events: but there is a core of the service which must be right. A railway station may have wonderful shops, but they are of no use if there are no trains.

In fact in order to renovate the core of the library service we need to inject £600m of expenditure on books, £600m of expenditure on restoration and redecoration of the buildings and probably a further £400m on management training. The headline in the paper was a cry for understanding of the whole problem, where the announcement of the funding appeared to be pursuit of the wrong solution to the anxieties of the service.

It was also a cry of shame to the people who advised the Big Lottery board for failing to address the problem properly - and even to the board itself for not exercising its own judgment about what libraries needed and allowing itself to be persuaded by an argument that is not supported by the public view. No one asked communities, nor did they seek and quote market research that would indicate what actual communities might say. Instead, local government officers and officials of national quangoes carried the day. That is not right. One cannot, regrettably, assume that employees of government, local or national, can speak for local communities and the Big Lottery Board should be aware of and understand the importance of that.

In fact, although it is not adequately methodical, one hears the voice of the community when councils propose to close local libraries as has been going on for the past few months. People say : "You starved our libraries of books and never opened them when we needed, and now you say you will close them for lack of use. This must be stopped" The message is consistent and has always been the same. Nobody wants their basic library to be used for Tai Chi classes (which is the example that has been used): they want their library space to be used as a good decent library.

Of course £80m does present a huge opportunity to step out on the right path. I have argued (as did last year's excellent Parliamentary Select Committee), that what are needed are some model authorities in which we thoroughly and completely resolve the management problems that lie in councils and in central quangoes; in which we renovate the buildings in an attractive and economic way; in which we restore the book and other collections to a high standard and in which we provide modern study space and the best access to information sources that new technology and a national library service can provide. By going through this process we will learn what is needed to do the same in other councils

£80m would probably provide the means to set up 4 good council library services around the country which could then be used as exemplars and training models. That is how, in my view, the money should be spent. Such a programme needs to be conducted with the highest possible management skill and experience from sectors both private and public; it needs ministerial leadership and government support with the long term aim of addressing the problem of the whole public library service as quickly as possible. It needs to be a fully managed programme by a project team with a national purpose. It should not be handed out by regional boards in response to sundry applications for small building renovation and community projects, which in 5 years time will have been demonstrated not to have met the long term public requirements of the library service.

I have previously predicted that unless we introduce a dramatic new management programme, the whole service will collapse. This fund of £80m may be the last opportunity: I dearly wish we would use the money properly.

c Tim Coates