« Conservative and Labour | Main | Market research »
June 25, 2006
Love Libraries, Eat cake
In the next 2 weeks David Lammy, the reading agency and various senior publishers will seek publicity for their campaign called "Love Libraries" They are using Saatchi Bros to promote the activity
There is nothing about this campaign which demonstrates an understanding or an acknowledgment of the serious problems of the library service. Not only are we faced with news of more closures every week, but books stocks and funds for book acquisitions continue to decline; opening hours of libraries have not increased materially in 8 years; and a huge amount of capital expenditure has brought no measured benefit whatsoever.
The fall in book lending for the year ending March 2006 has been greater than in any year ever (the Government has not yet released the figures)
This campaign is as if a Government of a country with slums and poverty and had taken one small child, bathed and dressed him and paraded in front of the press saying- "this is the way to solve the problem " It reminds one of being asked to eat cake.
The Government needs urgently to recognise the problems and- before the Autumn budget round begins in local councils- produce some realistic plan to solve them. Otherwise we face another two years of terminal decline from which it will be even harder to recover than now.
700 people attended a council meeting in the small Devon town of Colyton to argue with councillors who proposed to close their library. The councillors could not even produce the calculation that had been made that had persuaded them to take this action. This kind of public demonstration is going on all over the country.
Posted by Tim Coates at June 25, 2006 1:03 PM