The Good Library Blog

Renewing libraries

Tim Coates, to the Conservative Party Forum on Public Libraries : June 15 2006

It is timely for the Conservative Party to articulate a Vision for public libraries for two reasons.

The first is the extent of grave crisis which currently faces the library service. This could not have been better explained than in two pieces in the Daily Telegraph yesterday which said, in a leading article

“It has been by a breach of trust that in the past 30 years, books have been jettisoned from public libraries to make room for facilities that parallel those of a cyber café. Youngsters cannot learn habits of self reliant inquiry by playing on the internet unless they also have the opportunity to explore the world of books and weigh up their worth. The number of books has fallen from 105m a decade ago to near just 80m now. To close library buildings is to surrender to a new Dark Age. Under a government that has presided over a rising generation of functional illiterates the outlook for body and mind is poor”

In an article which described the ineffectual leadership of the service from the minister and his department and quango, the MLA, Catriona Davies quoted my view, which she has repeatedly written about confirmed by her own research “They are closing services because councils are preferring to cut services to the public than to seek efficiency in their own operation. Once libraries are closed we will have lost them forever.”

The second reason is that in the recent local council elections The Conservative Party earned political control of the majority of library authorities: those councils who run the public library service. This change offers a responsibility and an opportunity which I wish to describe.

If we have learned anything about politics in the past nine years it must be to beware of the politicians’ vision statements. In the near constant flow of press comment this week, Rachel Cooke in last Sunday’s Observer questioned the ability of The Tory Party to achieve any ambition it might set out for itself today. Plainly put what she meant was, it is no use Mark Field and Hugo Swire expressing a noble vision, if the Conservative Local Councils pursue their own agenda which is in conflict.

David Lammy has the same problem; even if the vision of libraries expressed by New Labour in 1998 and enshrined eventually in a document called “Framework for the Future” had been a practical one created out of some realistic management programme, which it wasn’t, even if it had been: David Lammy and his predecessors and his ministry had to find a way to have purposeful dialogue with local councils in order to achieve it. That they have failed to do this is not only embarrassingly obvious in every statement he makes but is essentially one of the major causes of the crisis we now face. The public library standards have self evidently been a mechanism incapable of producing improvement or management training. That vision statement and the absence of practical planning that needed to accompany it was fatally flawed. Eight years on there in a service with 4000 libraries there is barely a lick of improvement and much which is worse. Framework for the Future says many interesting things, but leadership needs more than documents with interesting ideas; it needs practical simple straightforward clear direction, especially when the problem being addressed was already quite grave on a wide scale and becoming worse. Moreover as public services are large and owned by the public, the documents have to be grounded in public opinion, written in language that ordinary people can understand and contain intended achievements that everyone can recognise. Framework for the Future has none of these: a new Conservative Party Vision must not fall into the same traps.

I am not a Conservative and it is not for me to write that vision but I believe it must contain the aspiration that public libraries work closely with and are able to be individual and responsive to their local communities; they must be safe accessible welcoming buildings that house collections of books and other sources of understanding, both for learning and for pleasure for lending and for reference; new books and old books; they must be places in which individuals can enjoy private dignified study and reading, with access to computers and the information sources to which they connect; they must be open most of the time; they must address the particular needs of children; they must also go out of their way to cater for any disability; I am particularly concerned and have been all my career, about people who have eyesight difficulties, but of course there are other similar issues. For me, libraries are essentially passive: they are there for people to use and to help people find what they need, not for librarians to tell people what to read; they are not educational institutions, although of course they are often attached to them.

In making such a list I am following the example of last year’s admirable select committee report which said that unless we identified the core of the service we would never be able to manage the funds available with clear priorities. This is absolutely correct; unless people who work in the service are quite clear what the priorities are for their resources, they have no clear plan of what their job is. They will feel entitled to ask for funds to undertake projects which they enjoy or genuinely feel are worthwhile, when such projects, to be undertaken properly, require resources outside the value of the public library service. I saw a document produced by the MLA last year which said that “libraries should be all things to all people”. I am afraid that in terms of leadership and direction no sentiment could be more foolish. It is a signal to managers that any expenditure is legitimate and any burden on the tax payer is reasonable. It is a form of political blackmail. That is simply not fair or practical. It is bad public administration and it is why the service has lost the reputation for the quality of its core operation.

The Conservative party has a tremendous opportunity to take the lead in this matter immediately. Libraries are run by local councils there is no need for the collective of Conservative Councils to take notice any longer of the dismal DCMS or the hapless MLA. I suggest to you that together you could address some of the very difficult issues which I see have befallen the service and I would be delighted to help you do that. I am proposing UDI and these are the matters I think you could address.

I n order to illustrate how we could make strides of progress, as an example may I talk for a moment about the London Boroughs?

London is a student centre of the world. From all parts young people come to spend time here and they use the city as a centre of learning. They take courses from the law to medicine, music to languages to hairdressing and horticulture. The city is full of bedsits with students. They add enormously to the colour, richness and vitality of the capital. The public library service could play a really helpful role in their lives- whether they be from Cumbria or Cambodia but at the moment it fails to do that. Collections are poor, buildings are drab, websites are outdated, opening hours are not designed to match the needs of a 24 hour city

There are 330 libraries across the 33 boroughs, but aside from a project called WILL which helps find books, there is no effective cooperative service across the boroughs. The service in London costs £220m per annum. It should have one website, one library card, one network of all night libraries, one method of reservation, one efficient programme for library renovation and maintenance and one marketing programme which proclaims the contribution that the libraries of London make. One instance of huge possible saving would be the use of one set of standard design elements for library buildings the existence of could save tens of millions of pounds each year in the place of Architects fees and design costs which are currently incurred almost each time a library building is renovated. This is only what Andrew Carnegie did in his time and libraries have forgotten the skill (but I have not). There is no need for London councillors in any way to lose their local influence over the service, but at the same time there is no need for 33 separate management structures each of which brings an extravagant burden of overhead cost

For as long as I can remember the officers of the MLA and the London Libraries Development Agency have been on the point of trying to resolve the political and technical questions that would make such progress possible. I say enough- forget about them; they have had their chance. If three political leaders from Conservative Boroughs working with Mark Field, sat round a table we could establish the political will that would in turn resolve the technical issues. We could begin the programme of eliminating the annual £30-£40m in total of wasted replicated management effort that occurs in the library service of the London Boroughs and produce results within a year. We could commit to this today. At the moment almost every borough has bibliographic services, systems departments, selection departments, reader development teams, operations managements; each of which replicates the work of 32 other boroughs. This structure may suit the library profession but it wastes so much of the money which the public pay. By working in detail to remove these inefficiencies we could be absolutely certain that not only would we please the public, but that we could obtain top CPA scores of whatever kind the Audit Commission should set. In a short time the libraries of London could have one wonderful universally accessible collection of books supported by shelf ready supplier selection individual to each library with one vast database. One operational management can report on a daily updated performance website to each ward councillor (or opposition candidate) in each borough about the performance of the library service for each postcode if they wished to look at it. There will be much improved democracy. The money saved can be used to double expenditure on books and improve buildings and hours. But the resolve to take this step has to come from political leaders of councils and not from the level of chief librarian. Chief librarians in consort are simply not able, as has been sadly shown, to hold the leverage to take action; they are too concerned to preserve their own budgets and their own pride. From three councils we would have a model that could be used across London and further afield. There is no reason why boroughs of other political colour could not join- it is just that the Tories hold a key now, this minute, to the door of transformation

There is in truth in these areas of activity which I have just begun to describe about £200-300m each year of misdirected expenditure in the library service across the whole country, and it is only by this detailed work in a small number of councils that we will start to unlock that. . While we dither about taking these steps, there cannot be a reasonable case for asking for more money for libraries from the Treasury or councils or anywhere else. They know now, because they have listened to me that the service does not have credible leadership and without that the public could not support extra funding. We cannot give more public money to management who will not direct it for the public benefit

If the Conservative Party is to have the practical, electorally useful vision for public libraries that the people of the country are crying out for, it has to be one which will produce real improvement to a service that people can easily see is in complete disarray. That improvement has to take place within the next 4 years and it will not happen by itself or with the current regime. I am telling you how it can be done because I know how it can be achieved. I would be delighted to make it come true. It is also my ambition.

Thank you