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June 18, 2006
Turning points
It may well turn out that the number of libraries that close this year is less than the 107 mentioned in last week's Observer, but that will be no thanks to David Lammy, Chris Batt, John Dolan, Mark Wood, Paul Kirkman, Andrew Stevens etc, the people who have responsibility for ensuring we have a comprehensive and efficient library service. It will be because people across the country have protested and argued in hundreds of different ways with their local councils and forced them to think again. In the case of Cumbria, it will be because the council itself has made noble efforts.
The Observer's highlighting of the ineffectual approach of the Minister was followed during the week by articles in The Telegraph, The Evening Standard and in a host of local papers and the professional book press.
What they all demonstrated was not just a lack of leadership to which people are entitled (as Helen Dunmore, the author, so eloquently said, before David Lammy abused her publicly); but that those in positions of leadership simply don't understand what it means. Apparently they have never seen it at work and never learned how it is conducted.
Next week will bring more attention. A (rather good) report of a set of focus groups among people up to the age of 35 will show that for them, by and large, the public library service is irrelevant. Throughout their own childhood, years of study and their lives to date, what has been on offer in public libraries has been so awful that they don't care about the service at all. It has no value. In fifteen years time the affection which currently surrounds the service and from which the pleas for survival mostly come, will no longer be there. That is why it will be closed down. That means that the generation of senior managers of the service, now in place, have ruined it. It also means that the job of restoration is now so formidable, one is feared to undertake it. For certain we cannot go on allowing these same managers to carry on their agenda in the way that they have. It is time to change the management.
In the following weeks we will get more "Love Libraries" propaganda. These will be photo opportunities for Mr Lammy with beaming children and hard working library staff in libraries that have been cleaned up. No attempt has been made to address any of the underlying management issues or the questions of management development or straightforward performance measurement that are so desperately needed as a foundation. It is, as the Bookseller has already perceptively observed, sticking plaster on a gaping wound. And, after the 14 months he has been in office, it will represent a small improvement in 3 libraries out of more than 3,000 for which he has (but denies) responsibility.
I hope that the public and national outburst of frustration that all this brings means we are coming to a turning point. All these problems are readily solvable- but not unless someone asks for help and that person should have been David Lammy, the Minister.
Posted by Tim Coates at June 18, 2006 9:34 AM
Comments
This is the oldest trick in the book... you make it unviable but starving it of funds and neglecting it, so no one wants to use it any more, so you can say you are justified in closing it down because no one wants to use it any more.
What is wrong with the obvious answer ? If communities want libraries with books in them, they must open and run themselves, privately.
Meanwhile, academic libraries continue to be superb. I am doing an MA by distance at the University of Wales, Lampeter - I send for books and they are either immediately available in the library or obtained via inter-university library loan. I use them and reurn them.
My old college, King`s, London, of which I have the honour to be a Fellow, has opened its new library in the last couple of years - it always was a good library; now it is outstanding, among the top half dozen in the UK. Masses of books an dedicated staff.. and this at a time when academic work is available online more and more, so they would have a better argument for closing the academic libraries than the public one. But they don`t.
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at June 18, 2006 1:01 PM
Susan- I agree with this, but don't you think that when a council hands the running of a library back to its community, they should give them back the money they paid? For example in Little Chalfont, the people there pay £80,000 each year to the council for the library service. That's a lot of money and now the council are refusing to provide a service but saying the town can run their own, at their own expense: which they estimate to be about £20,000 each year. It's wrong that they are having to pay twice.
Otherwise I certainly support you and would find a way to provide Little Chalfont Library to all the benefits of national databases, supplier discounts etc that the council already obtain. Tim
Posted by: Tim Coates at June 18, 2006 1:36 PM
I do think so. But people could always withold the proportion of their council tax which would go to the library service - on the grounds that there is no longer that service therefore why should they be paying for it ?
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at June 18, 2006 2:39 PM
I'm baffled about the difference in care and support between academic and public libraries. Here in the States, there's much talk about the irrelevance of academic libraries to most students. They just won't go into the building. We had a young graduate as editorial assistant, well-read and a good writer, who said that he had never once, in four years, been inside his college library.
But public libraries are being revitalized right and left, as is obvious from our Libraries We Love book contest, that generated hundreds of passionate submissions. (Note, this is NOT the U.K. Love Libraries campaign.) We have buttons available, by the way, that say, "Libraries Make the World A Better Place."
Posted by: Karen Christensen at June 20, 2006 11:03 AM