The Good Library Blog

I find your blog fascinating to read. Fascinating but infuriating - I feel like I am intruding on a private conversation where the participants know each other so well that they use a form of shorthand.

Even your explanations of what the blog is about leave me a little confused. The general drift appears to be that libraries are good but librarians are bad - or is it that there are too many library managers?

Would your ideal public library impose any library charges? Would the non-fiction books be arranged on the shelves in any precise order or would there be theme areas e.g. Mind, Body, Spirit etc.? What criteria would be used to select the small proportion of all books published? I assume you accept that not all books published in one year can be bought for the public library.

I have just checked the on-line library catalogue of my own borough for the 10 items you specifically mentioned in your latest blog item. The score was 9 out of 10 - no Sunset Song. I assume by Italian Recipes of Jamie Oliver you meant the book entitled Jamie's Italy.

But what precisely did you mean by score? My borough has several libraries - 3 main ones and 4 smaller branch ones. To score a point did you intend that a title should be stocked in each of the libraries? And did you mean that a copy of the book should be on the shelf - or could it be on loan?

9 out 10 would seem to be a good score but I would not describe my own borough's library service as being anything other than at best average.

Very few book shops provide internet access - free or paid for. Do you believe that the British Public Library service has gone overboard in providing free internet access? To the detriment of the book stock? Do you believe that to survive a public library service should attempt to combine the functions of an internet cafe, video shop and a library?

I think you stated earlier that there should be a good selection of reference books in a library. Which begs the question as to which ones should be stocked. Some reference books cost hundreds of pounds. Who decides? With the advent of online reference works aren't the paper versions an unaffordable luxury?

Thank you- welcome to Bloggington on Sea. I'm sorry that some of this appears like a private conversation; I am sure you are right. Sometimes I am lampooning people who are in positions of responsiblity and I try to reflect their position and their actions rather than the person. I'm sure those things are mysterious. But I am also guilty of shorthand. I'm sorry.

To answer specifically your question about scoring the collection, I mean that the book is available on the shelf.

One of the concerns that is widely expressed about libraries is that "younger" people don't use them. In my experience most people nowadays, if they are looking for a particular book want to find it straight away. They don't want to be told it is in a library five miles away and will take a week to come. That is like going into Next and being told that this branch doesn't stock blue shirts but another one does. So libraries must have stock available.

If you think of a really good small independent book shop, they are often very much smaller than the local library and yet they often seem to have almost everything one could want to read and a great deal of which one had never heard. I think libraries should aspire to that same standard. One of the shops in my survey yesterday was one tenth of the size of the library- yet it had far more to offer.

With respect to internet access, I think one of the very important roles a library plays which a book shop doesn't, is that of providing quiet dignified private working space. For most people nowadays that means having a computer on the desk and if libraries can provide those for people who don't bring their own, then that is a good service. I don't think that libraries should simply mimic internet cafes. They aren't entitled in law to do that anyhow, although no one has brought a case. Governments aren't supposed to subsidise services which compete with others who earn a living- but that's a whole different subject.

Reference books again are a subject which need careful thought. What you say is obviously right, but I am mindful of the small community library and the service it has always offered of a collection of works of reference and people's familiarity with those. I think the withdrawal from paper copies has been too fast.

Thank you Tim for taking the time to respond to my comments. Much appreciated and very helpful.

Although I fully agree with your pro public library stance, I think I disagree with some of your views. Hopefully I am not tilting at windmills and I have not misunderstood what you have said in your blog.

If availability of a book on the shelf is a requirement for scoring a point in your 10 book test, then I am not surprised that a public library should score less than a bookshop. If Mary visits her library in Bloggington on Sea and finds a copy of Jamie Oliver’s Italian recipes, she will leave the library with the book and a warm glow. Freda arrives ten minutes later and is disappointed that the book is not on the shelf and apparently can justifiably criticise the service provided by the library. But why? The library has a limited budget and is a not for profit organisation.

You may well feel annoyed if your local Next shop cannot immediately provide you with a blue shirt but you surely would not feel justified in berating the manager of your local Oxfam if he or she had none in stock. I suggest that comparing a bookshop with a public library is a similar error.

Bookshops, even small independent bookshops, are businesses which aim to make a profit. When Freda visits her Bloggington on Sea independent bookshop BooksRus and finds three copies of the aforementioned work of genius on the shelves she has a choice – fork up the £20.00 and remove the book from the shelf or go back to her library, place a reservation for the book and wait for Mary to return the spaghetti stained tome. Or log on to Amazon and buy it for £11.99!

I have always thought that a proportion of the books available in a bookshop were made available to the proprietor on a sale-or-return basis. If that is correct it is unsurprising that a bookshop can provide a more readily available supply of popular latest publications. Librarians on the other hand have to estimate demand for a book before purchasing it – a once and for all decision with no possibility of a profit. They may be inefficient and ignorant in their choices but their position is more difficult than that of a bookshop stock manager.

Bookshops, independent or chains, sell books. Nothing else. However, a public library service is only one area of activity for a council or community. The council has a finite budget – education, health care social welfare, street cleaning, etc. compete for a share of that money. Purchasing multiple copies of each of the current best sellers in order to compete with BooksRus is just not on.

You may have read Ruth Kelly’s latest speech in which she said “80% of the performance reporting produced by councils is information required by Whitehall and only 20% is of direct local benefit. This has got to change. I’m clear that we need much less red tape. This means a dramatic reduction of as many centrally set targets and indicators as is possible. “

Which may account for the disproportionate number of back-office managers and administrators in the public library service – they are beavering away writing reports and holding non-productive and costly meetings discussing all these central government initiatives and directives. They have no choice. The red tape is not of their own making.

Not something that the managements of Borders, Ottakers, Waterstones or BooksRus have to deal with.

Given these set of circumstances and these restrictions and this environment, I don’t see how you can improve the library service in any major way. Improvements here and there , yes. But not-for-profit organisations operating with a limited budget and burdened by targets set by a central bureaucracy face a bleak future.

Thank you for your long comment- which gives me chance to answer a number of points.

First of all "making profit" is not the modus operandi -- giving service is what anyone deals with the public tries to do. A bookseller does not make sure that there are sufficient copies of a book available on one day "in order to make a profit" - they do it because it is their job to anticipate what potential customers will need. 99.9% of booksellers do not earn anything from profit - they earn a weekly wage.

In fact in the sample I quoted, the library did have a copy of Jamie Oliver's Italy, but one book shop didn't- and that is plain bad stock control on their part.

As I have argued elesewhere the limit on the libaries' stock fund budget is because they have chosen to use very considerable resources elsewhere. They will tell you that has happened by neccessity, but no one is responsible outside council management, and it is a wrong allocation of resources. If they managed their resources properly library services could have, as they used not many years ago to have three times as much money to spend on books,in real terms, as they do now. That change has not been anyone's choice but their own (collectively) or a consquence of their allocating funds elsewhere.

If libraries are to remain relevant, they have to present collections of stock to people who expect a large part of what they need to be there when they need it. That is the imperative- it supercedes all other calls on the funding.

It will suprise many people to know that the operating cost of most public libraries far exceeds that of most retailers of any kind. In the town on which I was looking, there were more library staff at the counter of the library (doing effectively nothing) than all the three bookstores combined, with less customers than any of them. That is just a momentary sample, but I happen to know the operating cost of that library service and those book stores and the people of the town pay far more for library staff than they do for bookselling staff. that is not becuase of excessive bureaucracy, it is poor management.

The library service has very little "red tape" of the kind you describe. The performance management regime of libraries is not overburdening and no one takes much notice of it anyhow. I have studied it also at some length and if it were done properly, it would take no more than a few minutes each day, it would be very useful, it could be 100% directed beneficially at the operation of the service and can cost a great deal less than it currently does. Again, since you make the contrast, the booksellers have to deal with the administration and security of their daily takings of cash, which actually is a far more time consuming burden than any the librarians have to carry.

I don't know about other public service operations in the same detail, but I do know that the public library service is awash with excuses for its poor performance which are not justified. What is certainly true is that everyone blames someone else, or some other regime, and no one takes responsibility. I am aware of them- that is the management mentality - and the public is ill served by it. It pervades, particularly, the levels of senior management and does them no credit.

Believe me (why should you!) the library service can be greatly improved with the existing funding (£1.2bn per annum) - money is not the problem, as most are beginning to realise. The problem lies in how the money is spent, and more importantly, the direction and leadership of the service which should allow local individual libraries much more freedom to give service to their own communities and the control over their resources to be able to do that.

Thank you for highlighting the tips and answering the questions.I'm an upcoming entrepreneurer who wants to venture in this business.At the moment i'm facing alot of challenges like funds and suppliers who will bring for me books,videos and the computers inorder for me start the business.I would also like to know more about record keeping of books,videos and finances.