The Good Library Blog

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July 23, 2006

Who's in charge?

Much press attention has been given, rightly, to the fall in the number of books in libraries available for lending. The number reported has gone from about 105m in 1997 to 80m now

I bet it is in fact a lot lower than 80m because the computer system in each council believes many books to be present which were lost a long time ago. Perhaps the figure is as low as 60m

For a long time the senior managers and civil servants were saying that this discarding of books was right: that libraries now are about far more than books and the emphasis needed to change in the era of advancing technology. Few people outside government and library management realised this was a deliberate strategy

When the public found out about this nonsense the outcry in Parliament and in the press was so emphatic that the message has now been changed. We are told that there needed to be a "clean-up" of the stock but there was never any intention to reduce the quality of the book collections.

Once more it is "OK" to say that books are important. Government propaganda has been turned on its head.

But who is going to restore the stock in both quality and quantity? The Government Minister with his new found enthusiasm for books, despite the enormous and expensive teams of officials and quangoes that surround him, repeats all the time that it is not for him, or them, to run libraries- that is for councils to do. (What these officials and quangoes do and why we pay for them is still a mystery)

However, more libraries in the country are run by Conservative councils than any other party, by a long way. Indeed Conservative councils have been just as responsible, if not more so, for the decline in book collections. So while the Conservative party rightly find fault with the Labour Government that has allowed this perilous decline to take place, they now find themselves with the job of leading the change of direction and putting all this right

If the Conservative leadership is sincere in its call for books and reading to be put back at the heart of the library service (and I believe it is), then it is already in their hands to do something about it. They have spotted this - and now we have to see if they are up to the job of addressing the problem. I hope so.

They have already indicated their disdain for the mechanisms and quangoes of Government, which is a good start. Now their own local councils need willingly to help them form a joint vision for libraries, which is new and different to the current one.

Councils willing to join the campaign should contact Mark Field MP and shadow Minister. He's the man trying to make this all come true.

I have listed the English Conservative library authorities below. If you live in one of these councils, petition them to join Mark. If you live in other councils, by all means ask them to make contact with Mark's office or even me, there's no reason why this good work should be confined to Tory councils at all.

Posted by Tim Coates at July 23, 2006 9:58 AM

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