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August 3, 2006
Conservative Party on public libraries
I have written before about the Conservative Party forum on libraries on June 15. Yesterday Mark Field sent a public letter to all those who had attended.
I think it is excellent and I am very grateful to him, to Chris Furey, his colleague and to Hugo Swire and his office. I believe that there is political concensus between all the parties in the UK parliament that the problem of our public library lie with its management at national and local level, up to and including the level of Minister of State, and they have become grave. I shall write more about points made by Mark in his letter, but here it is (with his permission, for which I am grateful), more or less, in full:.....
31 July 2006
I promised at last month’s Forum to provide a follow-up note to attendees.
Please excuse my tardiness in coming back to you but, since 15 June, I have had many further meetings with councillors, representatives of library councils and other advisory bodies as well as members of the book lending library public. It is clear that there is a chasm between the ‘21st century community centre new library enthusiast’ and the long established book borrowing library user. We need to fill that gap.
What we are therefore trying to do is to bring a fresh vision to councils and an outline of best practice which can be refined over the next months such that Britain’s public lending library service is something of which we can all be proud again.
My interest in the current library situation developed at the start of this year when notice of library closures fed into the offices of the Shadow Team of the Department of Culture, Media and Arts. Over the last six months there has been much misinformation from the government and the directors of the nation’s library strategy and policies that all was very well in the world of libraries.
Our view is that all is not well. In fact it has been valuable that some senior specialists long connected with the development of libraries have begun to accept that there is a crisis. There are huge operational discrepancies in the services provided in our libraries around the nation. No one has been prepared to show national leadership in providing clarity of thought and effort in order that our record of 150 years of successful library provision is not finally buried under a welter of closures, technology, wasteful refits and finally recriminations.
Bullet points:
· There is a major political deficit as a result of poor leadership from central and local government
· There is sufficient money in the system if it were used efficiently
· Many problems with libraries are down to poor management; poor management accounting
· Funding for new books is falling
· Visits are down substantially, book borrowing even further
· Various reports on the Future of the Libraries have been produced year after year yet piecemeal actions have resulted in a fragmented service, satisfactory to very few of its current or potential users
It is our aspiration and belief that the library experience should be relaxed, enjoyable and part of the community. Libraries are popular but they do not do the job they could and should. People want them and there is probably enough money in the system to do the job. There are too many tiers of bureaucracy now in the library service in local government - a complete waste of money. Money and empowerment gets sucked into council bureaucracy and is wasteful. When libraries are closed the bureaucrats do not lose their jobs. Councils need to be directed and any task force or central directing body needs to create confidence in all councils that such a body has the interest of the public at heart. To this end we believe books must underpin the library experience. New books must be stocked and the concepts of IT research, internet cafes and the “sofa experience” should be additional to the basic reading and borrowing book experience.
I have listened to many ‘so-called’ experts telling me that books in libraries are finished. However, the support that the government puts into library-held initiatives such as this year’s heartfelt Summer Reading Challenge for children’s reading, flies in the face of such expert considerations. Libraries need to be marketed and then deliver expectations. The fund for new books in libraries must not become an easy target in the annual council budget savings round.
Some months ago I was berated by many in the upper echelons of the library council world for my concern that the library system could wither on the vine. Councils from one end of the country and in London are happily announcing 33% cuts in book funding; cessation of mobile library services and closures of 25% of libraries in their borough or county. Unhappily my anxieties have not been mollified by the news of cutbacks and possible closures from councils in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Lambeth to name a few.
The forum here in the House of Commons in June allowed us to hear the sometimes polarised views of many who either cherish the public book lending library world or wish to create an entirely new entity with the word library banished from its title forever.
Thank you again for coming to the recent event which provided so many valuable insights into the problems that libraries face and also to identify that there is a book reading and library using public which feels its voice is being ignored.
May I especially thank those who have continued to contact my office. I can only ask you to watch for future developments and I look forward to hearing from you all on this matter in the months ahead.
MARK FIELD MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CULTURE
Posted by Perkins at August 3, 2006 10:47 AM
Comments
That is a quite excellent view of the whole subject. But my worry, as always, is that when Shadow, the Ministers say anything - ANYTHING - that they think any of us want to hear, in order to win our vote. Then when they have won it, other things start taking priority (and of course there are higher priorities than libraries..) and before you know it, promises are broken, ideas back-burnered and initiatives fail to be fulfilled. IF he did indeed carry out even half of what he knows needs to be carried out, we would have a successful library service again. It is so sad that it is the librarians who have rushed over the cliff like Gadarene swine, wanting to believe books were dead, electronics were all... They started it all years ago. It is like the mass ranks of sports coaches in the country saying Exercise is dead, ban all Ball games, close the playing fields... bring on the hand-held Lara Croft the Tomb Raider.. these are the GAMES of the future. You wouldn`t believe it. But this is what has happened in the libraries. I am not anti-computers, I use them all the time. But most people who use them now have their own.They are very cheap. The few who do not, go to the library to research their next holiday on the public computer. Meanwhile, book sales and the reading of books, as evidenced by the success, for e.g. of Richard and Judy, continue to soar. Books are dead, shout librarians down the wind, books are dead, follow us, follow us, books are....
If they were, would Richard and Judy`s recommended titles sell in their multi-thousands ? Would the winner of the Booker prize sell by the many-thousand year after year ?
And do you know something ? The Library officials don`t but I`ll let them into the secret now.
HARRY POTTER IS NOT A COMPUTER GAME.
Thank you Susan. You can be sure these Tories are reading this blog. They will be alerted to what you say. I am grateful for them for getting this far. Tim
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at August 3, 2006 1:44 PM