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August 25, 2006
"Libraries are overstaffed"
There is an article in the Bookseller today by Katherine Rushton which I have attached below. She says that the public library service is "severely over-staffed"
I have been saying for 6 years that all the evidence I can find suggests that local council library services have a lot more staff than they need to do the job they do. Not only do they have more staff but those staff incur overhead costs which also mean that the service costs much more than it should. That money could be better spent, particuarly on books, longer opening hours and redecoration of buildings.
However, what is interesting about Katherine's article today, which is prompted I imagine by last week's debate about book supply, is the number and identity of the people who have suddenly started agreeing with me. Rob Froude, evidently means what he says as evidenced by what he is doing in Somerset, and he is a very senior member of The Society of Chief Librarians. Andrew Stevens who is also quoted is no less than the chief policy adviser on libraries at the MLA (a title he mysteriously shares with John Dolan). Andrew's claim that the PwC report might "reform efficiencies at every level" is about as realistic as saying that a heavy dew will end the hosepipe ban- but this is the first time I have seen an admission by the MLA and DCMS that there is "an overstaffing situation".
The spokesperson for Lancashire reveals a great deal that I'm sure will be of interest to the electors of that once wonderful county.
When people at this level start admitting that libraries are "severely" overstaffed it is time for librarians to give up asking for more money, and for councils to stop recruiting new people.
Curiously there is no comment from SYRUP the professional body. Maybe their pen is stuck in the treacle.
Libraries are "Overstaffed"
Katherine Rushton, Bookseller, 25 August 2006
The public library service is severely over-staffed but councils are axing branches before employees, key figures in the sector are claiming.
The head of one library wholesaler estimated that 20% of the 21,691 posts (full-time equivalent) in the service in England could be axed without affecting the quality of the service. "There is a bit of a 'job for life' attitude... clearly there are significant staff cost savings to be made"
Former Waterstone's MD and library consultant Tim Coates said that a third of library staff are due to retire in the next decade which presents a "big opportunity to reorgansise the service", redirecting funds to books. He lambasted last week's Price waterhouse cooper's report into library supply for being too narrow. "It's time to tackle the excess of management tiers. The PwC recommendations will add two extra layers."
But Andrew Stevens, senior policy adviser for libraries at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, said that, although the PwC report focused on supply, its implications would be wider. "If we can crack this one, it gives us opportunities to reform efficiencies at every level" He said that "good local authorities bite the bullet and deal with overstaffing situations".
Somerset County Council has reduced its number of library posts by 10 in order to close a £104,000 budgetry shortfall without closing branches. Head of libraries Rob Froude said that small libraries "cost so little to operate that the net loss to communities is just not worth the small gain in budget."
But other library authorities do not share his logic: a senior figure at Lanacashire County council - which plans to close nine libraries and is reviewing another three- confirmed it had moved all jobs to other branches. "If you take posts away, you are into redundancy payments and there is no immediate saving to be made," he said. Lancashire employs 770 staff across 76 libraries.
Posted by Tim Coates at August 25, 2006 4:55 PM
Comments
WHY are they overstaffed please ?
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at August 25, 2006 5:30 PM
Susan
If you mean "in what way are they overstaffed?" the answer is that in Lancashire where there are 770 staff in the library service, more than 200 of these are in back office jobs, not on the opening rota of any library. If those 200 plus did not turn up for work, it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the libraries being open to the public. Tim
Posted by: Tim Coates at August 25, 2006 5:34 PM
But that is Lancashire. I can't comment about them because I have never used their service, I don't know how large their average branch s or whether these staff are full-time employees or not.
There are other authorities that work with a lower staff ratio or where professional staff have no contact with the public at all or where there is a skeleton staff struggling to provide a decent service.
Personally I would agree that anyone who works in a public library should do public duty for at least some of his or her working day. The problem with a statement such as "libraries are overstaffed" however is that it is a generalisation, it damns us all across the board and it is not something which can be quickly or easily resolved. Referring to “the library service” is somewhat misleading because we are not a national body. We are a group of individual services all run in slightly different ways, all of which aim to provide a similar service to the public.
I would have been happy to see a suggestion from the MLA about a standard code of practice within libraries. This would be more practical use than statistically based standards that don't always relate to the standard of service and it would have been far more useful than the suggestion that we farm everything out to regional hubs.
Posted by: Miriam Palfrey at August 25, 2006 7:07 PM
Miriam
Thank you. I have seen the "overstaffing" problem in close detail in many authorities. Of course you are right; the degree varies greatly and the circumstances are different. It is rather like something a doctor might encounter. There are varieties of acuteness and the approach to resolving the questions is different in each case and rather personal. But I haven't found an authority in which very substantial savings could not be made and they have never been seen by the professionals. My offer is still there to every council: Let's meet and talk.
I have watched the way library authorities respond to recommendations made by bodies like the MLA and the Audit Commission and the awful truth is that their response is normally to evade anything that doesn't suit them. I wouldn't go for the approach of offering guidelines- it has to be much more individual than that- and it has to have an effect which might be different to that which the profession would normally choose for itself, in my view, Tim
Posted by: Tim Coates at August 25, 2006 9:20 PM
But what are all these back-room people who never see the light of the public DOING ALL DAY ?
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at August 27, 2006 11:47 PM
Susan
Many professional librarians (in public libraries), with the exception of those who work in the larger reference and local history libraries are taught that they should not have to deal with the public; that there will be other staff to do that for them. Some believe that it is only economic frugality on the part of the council that forces them to serve at counters. There are even those who believe that during the working the day they should have specially rostered breaks from public service and rooms to which they can repair (these are not the same as meal breaks).
That doesn't answer your question about what they do - I shall leave it to the professionals to answer themselves
Tim
Posted by: tim coates at August 28, 2006 1:25 PM
I haven't read the Bookseller article, but I wanted to respond to the question of what "back-room people" do all day. Some of the work performed by library staff out of sight of the public includes: selecting materials to add to the library's collection; physically processing materials to put on the shelf (barcodes, spine labels, etc.) and repairing damaged materials; negotiating licensing and pricing of online resources; processing invoices; maintaining the physical facility (replacing lightbulbs, cleaning, etc.); setting up online access to databases; maintaining linking and search services to facilitate easier access to online resources; adding information to the library catalog; maintaining the library's web site, computers, printers and software; maintaining the integrated library system, specialised software which manages everything from patron information to fines, checkouts and the library catalog; processing interlibrary loan requests; planning new library services; providing staff training. Without back-room people in libraries, there would be no books on the shelves, no functioning computers in libraries and no online databases to use. Jennifer Watson, Head, Electronic & Collection Services (i.e. "back-room person"), University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, USA.
Posted by: Jennifer Watson at August 30, 2006 3:25 PM