The Good Library Blog

Now here's a double bind. You see, I agree that libraries will (can, and indeed must) use wifi connections (if only to spare themselves from the crippling cost of constantly upgrading or replacing hardware for people to use for internet surfing etc), but they could have saved the consultancy money by simply doing a straw poll of any 100 IT professionals (or indeed enthusiasts) who *don't* work in local government (and hence aren't too worried about their easy and well-paid jobs changing, resulting in them having to leave the office more often).

Progress (technological, at least) is inevitable - the only thing that slows it down is budgetary expenditure on people who have some nebulous qualifications in stating the bloody obvious.

Is this work something that councils have asked for because they can't work out the answers themselves?

Councils, like many of the moribund and old fashioned industries out there, still cling to the attitude that the more you pay for something, the better it must be - especially when it comes to things that the executives and decision makers know nothing about. Sadly, there is ample evidence to the contrary. I might suggest the licencing fees on library catalogue software as an example.

Every time I hear that another consultant's "services" have been hired, I picture the towering pile of books which this money could have bought.

It is books that do libraries' work for them. Word spreads that there is a good, readily available collection, new and old. There is no need of razzmattazz, word of mouth does its stuff.

Here in Hove, where we have had a celebrated struggle to keep our Carnegie library, there is palpable joy as it accumulates more stock. Every time that I look along the shelves of reserved books which readers have requested, I marvel at the spread of interests and enthusiaasms which people have. The whole point of a library.

The Library is willing to buy all manner of things, and with any institution, it responds to readers.

Across the country, readers should be alerted to the fact that the library system can provide all manner of books: ask for something, and it will come along.

The more that readers can be pesuaded to do this, the more that the powers-that-be will realize that there is a public hungry for books, which, in turn, is good for publishers hard-pressed to get their books through the 3-for-2 maw of the chainstores.

Books, not consultants!

Christopher Hawtree

Having read the report, the purpose is not to predict future use of Wifi services (although that is a by-product). It is to look at HOW authorities have done it and what issues they have encountered.

"The kit costs £60 at PC World". I have a home wifi service too, but I wouldn't try to just stick it in a library and hope it worked for hundreds of users with wildly different kit.

What the report's conclusions? The main problem was security and people hacking into authority systems. Would you be happy having a few hundred people every day browsing through your hard drive?

There are probably very few people in libraries who don't think that wifi is the way the service will go. Looking at how other people have done it is surely sensible.

Duchess,

Yes, but why is the MLA doing this? There are IT departments in each council for which we already pay. Did they ask for this advice? Are they paying for it?

One keeps saying the same thing, that while so many council library services are genuinely struggling to address the next budget round - and hardly any of them have approached the "Quick Wins" of the PKF report- wouldn't the MLA be much better spending its time and money addressing the problems that lie at the heart of the service? This Wi Fi project does rather look like boys playing with train sets. Tim