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January 22, 2007
A new policy for public libraries -Step 2
This is my second step- again please feel free to comment. I think this a really important statement:
Step 2
My list of six points about public libraries (in the next entry) mentions only three groups of people
1. The public, who have a need for the public library service and who pay for it
2. Elected local councillors who gather the money and have a responsibilty to provide the service to the public and account for it
3. The people who work in the libraries in contact with the public, whose responsiblity is to meet the immediate needs that the public place upon them.
If the service is to be improved: as the six items suggest it should, the three groups of people whose views we need to hear above all others are these.
My next observation is that in all the years I have commented on the public library service I have never seen anyone attempt, in a methodical, comprehensive and lucid way, to obtain the views of any of these three groups- faced with the question "how shall we make things better?"
There are certainly many views and analyses- but none from these people. Not in the professional and continuing manner that is required.
So what is done is never done in response to the needs of the people who are the three groups of people tied together to provide our libraries. That is wrong!
We can listen to all the agencies, departments and bodies in the world, but until we have understood how it looks to these three groups we are going round in circles. This observation is key to a policy to improve the public library service
Posted by Tim Coates at January 22, 2007 6:06 PM
Comments
"Please have a look at the white paper - in future the focus will be on overall outcomes for communities (learning, health, prosperity, cohesiveness etc) rather than measuring outputs of individual services - funding will follow from what a library does to help improve those outcomes, rather than the number of books it issues or visits it gets. This is the general direction of travel for government policy, the way in which all services are going to be treated, which I think we need to be mindful of."
Posted by: Dick Whittington at January 23, 2007 10:39 AM
I can see how a library can contribute to learning - though difficult to prove it, whereas easy to show how many books have been issued. Health ? Well Liverpool installed its fitness machines and our little library has notices about Walking the Cotswold Way and the school Swimming Pool and Keep Fit for the over 60s classes. Again, how do they prove it has helped ?
Prosperity - impossible. Logically, the more books borrowed the less prosperous - if we were prosperous we`d be buying them.
And I have absolutely no idea what cohesiveness means in this context.
It looks as if it will be far easier for councils to avoid giving money to libraries for books under these criteria.
Now why are we not surprised.
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at January 23, 2007 10:46 AM
Turn again Dick Whittington - these are just slightly different labels from those used in "Framework for the Future". While these are all admirable and worthy objectives in themselves that does not mean that Libraries should be forced into picking up the pieces for the failures of local and national government to the detriment of their main purpose. In order to promote good health - the very first step should be to ensure that there is an adequate bookstock (and related resources) on health issues. If the library has a properly funded well selected bookstock it will help to promote learning and cohesiveness.
Cutting book-funds, selling off or chucking-out out-of-print books, and closing village libraries do nothing to promote cohesiveness, leaning, health or prosperity.
Posted by: Martyn at January 23, 2007 2:48 PM