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January 9, 2007
The fifth mistake of Price waterhouse Cooper
Publishing companies a long time ago learned it was best to have industry standards for identification (ISBN's and Barcodes) and many other aspects of communication between participants. This co-operative working takes a lot of organisation and individuals have to learn to lose a little sovereignty and conform, for the benefit of all. They also set up a body (BIC- Book Industry Communications) to help individual companies make sure that what they do is compatible with everyone else. All this doesn;t diminish the service given to the public, in fact it improves it a great deal.
In the UK there are 204 public library authorities and no two of them operate in the same way. Each of them has a different means of cataloguing, labelling and marking the same book. There are no two labelling and cataloguing specifications which are the same.
It wouldn't take Perkins the library cat 5 minutes to work out that this variety is a huge waste of money, but a visit to any of the library book suppliers leaves one gasping with amazement at the ridiculous nonsense which they have to undergo in order to satsify single book orders from individual councils. If they weren't all based in The North, more people (like Treasury officials ) would have seen them a long time ago and put a stop to such astonishing waste of the public penny.
All consultants say this ought to stop, but no one has worked out that in order for it to stop you have to explain to each council what they do that is different and why it is worth everybody conforming to a standard. It would take a twenty minute film of a day in the life of a library supplier and it would be very amusing to watch. Then a standards body (BIC would do the job excellently) could help each council change its methods. It would take a year and offer potential savings in excess of £100m (Yes- one hundred million pounds per annum), which is money we need for books, opening hours and clean desks and lightbulbs.
But Price Waterhouse Cooper's fifth mistake was not to spot this. In fact when I listened to them, and reading their report, I got the impression they hadn't understood the difference between supplying elastoplast to hospitals and supplying books to libraries. One of the key aspects of this is that there are really only two places you can buy a book title: either from the publisher who won't stick labels on it, or a library supplier who will.. Whereas elastoplast or equivalent products can be bought from many places for which an internet market (such as that proposed by PwC for books called e-Zanzibar) would actually be jolly useful.
That's five big mistakes and so far no one from either Price Waterhouse Cooper or the MLA has popped up to tell me I have got any of them wrong. They are reading this and staying silent-- but an awful lot of people in local councils know that I am right, even if they daren't say so for fear of upsetting someone.
There was a steering committee of librarians (mostly from the Society of Chief Librarians) who were supposed to help the MLA guide Price Waterhouse Cooper through the production of this research. Shall I put up their names? Steered on to the rocks is what happened-- even though people like me were warning that was happening throughout the whole process.
Posted by Tim Coates at January 9, 2007 1:50 PM
Comments
You need Gerry Robinson.
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at January 9, 2007 2:33 PM
It is a bit rich to suggest the SCL steering committee are responsible for the content of the PWC report! PWC did it themselves, for the MLA. Have you seen any notes from the SCL steering committee? I should say I haven't, but I'd be amazed if they had any substantive impact on what the report said.
Posted by: Duchess of Malfi at January 10, 2007 3:49 PM
So what does a "steering committee" do ?- I didn't say they were responsible for what PwC wrote-- but surely their task was to make sure that PwC approached the subject in the most useful way. They must have met several times and seen many drafts. On those occasions they could perfectly easily have made the observations I have made here, and the MLA, who formed part of the steering committee could have asked PwC to address them. The committee wasn't entirely SCL- but much of it was. The MLA could have called on any expertise to participate. One of the criticisms made this time last year was that the steering committee was too narrow in its experience; but while promises were made, there was no attempt to address this.
Posted by: Tim at January 10, 2007 4:04 PM