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June 2, 2007
What shall we buy ?
In one council we have come at last- after all these years-- to the glorious moment at which they have addressed all the questions of efficiency and over-administration and are able to allocate a substantial amount more of their annual budget to be spent on books.
The question came up last week. What shall we buy?
Being methodical, the place to start was by looking at what they have available now and the condition of it.
There is always a temptation to go out and acquire the new titles which are being mentioned on the radio and in the papers-- but I don't believe that is the place to start.
The "Top Ten" to look at is not the Top Ten Titles-- but the Top Ten Sections. Even more than a book shop a library is a place to use to look around for ideas, to find other people's experienced views on subjects which are unfamiliar
Buy the best back list: that's my advice. Go through the sections and re-establish your collections of the standard and best. Spend three- quarters of your money at least in that way and a quarter of it on the new and current fahionable. Make your library useful first. Our new money is wonderful- but it will never be enough to buy everything - you have to set priorities.
At the same time go and look in the reserve collections and bring out onto display some of the gems from the past. Make a big section of these.
Exciting times
Posted by Tim Coates at June 2, 2007 9:50 AM
Comments
Incidentally, sceptics will be astonished to learn the following. Officers went to tell the leader of the council "we can save many hundreds of thousands of pounds- and if we were we to spend that money on increasing book stock, smartening the libraries and increasing opening hours then we believe the libraries will be much better. Please may we do that?"
He spontaneously and briefly replied that he most certainly believed them and in order to speed the process he allocated them some extra council funding for which they most defnitely had not asked.
That is what advocacy means
Posted by: Tim Coates at June 2, 2007 2:23 PM
It would be interesting to know which council this was, Tim. Praise where praise is due.
Posted by: Bill Neave at June 4, 2007 8:03 PM