The Good Library Blog

As the Librarian with the faulty calculator, I’d just like to clarify a few points . My call is for public librarians not to waste energy on angst about the “ 9% spend on stock” accusation, and instead to put their energies into seeing how they might be able to reach an expenditure of 15%. But I did say stock, rather than just books, and by this I mean books, periodicals, CDs and DVDs, subscriptions to electronic resources etc. I did stress to the Bookseller that I was talking about stock and not just books…but understandably the journalist’s main concern was to talk about books.

I am a bit confused about Mr Coates’ take on my comments. I understand his point about Newcastle’s spend on stock (but see below) but does he not approve of the idea that we should have the “15% target” as an ambition.

Our stock spend figures for Newcastle, also based on CIPFA, tell another story (I have used net rather than gross budget figures):

Year Total Net Total
expenditure expenditure stock
on library excluding expenditure
materials Capital as a % of
Charges net exp.
£ £ %
2000 01 383,840 5,141,327 7%

2001 02 549,573 5,489,574 10%

2002 03 623,939 5,568,205 11%

2003 04 912,838 6,030,345 15%

2004 05 698,223 6,645,599 11%

2005 06 724,100 6,375,304 11%

2006 07 648,799 6,705,650 11%

I'm not sure whether the above table will translate properly, but to summarise, our spend on stock reached 15% in 2003/04, but has hovered around 11% since. I did admit to the Bookseller that we were short of the target…and at 11% we are shorter that I recalled.

We have had bad years (in 2000/01 we were unable to buy fiction) and better years (the figure for 2003/04 included £100,00o for stock for a new library, and an additional £100,000 for stock to support community education work). In 2004/05 we managed to negotiate £75,000 for another new library, and this year we will have an additional £100,000 for our latest new build. For information, so far we have negotiated £500,000 from the new City Library budget to spend on new stock (and in the temporary absence of a city library we’re saving from the current stock fund – including the 2006/07 allocation- to add to this). £500,000 equates to 2% of the capital cost.

In Newcastle we would like to spend more on stock. The Council is supporting us with one off injections whenever it can. We keep the stockfund issue in senior councillors’ and officers’ minds as much as we can. I’m not sure we have claimed to be virtuous, but we care very much about our libraries and our stock…and I think it’s helpful to have ambition. So we’ll continue to aim for 15% until we hit it in a sustained fashion, and then we’ll set our sites higher.

Tony Durcan:

Head of Culture, Libraries and Lifelong Learning, Newcastle City Council;

President of the Society of Chief Librarians.

Tony

Many thanks. This blog is not good at laying out tables- but I think your figures are clear enough to make sense. I appreciate the detail of your answer.

Nevertheless I think it is important to restate that the concern widely expressed by the Select Committee and others has been that expenditure on books (not "all stock including dvd's etc") is too low when it has fallen to 9% . It has now fallen, nationally, to below 7%. Their concern was about the emphsis on books, which they described as the core of the service. That is why I quoted figures for your book purchasing. It has broadly been understood that you meant that book purchasing should increase to 15% of funding- but clearly you don't mean that at all.

I also think it is misleading to quote the percentage of "net" revenue funds when the money available to you is the "gross" amount.

For those not familiar with the expressions: the "net " amount is the amount the council pay on behalf of the taxpayer. In addition to that figure libraries charge rentals for dvd's, fines and various fees, which they often describe as allowing them to buy more books. When this amount is added to the funding to libraries this is the "gross" amount.

The figures for book purchasing for Newcastle are among the lowest in the country by whichever measure.

I am sorry to lay emphasis on this- but as you rightly say- it behoves those responsible not to be defensive. In that same spirit, I and many others wished that the Society of Chief Librarians had taken the Select Committee findings more seriously and addressed the questions that were raised. To aim to raise the book expenditure to 15% of gross would be a fair first step; to aim to raise the materials fund to 15% of net is hardly an improvement over the distressed situation the Kaufman report described.

Clarity about figures is essential and it would be helpful for the public to see the leaders of the industry using consistent meanings for terms

I'm sure everyone in Newcastle is jolly pleased to be spending £25m on a new public library- but I hope they are not disappointed to discover that only 2% of that money is intended for new books.