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September 20, 2007
MLA
There is talk tonight of a 'High Level Audit' of Better Stock Better Libraries at the MLA
The problems go back to the very outset when Andrew McIntosh called for a review of efficiency in the public library service. Questions surround the handling by DCMS, MLA and the Society of Chief Librarians of the first project conducted by consultants PKF. There is the matter of how the MLA and DCMS handled their response to the Culture Select Committee and then there is the whole saga of consultancies conducted by Price Waterhouse Cooper and the MLA.
While it is right to ask serious questions of all these things, somebody has to worry about what to do about the public library service-- the things that all these bodies should have been doing all this time.
The worst aspect of all, from the public point of view, is that the extent of the misdirected funding in the UK public library service is about 200-250m pounds each year within the council operations themselves. DCMS and MLA have allowed the focus of their projects to be narrowed to the, now remaining, 20-30m pounds which are available through extra discount from suppliers and the immediate activities around stock purchasing. That avoidance of the central issue has been a conspiracy between the SCL and the those two departments. It still needs to be addressed and that work has to be done in each council, but every council needs help to do it. That is what should have been happening. After 4 years of avoidance the sum comes to 1000 million pounds-- and that is the money that was needed to restore buildings and the book collections. There lies the travesty and the shame.
It simply isn't fair to ask the public to pay more when the managers of the service has so failed to do their job and allocate the money properly that the public have already paid.
Posted by Tim Coates at September 20, 2007 12:05 AM