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September 10, 2007
Mansion Polish Margaret is given the wrong figures
I have written this letter to the editor of the Observer
Subject: public libraries
To: review@observer.co.uk
Dear Sir
Margaret Hodge's letter (September 9- copied below) is wrong. She wrote 'There are 1.5 million more books in libraries today than when this government came into office in 1997'. In fact the Government's own figures show that there are 20m less books in libraries than there were in 1997.
It is important that a new minister is briefed correctly- otherwise serious problems lie untackled and the opportunities of a new unencumbered ministry are missed.
Since 1997 the DCMS has seen 5 Ministers responsible for libraries. Chris Smith was not briefed on the decline in use and book lending. Neither Tessa Blackstone nor Andrew McIntosh were briefed on recent damning reports from the Audit Commission. David Lammy was wrongly briefed on the decline of book collections and had to apologise to Parliament for his ignorance and now Margaret Hodge has embarked in the same way.
The Minister responsible for libraries not only has civil servants in the DCMS, but also a statutory Advisory Council, a substantial quango called the MLA, two large professional bodies, CILIP and the Society of chief librarians-- and, since her appointment in May, none of them has managed to tell her the truth.
The facts are contained in two Govt produced spreadsheets for 1996/7 and 2005/6 (copies of which I have attached)
She is, not surprisingly, wrong about almost everything else in her letter, too.
Yours sincerely
Tim Coates
Sunday September 9, 2007
The Observer
Much more shelf life
Rachel Cooke's gloomy view of the public library service ('Fiction belongs in libraries - not in council policy', 26 August) is not borne out by the facts.
There are 1.5 million more books in libraries today than when this government came into office in 1997, while visits have risen by 7.5 per cent in the last five years. I can't quite see how this squares with a service being 'systematically dismantled'. We, too, commend councils like Hillingdon for modernising and improving their service to local people and I agree there is much that other local authorities could learn from their experience. But Hillingdon has placed the focus on book provision, prioritising this over, for example, outreach work to open libraries to people who in the past never saw them as relevant to them. This is their decision to make, working with their communities, but libraries in the 21st century are about more than the printed word, as those who actually use them understand.
I know there are those who long for a return to the smell of Mansion Polish and a tweedy librarian shooshing anyone whose voice rises above a whisper, but that boat has sailed.
So a 'one size fits all' approach is never going to work nationwide because the needs and customer profile of a library in Toxteth, for example, are not necessarily going to be the same as those in Tonbridge.
Margaret Hodge
Minister for Culture
Posted by Tim Coates at September 10, 2007 5:56 PM