« Remove public libraries from the control of national and local government | Main | Perkins puts her paw on it: »
May 15, 2008
Karen Cunningham
About a year ago Karen Cunningham, who is the head of public libraries in Glasgow, made an important speech in which she said that she intended to reverse the decline in emphasis on books in her libraries. At that point the published figures showed that book lending in Glasgow was among the lowest in the whole UK at less than 4 loans per person in the city per year. (Good libraries achieve 10 loans or more).
This week at the Booksellers Association conference Karen has repeated her very important message, as reported in the Bookseller --
"Cunningham also spoke about the connection between the current strong performance of Glasgow's library service, and its renewed focus on book reading. She said that Glasgow "took its eye off the ball" in earlier years when it invested heavily in ICT (information communications technology) and "threw out our core business—reading". She said: "If we had put the same amount of planning, time and resources into reading we would not have seen the dramatic decline in issues and membership that libraries have seen over the last 10 years." In Glasgow, that decline had been reversed in terms of children's issues, while adults' had "bottomed out," she added."
Good stuff. Among the many important points she is making is that unless a council admits that it has been making a mistake, within the political mechanisms that operate, it is impossible to correct it. We have to admit that the policy on book acqusitions has been seriously wrong in order to persusade politicians to help us put it right.
Posted by Perkins at May 15, 2008 9:56 AM
Comments
I'm pleased to hear Mrs Cunningham has had the guts to admit that Glasgow "took its eye off the ball" by going nuts for computers but also resentful in hindsight because I was one of the librarians desperately trying to find a job in the Glasgow of 10 years ago and every time I mentioned the fact I liked books, I had another lecture about the wonders of IT shoved down my throat. In reply to one query about a post, I was gaily told "oh, it's just to help people with ICT"! As George Jefferson summed up superbly in his letter printed in the May edition of Update, "I am a librarian - not the proprietor of a coffee shop or a keeper of computers". I was also pleased to see A. L. Kennedy's quote about the part this IT craze played in the decline in the use of the English language: "It's not those libraries that have a couple of computers, [she said] but ones where there is a bank of computers and no bloody books". I've always tried to make it plain that I'm not a ranting technophobe, but neither am I an IT enthusiast and I'm simply sick to death of the subject. Perhaps I'm one of a lost generation of librarians who were thrown out along with the core business of reading, and only now does there seem to be some realisation that a room without books does not a library make.
Posted by: James Christie at May 30, 2008 12:02 PM