The Good Library Blog

Perkins is off again, disputing national trends about reading. Young poeple are into other than books, where are your stats Perkins?

I agree, many young peole do want the books they like to be in public libraries, but as in the Define report they want the sort of places and poele they like in public libraries. They find them smelly, off putting, staring staff etc, and not condusive places to be.

To move forward and get what you want (more bums on seats, more people especially the young, in libraries, and) yes more of the product they want, but also presented in a way your customer prefers. who would go into a grubby umpleasant caff or shop with misreable poorly dressed staff who were offhand, if you could go nto a clean, comfortbale , welcoming place with good coffee and the newspapers (e.g. Starbucks or Borders v some greasy spoon). We do have to consider new ways of promoting our product, and no harm in experimenting to change the image. M & S etc have done this succesfully, and it is a long term thing so it is expensive to set up.

It is well worth comparing Hillingdon with the other 2, and it is good we have differnt ways of moving forward and the best will succedd and last.

Perhaps people think Perkins is the cat who has got her cream already? But this isnt a listening profession so I woundt take it to heart. An old sea horse is at the helm and as the saying goes, no one listens to a sailor on land!

Keep on going Perkins for a cat you are doing a great job!

All these things are true-- but I have not seen any evidence that this generation of 'young people' read less than any previous one.

It has always been true that during teenage years people, young men particularly, read less than they later will. This is not new. It has always been true.

Of course libraries should be clean and modern, but that doesn't mean that they should cater any less for the needs of the reading public. They are still libraries. If they have books, people will read them. Ask Borders.

There is no question that libraries should be clean, modern, attractive and welcoming. They should indeed also be a cornerstone of the community. I'm even a great fan of coffee shops and nor do I advocate throwing out IT (well, not all of it, anyway), but I think we got into this mess in the first place by forgetting our core principles and diversifying so much (usually into IT...) that we forgot who we were and what we were about. A.L. Kennedy recently condemned education in general and public libraries in particular for the decline of the English language, saying: "it's not those libraries which have a couple of computers [which are at fault], but ones where there is a bank of computers with no bloody books"!

There is no certainty that public libraries will survive, but rebranding ourselves as Ideas Stores and community centres will not solve deep-seated problems (such as CILIP, the MLA and those dorks at Southwark) while kids will wander round saying "is there, like, a video rental place for books"? That is an actual quote from a young person, by the way, taken from MSN.

While I'm certainly not against community involvement by libraries and I harbour no dark desire to hammer every computer I see into a pile of junk (what do you think I'm writing this on?), librarians are not social workers and I don't think they're just IT technicians either. I'll never forget asking about a peripatetic library post and gaily being told "it's just to help people with their IT".

I suspect library staff may now be perceived as little more than IT support on legs and this assumption (along with the idea that reading books and use of paper will disappear) will probably continue until someone gets bolshie. As Dr McCoy might have said in different circumstances: "I'm a librarian, Jim! Not a social worker and not an IT technician"!

Karen Cunningham, head of Glasgow public libraries, had the guts to admit that Glasgow "took its eye off the ball when it invested heavily in ICT" and that she now intends to reverse the decline in emphasis on books in her libraries.

I hope she succeeds. I like coffee shops and IT in libraries, but I like books in libraries more.