The Good Library Blog

You know what I'd like to see is the Dewey Schedules and Indexes made available on the web to the public. Then people would use the Internet to look up the telephone number of their local library, but the library and books to find out the history of the library. I think if the Dewey system were openly available to everyone to use then books would be elevated back to their rightful level, the library even rivalling in popularity that of Google and all the grey literature on the web. The library could even make other indexing systems available for the benefit of the user, such as the book industry's BISAC system (books are classified using this as a matter of routine, so why not use it). //

Regarding computers in libraries, I would ask Perkins to consider the following anicdote. I found myself a number of years ago at 15 stone and getting a warning from my doctor about being overweight. To do something about it I first looked on the web (this being in my living room -- an important lesson for the libraries to learn here). As a matter of fact all the information I needed to be able to bring my weight down to 12 stone I found on the web. As an exercise some time later when in my library I took a quick look on the shelves to see if I could have got the same information in the library as that which I found on the web. The information that I needed to lose 3 stone was not in the library. I ask that Perkins builds into his vision for the library the web.

In the 1840's and 50's there was an erudite correspondent of The Times who labelled his letters 'SGO'. Investigation reveals that he was an amiable country vicar and his views were well respected and he achieved some national admiration.

We can keep hoping that our 'GSO' acquires the same reputation in the fullness of time.

Sadly Perkins is correct. The current library profession does not attract people with the skills or desire to manage a service. Instead introverted information cataloguers and retrievers are thrust into positions with vast power and little or no idea how to use it, let alone stand up for themselves of their service. Librarians have specific skills, but little or none of them are of use to the modern public librray. We have hidden behind the magic of professional qualifications and provided no real training, career path or new blood into our work force adn now wonder why it stagnates? The number of times I have heard managers lament 'no one applies with the skills we are looking ofr?'.

Then the fault lies in you, where the job is advertised, the specification, the job description and opportunities offered. The whole structure needs looking at. To the many passers by anyone who works in a library is a librarian and so it should be. They should be embraced by CILIP and encouraged on a path of self-improvement by employer and profession to truly understand what the library is about. oh wait the library service and Cilip have spent the last 100 years failing to do that.

Its not all doom and gloom. Look at Australia and New Zealand, regularly they have 70%-90% of population using the library once a year, compared to as low as 30% in Britain. Issues are flying (even with RFID) and the profession is proud to stand up for a book core service, with information provision, I.T and quiete study trhown in. All this and they seem to cost less!?

Amen to A! Over the last decade, my opinion of CILIP has moved from ambivalence to disillusion to outright contempt. My skills have been wasted and my potential probably damaged beyond repair while CILIP (now better known to me as the Judean People's Front) added qualification after qualification to their golden pile of balls. Revalidation was the last straw. Three years work to prove - again - that you were actually able to stand behind a desk, issue and look up stuff! So get stuffed, CILIP! Take your revalidation, your Chartership, the horse you rode in on and get lost!

Come on, A. That's a risible use of statistics. The most authoritative record of library usage says that 46% of adults in England use a library at least annually. As for your Antipodean statistics, you've got to use stats better than that. There's 20% difference between 70% and 90%, and if you are giving your figures that amount of leeway, I'm inclined not to trust them very much.

Dear Perkins,

I think you look at this problem through the wrong end of a telescope: local councillors/the public cannot trust professional librarians to advocate/defend the role of books in libraries!???!!

On the contrary history shows that chief librarians from the mid 1970's onwards lost the respect of councillors and have allowed those local politicians to set their own agendas for libraries, running libraries to reflect their own political "isms". A right wing council thus outsources or privatises the professional work and deletes posts; a left wing council tends to push for political correctness a la Blair's vision for the UK these last ten years and more.

A true and strong profession does not allow political infiltration of its work, and it regulates itself with a code of ethics and conduct, like the other professions. Take a good look around and you'll see that nothing of the sort is happening. Chief librarians abdicated their responsibilities to the profession and rolled over for their political masters. I have seen this at very close quarters; to make matters worse, CILIP acquiesces in all this and then expects its members to "revalidate" their qualifications when local authorities are now talking about doing away with the need for professionally qualified library staff.

So, Perkins, do not blame honest, hard working profesional librarians for the mess libraries are now in; blame those who really are responsible, chief librarians who are complicit and a professional body that is complacent...

Frank Daniels
Ex-librarian