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July 10, 2008
Publishing News
This blog has frequently and gratefully praised and quoted The Bookseller for its reporting of the grim situation facing public libraries.
However it must be said and emphasised that the first and most consistent bookish journal that has supported the campaign to improve public libraries has been Publishing News. In particular Ralph Baxter first wrote the story which opened the Pandora's box on the lunacies which pervade the public expenditure on and disappointment with our public libraries exactly ten years ago.
Ralph (and sometimes my former colleague Roger Tagholm) has always written about and understood the issues with perception and enjoyable wisdom. I here record my abundant gratitude to them both and to their newspaper. Here is Ralph's latest piece.
Posted by Perkins at July 10, 2008 8:32 PM
Comments
I have read the article, and see that Motion, Clare and Burnham each declare, in the quotes from them, that these are "exciting" times in libraries.
I have noticed that bureaucrats so often declare something or other is "exciting". But it seems to me that such a thing cannot be proclaimed. Excitement cannot be ordained. It is is the eyes of the beholders.
And I am not at all sure that readers want such a knees-up atmosphere of perennial "excitement". They want a good, regular and wide supply of books to fulfil that quiet satisfaction which, I suppose, some might called excitement.
But excitement, by its very nature, cannot be a permament state otherwise it ceases to be excitement. Same thing with happiness - that is exceptional. What people seek in general, in this life, is contentment.
And there is some considerable way to go before libraries regain that.
Posted by: Christopher Hawtree at July 10, 2008 9:53 PM
Yes, one doesn't imagine that there is really much excitement in the offices of the MLA at present. Most of the staff have been made redundant and of those that remain the plebeians have been sent to work in Birmingham while Roy Clare and the flash guys have rented a smart office in Knightsbridge.
All the calls for exciting times remind us of Miranda Mckearnie of The Reading Agency telling us a few years ago that her plan for the future of public libraries was full of 'Zing' .
Posted by: perkins at July 11, 2008 6:35 AM