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August 27, 2008
Press Release from the London Borough of Hillingdon
Readers of the blog will remember that the programme to renovate the public libraries in Hillingdon was designed to be done at a reduced cost to the residents (unlike Tower Hamlets, Brighton, Peckham or Hampshire where the building programmes cost millions and millions)
It should also be remembered that before the programme of improvement began, the performance of LB Hillingdon's libraries was among the best in the country
Here is tonight's press release from Hillingdon
According to the latest figures, the newly-refurbished Hillingdon libraries have proved successful with local residents.
Compared to the same period last year, the number of people visiting the newly refurbished libraries has increased by more than 11,000 and the number of books being issued has increased by more than 12,000.
In the last year the number of visitors and book issues at both Ruislip Manor and Manor Farm libraries have shown impressive improvements since they became the first two libraries to be upgraded as part of the council’s library modernisation program.
The new Ruislip Manor library as now been open for 10 months and attracted 23% more visitors and 32% more book issues during July, when compared to last year.
At Manor Farm library, Manor Farm, which re-opened in March after a substantial refit, the numbers have been equally encouraging with a 23% increase in visitors and 365% increase in book issues.
Darren Deeks, Manager at Manor Farm library said: “ There’s so much going on in the libraries that it’s great to see people are getting involved. We’re on a unique site at Manor Farm and welcome visitors anytime, we had more than 1500 visitors when the complex opened last month!”
The two libraries were the first to be upgraded as part of the council’s modernisation program, which is continuing throughout the borough.
Cllr Henry Higgins, Cabinet member for culture, sport and leisure said: “ We’re bucking the trend in Hillingdon and investing in our libraries whilst others are closing them so it’s good to see that our residents enjoying the new facilities. What’s really encouraging is that we have seen a rise in not only the amount of people coming to our libraries but also in the amount of books that are being borrowed so this hopefully means that the appeal of the new libraries is helping to reignite people’s interest in reading.”
Well done Henry Higgins and Hillingdon. When he was elected in May 2006 and given responsibility for the public library service, he set himself the target of bringing all his libraries up to a high standard by the time of reelction in 2010. He is on target to achieve that. He did not attempt to persuade the council to grant more money-- he said he would do it with the same funds they already allocated to public libraries, or less if it were possible.
It is a good programme (even though it caused the library profession - who scorned his efforts to go on strike and complain) and the residents are showing by their response that they approve.
Posted by Perkins at 8:08 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2008
Losses of Stock in public libraries
The Bookseller has a headline about Kent County Council losing 200 thousand pounds of books. (Despite their rather surprising spelling)
This is an important subject. Realistically public libraries lose at least as many and actually a great deal more books than an equivalent book retailer. Not only is there the level of theft by staff and customers that, sadly, has to be anticipated, but there is also a significant loss of stock when library readers fail to return books they have borrowed. The only mitigating factor is that because libraries generally, regrettably, have less desirable stock less will be pinched for resale.
The difference between retailers and public libraries in how they handle this is also important. Retailers are forced to take the matter extremely seriously, simply because it is a prominent feature in whatever accounting procedure they use; lost stock has to be replaced and that process is expensive; no one insures stock losses. Public libraries, however, in my experience, tend to avoid the subject because revelations, like the one about Kent featured by the Bookseller are bad publicity and bad politics.
However if you believe, as I do, that the heart of the problem of the UK public library service is the quality of the stock on offer in each public library, and that the purchase of it and funding of those acquisitions is the central financial question to be addressed, then 'stock loss' has to be a crucial figure.
In fact, by my calculation, many councils do not even spend enough money to replace the valuable stock they lose, let alone add to it in the way that good collection management and a constant flow of high quality and relevant publishing demands.
In 1999-2000 I had the opportunity to calculate in detail how much needed to be spent on stock in Westminster in order to maintain a high standard of front list and back list stock in their 13 libraries. The calculation showed that out of a total budget, then, of 9m about 2.5- 3m should be spent on books. By doing that i said at the time that the libraries would increase in popularity probably by about 50%. The expenditure on books at that time, in Westminster was about 800k, but at that time about 2m was spent on the various processes under the heading 'bibliogaphic service' - so I argued that over 2-3 years it would be better to reduce the bib service cost and spend the money on books. I have no idea how well the plan progressed, although it was certainly successful for a while.
I know now, from the results of the work in Hillingdon, about which some announcements will soon be made, that the increase in use and popularity, if Westminster had come near to doing what I said, would have been far far greater than 50%.
If only Library authorities had conducted Best Value Reviews as they were intended at that time in a proper and rigorous manner, now we would have a thriving and healthy public library service. But they were scornful, generally, and avoided the questions rather than answering them, and there has barely been any improvement at all. In many places the library service is worse than it was then.
Posted by Perkins at 6:12 PM | Comments (6)
August 21, 2008
More astonishing revelations from the public library chat room
A chief librarian writes
"A colleague of mine 'left' a library to work in HQ...In his absence the library he left started to 'perform' really well ..to the delight of the management who lauded his replacement (naive or what)....because Charlie still lived in the area and had a key to the library ..he checked the Browne issue stats. at random for a month, when the library was shut!.
His 'replacement' was, on average, topping up the issues by 200 a day..this in a part time library issuing, in reality, about 600 items a day!!!
When confronted, she justified her action by claiming she was only doing what everybody else did.
I suspect the biggest problem isn't the action, but the stupidity of professional library management who fail to question statistics which are too good to be true. The same Authority, when switching from a 2 week loan to a 3 week loan period , generated a level of sustained usage, which suggested that some locations would not allow their 'issues' to fall, as by and large, that change in parameters should have done. ....
We do need to get away from a philosophy whereby issue statistics are used to create a mythical 'usage' and find a situation which creates meaningful corroboration of what we really achieve, if need be including 'real' evidence of what we lend, visitor counts, stock on loan, user satisfaction....surveying non-users ..lapsed users...lets spend more time finding out what people don't like about us and our services instead of surveying users who all say we are wonderful ...smashing ..great .. Scrap fines and charges and place real value on the underlying value of what we do and achieve..am I naive in thinking that in the last century we had a higher standing in most people's minds?"
Posted by Perkins at 3:13 PM | Comments (2)
August 18, 2008
Whatever happened to the Audit Commission?
Those who are dusting down their copies of the last report of The Culture Select Committee into the public library service in anticipation of further inquiries this Autumn, will recollect how The DCMS, MLA, CILIP, SCL ACL etc etc pinned so much faith in the ability of the Audit Commission to solve all the problems of the service.
It didn't happen, did it, and now with the very public revelations of librarians fiddling their performance figures one wonders how the Audit Commission will answer the questions about what they have been doing all this time.
Here on this blog we remember being told very firmly how wrong we were in all we said- by same Audit Commission. Not so, I'm afraid. We were right
Posted by Perkins at 3:15 PM | Comments (0)
Confessions of a librarian
On Lis Pub Libs it is confession time for library management
"At meetings I attend in (XXX), libraries discussed how to inflate and massage usage statistics
One practice to attract lapsed borrowers back to the library, was to print leaflets which were posted off to the lapsed borrowers. The leaflets had barcodes and were added to the library management system. Prior to posting each one out, the leaflet (which didn't have a due date) was checked out to each of the lapsed borrowers. The result? The library no longer had any lapsed borrowers and several hundred more active borrowers, and the leaflets were counted in the borrowing stats! "
Not that much different to photocopying ten pound notes really.
Posted by Perkins at 1:39 PM | Comments (1)
Librarians admit to fiddling the figures-- er, you just fiddle the figures, its easy.
From Lis Pub Libs over the weekend
...#.When you bury deep you can find some locations where only 2 in 5 issues involve a member of the public ..other 'issues' are staff or housekeeping. I have come across locations where a staff of 9 are generating the same issues as a population of several thousand....one individual issuing and discharging the same item to himself twice a day for a month.
Nowadays methods have been found to create fake issues electronically ...generating 'issues' as part of a stock check..giving new stock an 'issue' to determine arrival at location...issuing stock to display..repairs etc etcSome of these customs have a very sensible housekeeping side to them ..but in practice few are ever filtered out to give a really honest figure of public use. I have come across Authorities which have encouraged staff to borrow a lot of stock to improve 'performance'. After all its a lot easier to create false stats. than to it is to spend real effort in encouraging increased use.Counting a renewal as an 'issue' is more legit. than the above practices. I have found collections where only one in 3 issues involve a member of the public!!!"
And then a correspondent says 'This reliance on stats has a mendacious effect on the public library service." No, sweetheart, the mendacity is on the part of the people who are lying, not the people who rely on the information to know how well their money is being spent.
And just because you believe the police do the same thing is not an excuse for librarians to do it... dear, oh dear.
Posted by Perkins at 8:53 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2008
SYRUP Sponge
Is there a SYRUP annual conference coming up? I suppose so, they normally occur every few weeks.
It's time to sack your management and replace your old guard elected officials with some bright new brains. Overdue -- if you know the word. You need guts, courage and subterfuge of a kind not normally seen in libraries. Do it.
Posted by Perkins at 9:07 AM | Comments (0)
Good sense at last
Here is someone who speaks with the clarity we need:
"Never mind loans or renewals. The best measure of a library's book-lending capability is simply the number of books out on loan!
If CIPFA had thought of this parameter in the first place, we long-suffering borrowers wouldn't have had to suffer a reduction in the loan period from 4 weeks to 3 by almost every authority over the past few years JUST TO MAKE THEIR PERFORMANCE FIGURES LOOK BETTER ARTIFICIALLY!
All that extra travelling and telephoning we have to do doesn't show in any figures, except perhaps in the membership numbers as we are 33% more likely to be fined for forgetting our books are due."
And, sadly, it does look as if some councils have been fiddling their figures for years to make them look better-- this is one example of how to do it. If only the library managers would try to look at things from the readers' view point and not just from their own, how much better a library service we would have.
Posted by Perkins at 8:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2008
Close the MLA down-- it is beyond ridicule
I echo Christopher Hawtree's observation below on the article in The Guardian.
After a week of heated discussion on the subject of library fines in which calls were made for a review and understanding of how the library service conducts its business- -what the public think, how much different aspects cost, how change is to be affected;-- at last there was a response from the MLA. This is the body that claims that it is paid to provide leadership and advocacy for the public library service, and then always underlines that it is actually in no position to do anything at all.
On this occasion the sum total of the wisdom first from Roy Clare, the chief executive, (120k pa) and then his official spokesperson is 'Don't call library fines 'Fines'-- call them 'Charges' . I suppose he thought he was being clever, but he should not hope that the reading public will be fooled by such superior and arrogant tosh.
The whole edifice is a disgrace and should be shut down now. I guarantee there is not one person (aside from those who benefit from their funding) in the library world, the political world, or among the public who would cry to keep the place open. It has long been a painful and costly travesty-- and should be ended now.
If this is not the moment, then the forthcoming publication of Roy Clare's first 6 month review (after 14 months) will certainly be.
DCMS and Select Committee-- heads up chaps (if there is an honest and responsible person amongst you)
Posted by Perkins at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2008
The Guardian
The Guardian has picked up the the gossip about public library fines
Posted by Perkins at 1:02 PM | Comments (1)
Oh dear- have library authorities been fiddling their performance figures for years?
The Lis Pub Libs debate about library fines has turned an ugly corner this morning into a discussion about the recording of how many book loans a library makes. If you lend a person a book, that is one loan you might think-- but it seems that for some libraries it can be counted as several loans. Oh dear.
A correspondent on their site writes:
"if a renewal by the same person is counted as a new issue to a different borrower, that is misleading. There has been an indication of this in the responses. Off line there have been far more worrying trends mentioned that inflate or massage the figures of use etc which have been
happening for many many years, and quite honestly astonishes and disappoints me. I know we live in a number crunching world (but these practices seemt to pre date that),where performance tick box data is the norm, but I just thought libraries were different and better."
Posted by Perkins at 10:20 AM | Comments (4)
Swindon Old Town Library is saved - -for the time being
Good news from Shirley Burnham. --
"We were very fortunate that Councillors did listen to our concerns and gave the library a reprieve, to be reviewed in April 2009. We have been told to "use it, or lose it" so are working to raise its profile in the community and encourage more people in. Attendance is now a lot better than before and we are cautiously optimistic for the future. See what we've been doing, by looking at our website (using Internet Explorer) on www.friendsofoldtownlibrary.co.uk
Thank you to all those who continue to give us their sterling support."
Congratulations to you and all your friends and allies-- really well done. Shirley, I used to be the warehouse cat at a large book distribution warehouse in Swindon (W*S)-- I'm sure that all the people there would visit the library if you asked them for support.
Posted by Perkins at 9:55 AM | Comments (1)
August 13, 2008
Roy is rowing up the Ribble
Exasperation on Lis Pub Libs (I wish I could provide public access to it-- but that is beyond our skills) as the debate on Public Library Fines, goes into tail spin
"Where are our so called leaders in all this. Don't they discuss policy and public relations, and time and motion and best practice, and how to attract and retain users? I know it is August and there are the Olympics, but someone must be working."
Posted by Perkins at 10:43 AM | Comments (3)
August 12, 2008
An offer that should not be refused
For the fourth day running the Lis-Pub-Libs site featured serious debate about library fines and what should be done about them.
Tonight the mood has turned to the question of how to move forward and includes these two comments below. The point is that not only are the collective of 'practitioners' or 'professionals' asking for someone to conduct the appropriate research, draw conclusions and help persuade councillors to take up their recommendations, but they are also implying that they will accept the leadership and cooperate in making the change. It seems to me that this is a first-- and is an offer not to be refused
---"I'd like to suggest that we draw a line under this debate and refer it to either CILIP or the MLA. Perhaps they should issue national recommendations on the use/non-use of fines and how best to encourage return visits to libraries. It is clear from the various emails on this topic that there is no national consensus but it would be useful to have guidance from our professional body that would carry weight with our employers, whether local councils, universities, NHS libraries or NGOs."
And
---"I do see many enquiries on this list about library related topics that keep cropping up over and over again without resolution. It’s often put forward as a point that local democracy is a good thing and that each library service (and also many other council services) “knows” its own community and is best placed to devise the rules and regulations but I think this often goes too far.
Quite basic decisions / guidelines could simplify many areas of library work and prevent time being wasted on reinventing the wheel. I am no longer a librarian but retain an interest – I worked for over 20 years in libraries and it was often frustrating to work on “guidelines” for basic procedures that were also (I knew) being worked on by adjoining library authorities. It seemed to be incredibly difficult to communicate and share the work being produced resulting in multiple teams of staff in different authorities working on PN Guidelines, membership procedures etc. etc.
I did a quick search on the CILIP site to see if there was a forum for this kind of discussion where contentious issues could be discussed and properly resolved at a UK level but didn’t find anything – if there is something there I apologise – but if there isn’t there should be.
An important point is also that more consistent guidelines would also help the customer – many may belong to more than one service and have to contend with inconsistencies re loan periods, fines etc etc
Of course all of this is made more important by budget restrictions and hard times ahead for many councils – think of the staff time saved if somehow, in an ideal world, library services could all agree. Then librarians would have the time get to grips with the really important issue of promoting their services and getting users in through their doors!"
Posted by Perkins at 6:31 PM | Comments (0)
Buckinghamshire
Long suffering members of the Buckinghamshire County Library Service have endured much torture as has been reported frequently on this blog. (put Buckinghamshire in the Search box on the right)
Earlier this year many people became cross because the county council stopped putting date labels in books and replaced them by till slips. As always, the council rubbished the public and told them to go back to their thatched boxes and be silent.
For us, the heart of the matter has always been to discover how the money for the service is spent. The official figures for Bucks County Council fail to explain the expenditure of several million pounds, at the same time that the county felt it right to close 12 libraries. Our suspicion, as in many other places, with reasonable foundation, is that too much is spent on the central administrative processes and too little on books, opening hours and buildings.
In the press coverage a few months ago, to my recollection, no one from the council said that they had spent huge sums on a new Library Management System. But they have.. as this entry on Lis Pub Libs from an officer of Bucks CC, this morning, sheepishly reveals.
"I've been interested in the debate surrounding fines/charges and one post re-ignited my interest in something close to Bucks libraries' heart. We recently moved LMSs from Concerto to Spydus and as such have started using receipt printers instead of date stamps.
Can I ask other authorities which have made a similar move what the reaction was like from the general public? I would guess that initial grumbles are due to people not liking change, but certain comments do ring truer than others. Do these grumbles go away with time? Have your customers grown to love the system? Obviously having a new LMS brings its own benefits.
Indeed do you as staff like or dislike using receipts instead of datestamps?
Links to any online information about this subject would also be much appreciated".
So what are 'the comments that ring truer than others?'
Posted by Perkins at 11:15 AM | Comments (11)
August 10, 2008
Has the London Libraries Development Agency closed down?
And can we claim another scalp for this blog (along with Chris Batt, Mark Wood, David Lammy, Andrew McIntosh,regional MLA's, John Dolan, Andrew Stevens, Better Stock Better Libraries, Impact Measures, Blueprint for the future, etc etc) ?
I can't see anything from them since the New Year. Are councils still paying their fees? (by mistake)
Posted by Perkins at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
More on Fines
from the Lis Pub Libs site this morning
'I can speak from a customer perspective. For the last 3 years, whilst working for The Reading Agency, I have had to pay fines as an ordinary punter at my local library. On many occasions now I have had to pay fines because, like most people, I have a life - loads of things to get done in the course of a day. Remembering to get my books back on time is not always top of my priorities.
On the last occasion, I had £15 to pay in fines. It made me feel punished, quite embarrassed to approach library staff and actually quite angry that I was 'wasting' £15. Of course, I've never really felt this before because I've had many years as a librarian where I've been able to waive my own fines (quite legitimately, I should add).
Faced with such an experience, it's no wonder that an increasing number of people vote with their feet and choose to buy their books. The experience is even worse for families - one of my neighbours has 3 children; on their second time of borrowing from the library they ratcheted up about £30 in fines and have never been back (either with fines or books)."
So, now, Lis Pub Libs, Roy Clare, Minister Hodge, MLA, DCMS, SCL, SYRUP, ACL, Ed Vaizey--- instead of your endless twittering, What are you going to do? and, When will it be done?
Posted by Perkins at 10:58 AM | Comments (8)
August 9, 2008
The library at night
From a correspondent
I thought you'd be interested in the following quote in case you'd like to put it on the blog.
This is a paragraph from The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel - a wonderful book, a lyrical meditation really, about the meaning of libraries through history - published by Yale in 2006. This particular section is about the pleasures of browsing in a library, and discovering books through serendipity, which is a key part of the library experience that those advocates of the mantra of ''libraries-are-for-finding-out-stuff' fail to grasp:
'We pick our way down endless library shelves, choosing this or that volume for no discernible reason: because of a cover, a title, a name, because of something someone said or didn't say, because of a hunch, a whim, a mistake, because we think we may find in this book a particular
tale or character or detail, because we believe it was written for us, because we believe it was written for everyone except us and we want to find out why we have been excluded, because we want to learn, or laugh, or lose ourselves in oblivion.'
The book is full of wisdom such as this. If there was one book that our councillors and officers and ministers in charge of libraries should read, it's this one. But then, as we know, they don't read books....Best regards
Posted by Perkins at 6:11 PM | Comments (1)
Public Libraries in Camden
This is a subject very close to my heart and my cat flap.
Alan Templeton who leads both the Camden library users group and the LLL (Libraries for Life for London) campaign in the metropolis has made very sensible comments about the service in Camden for many years.
Here is his latest news piece in The Camden New Journal.
The Councillor in question, Flick Rea, is a very nice lady well known in the area and an excellent ward councillor, but since being elevated not only to responsibility for libraries in Camden, but also to the London Libraries Development Agency, has not shown the courage that is needed to face the issues in her own council .. She needs strong support and some more steel in her approach. Alan Templeton, as he often has been, is exactly right in what he says.
People (and small black cats) in Camden pay more for their public library service than almost anywhere in the world. They deserve better, much better, than they get.
Posted by Perkins at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)
Fines for late return of books to public libraries
A habit which is as characteristic of Britain as the weather is being discussed by librarians on their chat site called "Lis- pub- libs"
Here is a typical entry:
Aside from the financial returns and 'discipline' (or incentive) concerns, there is another way to look at fines. From a technical perspective (i.e. related to the way LMS's can handle things), it is possible to think of 'fines' as a 'Repeat Hire Charge' for items for which there was no original hire charge - i.e. books!
Think about, say, a DVD, for which we might charge £1 a day - if the user keeps it overdue, we (try) to charge them another pound a day, normally upto a fixed limit (probably not a limit related to the direct value of the item, but arbitrarily set).
We are not allowed to charge for books in the first place (and I don't advocate that we do!), so we don't have repeat hire charges for them, so we call them 'fines' - fines are simply a special case of repeat hire charges. Effectively, IMHO, we call a spade a 'manually operated digging implement', because we can't call it a spade.
And if the maximum charge is at, or greater than, the cover price of the item (not what we paid for it, nor have spent on processing or handling it), the user's mindset may be If I pay the fine, then I should own it, or I'll only pay a proportion of it's and yes, I have had that said to me.
So if the item is really critical to us (e.g. rare, expensive), what effective recovery methods do we have in place for those, and what do we want to do about the rest?
What is it we really want to achieve?
And here is another
We recently introduced e-notification one day after the item is overdue, based on the fact that it is the customers responsibility to bring their books back on time. We have had a lot of really positive feedback and I am sure that it has contributed to our ongoing increase in issues. However it has also generated comments from customers who are saying well done ... but could do better ... and want an email the day before. I agree it would be a wonderful service improvement if we could offer it but I am slightly concerned on impact on fines income.
At which point Roy Clare (ceo of the Libraries body for the govt, the MLA) popped his head up and offered:
Dear Colleagues,
I have found this a most interesting thread. May I offer the view, born of my experience running a large national museum, that the deciding factor should be quality of service to the consumer? In busy lives we all forget to do things, so the quality of service yardstick suggests that prior notification will win more public hearts and minds than any strategy that tries to extract fines. Really good service will lead to many more users, and - probably - stable revenue from fines, as Hugh suspects, and I agree.
Which produced this response
Aside from the benefit to the customers, I wonder if the impact on fines income targets might be mitigated by the argument that pre-notifications contribute to the corporate "Avoidable Contact" measures?
So we observe that nobody knows what they are trying to achieve, nobody knows what the public actually think and nobody knows what to do and how to do it. Nobody has assessed whether this is an issue which should take priority over others-- and whether action for improvement is needed, or not. No one knows the cost of anything - or its value. However, a huge discussion goes on at public expense, with no visible regard for a need to make an improvement, and everyone has a jolly nice time. Where lies the responsibility for public service in all this?
In fact the Library users group in London (LLL) conducted a very sensible discussion about exactly this subject only a few weeks ago. Why don't Roy and his 'colleagues' go and ask them what they think should be done? It would at least provide a starting point outside the infantile world in which these people live.
Posted by Perkins at 10:02 AM | Comments (3)
August 5, 2008
Everybody is wrong-- except The Chief Librarians
Thanks to the correspondent who has drawn attention to an article by Rob Froud, former president of the Society of Chief Librarians.
His piece paints a picture of an industry in disarray without direction or leadership- and he is one of the leaders who should be playing his role but seems unable.
Nowhere in the public library service do we hear that which makes leaders - the voice which expresses what people, ordinary members of the public, will recognise as a coherent and obvious way forward.
He damns the MLA and ridicules what it has said and done-- but the MLA was an institution that always consulted The Chief Librarians before it talked to anyone else. Neither group should blame the other-- nor, as Rob Froud has done, blame everybody else as well. At some point someone has to admit that there must be a way-- and accept come leadership from someone. This is the perpetual three- legged race in which the participants resolutely refuse to accept that they have to work with others to move in one useful direction
I suppose this blog is what he refers to as a 'Siren' -- well jolly well done, us. I say-- at least we have had some success.
Posted by Perkins at 6:28 PM | Comments (2)
August 2, 2008
A symbol of Labour
In 1997, when the Labour Government came to office and the Department of Culture Media and Sport was born, there was just one civil service official for public libraries in the whole of central government. Peter Beauchamp was (and still is, I'm sure) an amiable voice for public libraries who followed dutifully in the footsteps of a number of ministers. There were a number of initiatives, lots of conference speeches, but while nothing useful was done in terms of analysis or action, it didn't cost too much.
By last year, just ten years later the central government structure had grown from it base responsibility which resides among a number of now nameless officials in the DCMS to the largest part of a large national quango called the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. This large, unrepresentative body has a chair, a chief executive, a board, and a substantial complement of officers in a large block in Holborn (now split to two offices, one in Knightsbridge and one in Birmingham). In addition there were 12 regional offices of the MLA all with permanent employees of considerable number. Of course there are websites, press offices, development managers, HR experts and all the rest.
As this blog has continually reported - and nobody actually denies-- this vast structure and expense has actually achieved roughly the same as Peter achieved, which is absolutely nothing. That is because libraries are run not by central government, but by local councils and those local councillors who are resoponsible work without any training or advice about how to do the job properly. But it is also because this organisation has never been managed by anybody who could make any sense of what it was for. Budgetting, each year, as it is in most government, is not an analysis of how best to spend taxpayers money, but how to secure the largest increase over the year before. So advocacy to like minded people has meant increase in public spending, to huge proportions, without any visible public benefit being achieved or sought.
It has just been horrid to watch-- and until a Cameron or a Milliband or anyone else grasps the stupidity of it all and faces down the people thus employed-- it will go on, whichever party is voted for in a general election. There is no sign whatsoever of such enlightemnment, but there needs to be.
Posted by Perkins at 1:20 PM | Comments (1)