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August 17, 2008
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 August 17, 2008 8:45 AM