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October 11, 2008
Consultation before conclusion
Here is a piece from today's Daily Express about Andrew Burnham's review of public libraries.
There is one technical point about this review that needs to be made. Mr Burnham has said that he expects to report on his findings next April and THEN offer them for public consultation.
The most fundamental problem with the management of the library service is that all these reviews and inititiatives are conducted without any proper understanding of what the public use libraries for and feel about them. In ten years no proper fundamental market research of the kind any large organisation serving the public needs has been conducted.
If there is to be a review it should START with a large and professionally managed public consultation on the current service which is not pre-tainted by proposals for action. THEN a review intended to address the problems and issues that arise in that research could provide management in local councils with a firm basis upon which to make their own individual plans.
To be honest I thought this is what Roy Clare and the MLA were going to announce, but if they did, such a proposal seems to have been pushed away by Burnham's Blast. That is one of the reasons I find the Minister's announcement so frustrating. The other is that, in my view, any ministerial statement on libraries should be fundamentally about the need for the collections of books and reading material to improve, as the Express quotes. To me, that is the leadership call that is so badly needed and is so long overdue
Posted by Perkins at October 11, 2008 7:16 PM