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March 25, 2009
The Financial Crisis will force radical change in public libraries
All the great British institutions which surround the public library service have failed.
During a decade:
CILIP- has had nothing to contribute and has been unable to reform
ACL- has hardly bothered to meet, never mind advise
SCL- has become a confused isolated secret society which shows no responsibility or leadership
The Audit Commission has been inept and ineffectual and achieved nothing
LGA- has been unable to make a coherent statement
DCLG - grandstanded with pompous aspirational nonsense
IdeA - has been pathetic and cowardly
MLA - has been unable to command any respect for its ideas
DCMS- has been abject in its management and failed to respond to being told to 'raise its game'
even Parliament has failed the library service by not following up the work of its Select Committee
Every single Minister has been both arrogant and useless and all the senior politicians connected with libraries have flirted with the subject and then cowered away from it when faced with the need to act
The next rounds of budgets over the next 2-3 years will either destroy public libraries or they will produce the radical improvement that is so overdue. Let us hope for the latter- but you can be certain with sadness that none of these bodies that I list will play any significant role- unless they, too undergo some dramatic but unlikely transformation in the next few months. None of them have yet shown either the courage or the ability. This is a challenge to them
Only the Queen has been any good, as Alan Bennett said (and who would call either of these two an instiution ?)
Posted by Perkins at March 25, 2009 9:28 AM