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April 17, 2009
Bumbling Hash
The ongoing saga of Swindon libraries, reported here in the Swindon Advertiser and here in the Bookseller makes two points for me that we have to face up to
1. There are too many councils which are not competent to run public library services. They will spend loads of money, but they will not make the improvements that people need. There are many reasons: sometimes good management is bedevilled by political confusion, sometimes the management is plain poor, and
2. There is no central body that can do the work either. The MLA doesn't have the experience, expertise, capacity or know how, to begin to run the service, or even bring improvement of any kind to it if it remains in the hands of local councils
Yet around the counrtry there are some quite good library management teams, councillors, directors, operators and the are certainly some who if, given some stern instruction and clearly defined responsibility could make a lot of improvement
I am beginning to join sides with that group of people who say we need to reduce the number of library authorities to about 20 -30 - and take them out of the hands of the 200 councils who run them now. There are a couple of movements around the country to make this happen. It doesn't need or want an act of parliament or an act of civil servants, the people can probably do it themselves .
Posted by Perkins at April 17, 2009 9:55 AM
Comments
Personally, I'm not convinced that replacing Library Authorities with a series of regional Quangos is the answer. We need to make the influence of local communities stronger rather than weaker. The problem with Local Authority control is that the move to 'cabinet' level decision-making has resulted in decisions made by small cabals of councillors and senior management.
We need to devolve decision-making while providing local libraries with regionally-organised online catalogues and book-purchasing consortiums.
Posted by: Martyn at April 18, 2009 3:27 PM
Martyn
I do completely agree with you.. Perhaps I am trying to describe the same thing-- a loosely bound federation of independent libraries with access to some regional supports like common catalogues, website facilities, buying contracts etc
Posted by: perkins at April 18, 2009 4:42 PM
I don't like the idea of Quangos either - for all their shortcomings councils are at least accountable to the views of local people and have an election to face every now and again. Small branch libraries can generate passionate community support if they are threatened. Local councillors can at least be made to worry about losing a seat whereas what would a library authority care about the views of a local community if it decided it had to make a cut?
I don't think specialised bodies necessarily do a better job - look at the record of health quangos.
What we need is proper leglislation laying down minimum standards and careful ringfencing of funding so library money isn't spent on rubbish collection. That way both local AND national politicians would have to take the rap for library cuts.
I'll dream on then. Sorry I'm sure you've trod this argument many times.
Posted by: Polly Napper at April 21, 2009 9:35 PM