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April 12, 2009
Management of public libraries
About 80% of the problem with our public library service is nothing to do with vision, leadership, modernisation, the digital age, or any of the hot topics forever bandied about in reviews or government statements.
It is a straightforward, plain case of simple management: you take so much money, and with that money you provide the service that people want, as best you can. Management which needs to be firm, clear and simple is as necessary in public libraries as it is in any public service. The basic ideas are the same as in any commercial operation, the military, the church or an academic instution- everybody in the organisation needs to know what you are there to do, what you can do and what you should do. Overheads are bad, unless they add value, and service is important and that is where your reputation lies.
One of the very hardest parts of managing anything is keeping the expenditure within the limits of what can be afforded. When the cost of staff and management is a large portion of that expenditure, those matter become even more difficult, because they involve people. Everyone enjoys employing more people, no one likes employing less.
Nevertheless managing costs in such a way as to provide best service has to be done and if the organisation has avoided facing these issues properly for years, then they are very hard indeed and very difficult to handle. If you try to pass them on to a further generation, or make them someone else's problem, or simply protest that you always need to be given more money, actually you make the real problem harder, when in the end it has to be dealt with.
I am sick to the bottom of my boots watching very senior council officers and highly paid civil servants colluding to avoid the issue of managing the costs of the public library service properly. I see it go on all the time. I watch bullying tactics and sneer campaigns and pretence at complication, all being used to hide from the truth. I am quite sure that of the current host of reviews that are in progress, all operated by our most senior leaders and officers of government, not one of them will tackle squarely and properly the simple issues that face every shopkeeper on a street corner-- the wages that are paid out cannot exceed the income that is taken in, in the case of libraries, from the taxpayer. We cannot afford to be allowed to use public money to pay high management salaries and expenses, and reduce the service that we give to the public
But what is sure is that the efforts by officers to hide the reality, as the recesssion deepens, will intensify and the people who will suffer will be the public on the one hand and the least paid library staff on the other.
The public library service has to return to a planet where common sense prevails.
Posted by Perkins at April 12, 2009 12:08 PM
Comments
I think, to quote "Not The Nine O'Clock News," that, having considered the problem of council officers and senior civil servants from an unbiased socio-economic viewpoint as well as, broadly speaking, a statistical analysis of concurrent and counterprevalent demagogical orthodoxies with reference to the problems of library management, that the only solution is to cut their goolies off!
Posted by: James Christie at April 15, 2009 10:01 AM