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November 14, 2009
Reading helps you write in a way that other people will understand
When I started at work and had to write reports for my company in response to questions asked by managers, my boss told us very strictly that the use of jargon was lazy and and attempt to appear clever. He required us to 'write so that your mother will understand what you mean: in that way you will avoid my wrath'
From Simon Hoggart in the Guardian today
"Your council tax at work. Reader John Richardson sends in a magnificent example of jargon, from a report by Camden council, north London, called "Growing Your Library" [sic]. This turns out to mean sacking lots of staff and replacing them with barcode scanners. It includes phrases such as "information plinths" and reads in part: "The People work stream sits alongside service visioning, ICT procurement, spatial strategy, pilot RFID (radio frequency identification), enabled library and communications work streams."
Why is it, when local councils are having more and more of their power taken by central government, they respond by distancing themselves so thoroughly from their voters?"
My mother would not have understood this report by officers of Camden Council but their work would have been the recipient of the firm and shaming marks of a red pen - as it should have been given by the highly paid directors and councillors. One's sorrow is augmented by the idea that the authors of this work claim to be professional librarians who 'promote reading'. I don't believe them- I never have. You couldn't read books and write English in this way.
Posted by Perkins at November 14, 2009 5:22 PM
Comments
I am open to correction, but I saw nothing in Hoggart's report to suggest that this atrocity was written by a professional librarian. I'd say it was much more likely to have come from the keyboard of a chief officer, one of the parasitic consultants who haunt local and national government, or a councillor.
Posted by: Tom Roper at November 14, 2009 6:35 PM
Tom, it's not in Hoggart's report. But chief librarians, I am afraid, who are mostly not only professional librarians, but also members of the Society of Chief Librarians, are not innocent. The Camden dealings have been well reported in both The Camden New Journal and the Ham and High.
In this case, it is certainly not the councillor.
Anyhow, whomever wrote it, it is definitely a document written by the collective of those responsible for public libraries. Professional senior librarians should not, I submit, attempt to wash their hands of 'atrocities' of this kind, as if they had no responsibilty. They take a weighty shilling, they have a part to play in making local government work properly.
Posted by: Perkins at November 15, 2009 8:48 AM
Perkins, The quotation in Simon Hoggart's article is taken from a Camden Council report on 'Libraries Organisational Change' - which makes quite interesting reading. It condemns the existing management structure as lacking logic, and for being 'top heavy and imbalanced' and criticises a 'lack of corporate engagement" - which I interpret as meaning that the managers and councillors are 'out of touch'. The recommendations include a reduction in 'middle management' and 'making more effective use of our stock of books'.
However welcome these sentiments are, the Review is still open to criticism on other grounds than the use of jargon: For example the Local Studies and Archives Service is facing a slight reduction in staffing in order to save just over £12,000 p.a.
Yet Consultants hired to redesign Camden's libraries were paid £2,000 per day earlier this year to visit the Apple Store and Jamie Oliver's cook shop in Clapham, but failed to visit successful libraries outside the Borough of Camden according to a report in Camden New Journal. The total bill for work by the consultants is reported to be £47,000 for 23 days work. Enough to have maintained the existing staffing levels in the Local Studies Department for nearly 4 years.
The Camden New Journal's article is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ygud6uc
The full text of Camden Council's report on Library reorganisation is here:
http://tinyurl.com/yk7srfa
Posted by: Martyn at November 16, 2009 11:48 AM
This is going to be a really rude one. Tim, please, please pass it! The Camden council quote epitomises the worst of the bull**** the library profession has been spewing out over the last fifteen years. There are occasions (and make no mistake, this is one of them) when I feel that civilised discourse is of no further use, and that we should fall upon the strange people whom we have allowed to deluge us with arcane writings so convoluted they would make more sense if they were in Aramaic or Vulgate Latin, and which deserve no better fate than being thrown in a midden by Vogons and then vomited copiously upon. To think I have wasted fifteen years of my adult life (fifteen seconds would be too long!) reading such tripe makes me feel like marching down from Scotland, putting the DCMS to fire and sword, and driving a tank through Camden council's HQ. What have we come to, when this is the only solution I can see? These people will never stop talking *****. All they're trying to do is save money, which won't work because they'll need even more people to take care of all this electronic ***** which they keep on rabbiting on about like blind acolytes. The truth I have come to realise is that none of it means anything, and we have thrown away our heritage under a pile of consultants' reports and audits, all of which are utterly useless.
Passed by Perkins, the cat
Posted by: James Christie at November 17, 2009 6:20 PM
"Chief librarians, I am afraid, ... are mostly not only professional librarians..." Not so. Many of those with senior management responsibility for public library services have no library qualifications whatsoever. This, I suggest, is part of the problem.
Posted by: Tom Roper at November 23, 2009 5:37 PM
But Tom there seems to be little in the qualifications that are acquired by 'professionals' that provide the management skills that are really needed. There is little about budgeting, marketing, investment, financial management or other managerial matters and experience of the kind that would be really useful to a council. This is not just my view but was the view of the last Select Committee and had been the view of many who report on the library service. Where, within the course work of CILIP or the Universities who offer degrees are these issues addressed?
Posted by: Tim Coates at November 23, 2009 6:55 PM