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December 29, 2009
Submission to DCMS public libraries review
1. The Review must describe the various needs of the public for public libraries now. In doing so it might characterise different groups of people and stages of life: for example, the needs of parents with small children; the needs of children to discover reading outside their school curricula; the needs of older children and students to have a place for private study, the needs of people through their working life to develop their skills, to enjoy wide reading and to cope with their daily lives; the needs of elderly people to a have access to wide tastes of reading and so forth. These descriptions should not be based on conjecture, but constructed professionally on hard factual evidence. This work will define the ambition and the shared vision of the library service.
2. The Review must then define the role played in satisfying each of those needs by individual small community libraries, by medium and large sized town libraries and by comprehensive central libraries. It should also describe the developing ability of publishing media to satisfy some library needs by electronic means. It must then make clear which of the public requirements are not likely to be met by these media developments. For example, access to some kinds of information might be more comprehensive through the internet, but the internet will not provide a community story time, or the serendipitous free access to new authors or the one to one contact with library staff many people find valuable. This changing situation needs to be narrated so it is clear what libraries should do now in a way that the public will recognise as realistic.
3. Then, in accepting a national responsiblity for providing public libraries for those who wish to use them, the DCMS Review must define, in conjunction with those managers and professionals responsible, the roles and responsibilities of individual libraries; of councils who administer the library service in their areas and of any central body that exists to ensure the public receive the service to which they are entitled through their taxation (and in accordance with the 1964 public libraries act) This definition cannot allow for different fundamental nature of libraries in different parts of the country and for unnacceptable library services anywhere.
4. Having made clear these basics, The Review must set out a defined and urgent improvement programme which tasks, with their agreement, all those responsible to restore the essential assets and book and other collections and provide the access to them that people are entitled to expect. In this it must again define the work to be carried out by individual libraries and by councils and give clear instruction to a new national library body, or task force, as to how its responsibility to fufill this programme, in the most efficient manner, will be carried out. This programme must make special emphasis and provide the means for improved management and management training in the library service. It must also create a new visible set of measures so that the public and their representatives can see how library service improvements are made and how the service is used.
Thank you
Tim Coates
Posted by Perkins at December 29, 2009 2:36 PM
Comments
A Review that encompasses all Tim's recommendations would represent more than just another meaningless lump of paper.
Posted by: Shirley Burnham at December 31, 2009 9:51 PM