The Good Library Blog

Like many cantankerous old cats, Perkins has clearly become selectively deaf.

Cuts in library bookfunds are inflicted by (are you listening Perkins?) chief executives and elected members. They are fought tooth and nail by chief librarians, who are contractually obliged - like any other employee - to do whatever their employers decide.

SCL members work as individuals as well as regionally and nationally to defend and improve public services, develop new partnerships, negotiate discounts, lobby MPs and provide much-needed professional challenge to DCMS and MLA ideas.

Can Perkins be rehabilitated or will he just carry on biting the hand that attempts to feed him?

... oh, and by the way Perkins, haven't you said consistently that library budgets have all been going up?

How do you reconcile that with your statement today that "every day there is news from one council or another of some significant cut in the library service" ?

Maybe you just like arguing.

Yes but the overall budget for each library service won't have been cut-- it will be some part of the service to the customer that is cut, in order to preserve the expenditure on overhead. If you look back at the library services of the past ten years that has been what actually happened. A cut in the service to the public is not the same thing as a cut in what the public pay. That is exactly what I have been arguing. Libraries cut the front line service, but keep the management cost.

I may be old, but I am speaking from experience of working in different councils. What normally happens is that in about October the council finance office requests that the library service, for example, meets a "budget pressure" of £100,000. At that stage the officers either propose closure of some libraries, reduction in opening hours or reduction in the book stock to meet that, or they suggest a reduction in their own management costs. The options are laid out and costed by the officers. If they only offer closures and argue that they need management 'capacity' to be maintained, then the councillors may well follow that guidance. If you don't believe me let's go over some actual case studies. I am reluctant to name names, but the high profile cases of the last 12 months will do fine. I agree with you that councillors need to engage more closely and the relationship between councillorand officers varies, but I regret to say that fighting for the book fund by library managers has not been notably successful. They are successful arguing for RFID and other systems and even appointments, but rarely for an increase in the book fund. and I have never found a council where there is no scope for more efficient operation in the management overhead.

A large part of the problem, in my view, lies in the way that budget material is presented to councillors. Figures for staff costs rarely distinguish clearly the role that the staff are playing. Branch library staff costs are mixed up with management costs so that it is often difficult to see which cost is directly related to serving the public. I believe that if those presentations were improved and showed more clearly how staff costs are spent, councillors would be in a better position to make wiser decisions about where priorities lie. I would like to see much clearer presentation of budget options than takes place at the moment.

From the public's view it gives no help or satisfaction to hear senior officers saying that councillors behave irrationally or wrongly. The public are not permitted to join the discussions that go on so they have to trust that these two important and highly paid groups of people can work together and behave responsibly and in the public interest.

If budgets were presented to trustees in the same way as they are presented and argued to councillors, the confused management would be just the same.

Oh dear, poor old Perkins is miaowing up the wrong tree again. I rather think I have a better understanding than Perkins of how the real world of library budgets work. I've been there, I've has the pressures, I'be defended opening hours, bookfunds and frontline staff from the ace wielded by others. I've also done my share of slicing to reallocate backroom budgets to frontline delivery.

There may be librarians out there who do things differently, but I've met many hundreds over the years and none of them was as self-centred as you seem to think.

So Perkins, old chap, it is such a terrible shame that you're still ranting about librarians when your energies would be so much better directed at the people who won't listen, can't understand when they do, and carry on hacking.

Could you link to the Brighton story? I scoured the text of your post for the detailed story, in vain

Often, when asked about a particularly dire situation, the MLA responds that it is 'watching' it. And what is all this 'watching', anyway? Hans Brinker did not 'watch' the hole in the dike, he got his finger out ... and plugged the hole.

Surely it is worth commenting on the whole piece, Apollo, and not just flaring up if you disagree with Perkins's views about Chief Librarians having junket for pudding up in Edinburgh.

Community libraries are disappearing fast. Book stocks are disappearing fast. Opening hours are disappearing fast. Chief Execs and councillors are getting away with it, while we are otherwise engaged in defending our positions. They like that.

Tom, the Brighton news came direct from the council meeting. It hasn't been in a newspaper yet, so far as I know.

The story is out there on the web - the library cuts are part of a package of measures that are being contested by the opposition.

MLA has no authority or power to intervene. Chief librarians can only work within whatever budgets their elected members allocate.

Let's not forget who elects the people who make all the decisions that we detest so much. It's the public - that's you and me but not Perkins (cats don't vote). If the voters want libraries more than all the other things that their councils support, they need to say so, loudly. The sad fact is they don't do so in sufficient numbers, even when prompted.

Let's do something different and have a system that gives the customers power and choice and opens up new avenues of funding for libraries. Or shall we just argue while the system runs its inevitable course - we could train Perkins to switch the last light out.

Northern Ireland Libraries are run, from last April, by a unitary authority with no democratic remit and have already started to attempt to close a number of branches. Wildly over managed and over staffed, it does not suggest a good way of running a service.

Mr Apollo. Would you like to write a short piece describing your model arrangement? Explain how it would give customers 'power and choice' and how it would open up avenues for funding and what kind of funding you mean. Explain, too, how it will be accountable democratically and to the paying public and how it would address the concerns of 'booklover' who is worried about the developments in Northern Ireland. I'll post it as a new item.

It seems like a wider and wider gap is opening up between the workers "in the trenches" and the upper-level administrators whose jobs seem to remain safe even while they cut jobs below them.

I, too, would be interested if Apollo could provide some details as requested by Perkins: Apollo appears to be a sensible and experienced librarian with a fresh perspective on the problems faced by public libraries. Time does seem to be running out and little seems to be hapening to reverse the trend.

This probably isn't the place for an in-depth proposal, but the key ingredients aren't new.

Charitable Trusts

The concept of library services operating within charitable trusts has been tried and tested, but an individual library service lacks the business characteristics needed to make a viable trust. Pulling several together, ideally with some related cultural business, would solve that problem.

Charitable trusts can collect and apply for funding from a huge range of sources closed to local authorities. They are free to decide which if any services they 'buy' from their parent councils. They are able to claim huge discounts on rates that councils have to pay on library buildings; simply moving libraries into a charitable trust can free up huge sums to be redirected into service delivery.

Typically, a trust will be managed by a board including both representatives of the funding organisation (the council) and the local community. It will have a multi-year funding agreement, linking payment to clear performance targets.

Shared services

The concept of shared services, in which two or more councils cooperate in the delivery of services, isn't new either although most elected members can't bring themselves to surrender sovereignty.

The shared service model brings economies of scale, particularly in management and in backroom functions, and allows neighbouring authorities to deliver services efficiently across a wider area rather than worrying about who owns and who provides what. Applying this to libraries allows staff, bookstock, mobile libraries, reference services erc., to be pooled.

Putting both models together seems to me to be not only the best way forward but probably the only way for libraries to weather the coming financial chill. There is no new money on the horizon and it is unrealistic to expect libraries to get priority when there isn't enough money to maintain adequate services for vulnerable children and adults.

So, shall we stop blaming and lamenting and try a different approach?