The Good Library Blog

I may be a relatively new reader and commentator here, but rest assured that my observations are based on long, wide and very varied experience at every level from shopfloor to senior management.

At no time have I ever suggested centralisation. What I make no bones about promoting is the aggregation of library services into cross-authority groups operated under clearcut service level agreements monitored by clients and users.

Why? To stop the short-sighted parochialism and all-too-easy mid-year raids on stockfunds; to encourage and support good planning, high performance and economies of scale; to enable funds to be raised, saved and used for capital investment.

The present system fails libraries just as it fails other public services. Flogging that particular dead donkey has gone on far too long and won't make it better. We need a different approach that focuses simply and clearly on what the users need without constant political interference. Bury the donkey and let's move on.

I'll be frank, Mr Apollo, one of the things that has been so frustrating about the higher orders of the library profession has been their unwillingness to listen to the experience of outsiders, even when it was evidently relevant. From the outside there are too many closed doors and curtained windows surrounding what is, after all, a service which belongs to the public, not the profession. I personally have seen so many situations in councils when the councillors act strangely, simply because they are not properly and helpfully informed by their professional staff. I'm afraid I can give too many real examples. Too often the 'profession' pleads the case of its own importance and too infrequently does it articulate the needs of the public. Martyn and I see little virtue in giving the profession even more independent control over the service, because of their track record. But who are we?

You talk about economies of scale, but the standardisation of methods which could have brought such economies about have been within the grasp of chief librarians for decades and they have never managed to bring them about. Elsewhere you have talked about the lack of training in basic management skills, and to us, some who are well versed in these things and who are forced to watch and offer help, that shortage of skill and experience is painful to endure, as we are forced to do.

As Martyn says, management is the problem, but in our view, chief librarians do not necessarily hold all the answers.

Communication is indeed a 2-way process. There can be no communication, no meeting of minds, no learning and no progress unless professionals, politicians and pundits listen at least as much as they talk.

Let me repeat that what I propose is a system of management that makes services accountable directly to the public who pay; delivers greater economies of scale; stops library budgets being cut whenever other services over-spend; allows existing and new sources of funding to be tapped and used to repair and improve buildings.

Is this not what customers, professionals and even pundits want? Or do I detect, as others have, that some pundits just have an irrational dislike of librarians? If so, take another closer look at how local government actually works.

The biggest obstacle to progress has always been elected members. Few give the job enought time, most fail to turn up for training, many read papers only when (if) they turn up for meetings. Many are more concerned with maintaining ownership of the proverbial donkey and would rather flog it to and beyond death than hand it over to a better owner.

Let's change things - but let's make sure they're the right things.

Mr Apollo. I agree with you completely that the working dialogue in most councils between councilllors and officers is not sufficiently straightforward and productive and mostly doesn't work. and that, in its turn causes many of the problems with the library service. Then we have two solutions- either we confront it and make it work; or we remove it to another arrangement. I think that we should do the former. That is the democracy upon which, in the end we depend.

By the way every commercial operation in the world experiences unwanted budget changes all the time. Where the funding depends on what customers do, budgets get rewritten every month, if not every day. In local government, the immunity from variations in spending is quite noticeable to those used to a more windy regime.