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February 9, 2010
Whatever happened to LISU?
While we endlessly await the public library figures for 2008-9 now nearly a year after they could and should have been available from the dreadful CIPFA public libraries office, I wondered whatever happened to LISU?
A common theme runnning through most reports and reviews of the last year has been the paucity of basic information about the performance and cost of the public library service. How on earth anyone is supposed to manage a budget when they don't even have to hand the relevant data from the year before last, goodness only knows
But LISU (The Libraries Information and Statistics Unit at Loughborough University) used to produce two very useful annual reports: the first was a ten year retrospective view of the most recent performance data and the second was an analysis of the most recent budget figures for each council. They weren't perfect but they were consistent from year to year and they were the only and therefore best figures available.
Without explanation the MLA - even though it is charged under the 1964 act with gathering such information as the Minister needs to superintend the public library service- has cancelled both reports. Why? what plans are there to replace them? What happened to the fabled promise of the MLA to 'do research' and to provide evidence for its improvement work.
If the MLA were to do anything useful at all (don't hold your breath), it would be as a repository of timely and comprehensive data about the performance of public libraries, as a resource for local councils to make meaningful comparisons. But it doesn't.
What is wrong with these people? The sooner they are confined to the dustbin, the better.
Posted by Perkins at February 9, 2010 8:08 PM