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February 19, 2010
Why the MLA has failed so badly
Yet another badly written report was published by the MLA this week about adult training. The language was appalling and the content meaningless. At the same time Perkins was present (if asleep) at some entirely practical meetings in local councils about making improvements to their public libraries. On this blog there has been some challenging thinking about the mechanisms that public libraries operate of the kind in which the MLA would never indulge. The BBC were filming in Hillingdon and asking 'why don't more councils offer a service like this and where is the national leadership?" It all made me think why the MLA has failed over 8 years to make any impression at all on the decline of the already disappointing performance of most of the public library service.
The document that was published was a rather supercilious attempt to explain the local councils the significance of a move of funding of adult education from being the responsibility of the Learning and Skills Council, to local authorities. I won't go in to it. But it seemed to me that the problem lay as much in the tone as in the lack of substance. MLA tries to inhabit the world of central government where large agendas and policies are passed around like cakes at a childrens' tea party. They come from the kitchen that provides all things, the treasury, and they are designed to pacify the small people. But the MLA is so small and so insignificant as to resemble a jam tart among the glorious chocolate eclairs; a cup cake in the trifle.
What really would be much better would be if the MLA was funded voluntarily out of necessity by the local councils themselves- if councils (rather than the DCMS) were saying - tell us how to make libraries better, help us with our musuems, support our archive operation and we will pay you for your help, then it would have a meaningful agenda and a genuine need to achieve results instead of more barrels of waflle. Its board should a group of leaders of councils along with other helpful voices. Its chair should be a senior figure in local government a leading MP, or an experienced commercial manager familiar with dealing with the public. It should be a resource of consumer information to support the local work that is carried out. At present it is none of these things; a rowing boat without oars in a whirlpool. War and Punishment
Those are the changes that are needed if we are going to set up a new Libraries Development agency. .
Why does one say all this? Because - as the annual figures are about to show-- in its eight years of expensive existence the MLA has done absolutely nothing to improve the state of our declining public library service. Nothing
In fact the accusation is going to be loudly made that where opportunities to improve were available, the MLA has deliberately avoided them.
(PS This was all in my submission to the current DCMS review of public libraries when they first asked in October 2008)
Posted by Perkins at February 19, 2010 6:06 PM
Comments
Jam tarts and eclairs aside, this isn't very different to what the profession has been saying about DCMS and MLA very loudly and very directly for years. The reality is that neither body has ever had the mandate or the power to lead anything, so they can't and they don't.
While DCMS and MLA have floundered about, devising and publishing at no small cost their respective standards and blueprints, library chiefs have got on with the job of making budgets hacked by elected members stretch further.
The notion of local authorities clamouring or even agreeing to be led by a national library czar or assembly is just that. I have yet to meet one elected member, let alone a whole executive, who would surrender sovereignty on any issue at all, ever. It is that pervasive parochialism that continues to block the profession's efforts to get the most out of consortium and shared service arrangements.
What we have is a brace of ineffective government bodies telling the profession what it already knows, and the elected members who alone hold power in all this hacking the budgets and stifling progress. The solution? Move more library services out into arm's length trusts, properly funded, managed by professionals, focussed on customers and free of constant political interference.
Posted by: Apollo (former Chief Librarian) at February 20, 2010 7:15 PM
I have a query about the MLA's role. I know they often reiterate that closures of branch libraries will occur (in spite of the grave damage to village life and communities) but are they reminding councils to conduct proper consultation? In Swindon they said that they had encouraged our council to do so, after we made a huge fuss. Yet, elsewhere, many people hear about threats to their local library only by means of a local newspaper report, or gossip -- and no hint of formal consultation at any stage. If the MLA is not actively engaged with such councils, it should be (and urgently) -- and, if it is "assisting" them, why are they allowing councils to get away with ignoring residents and failing to consult ? It is shocking.
Posted by: Shirley Burnham at February 21, 2010 9:39 AM
Thank you Mr Apollo. It is very good to hear a clear voice from the profession. If one were to follow your route, do you think that chief librarians, or 'the professionals who manage' receive or acquire the appropriate training to fill the role you describe? If you would like to elaborate on the whole subject, you would be most welcome and I shall post what you write with prominence.
(I should confess that if the profession having been saying these things for years, I haven't heard it; they seem to spend all their time fawning to Ministers and both DCMS and MLA, in the hope of crumbs from the table. But if now is the time to propose another way, then let's get it out into the open. It would be good)
Posted by: Perkins at February 21, 2010 10:40 AM
Shirley is referring to a whole string of articles in local newspapers. Even in the last 24 hours there have been expressions of public horror at reductions in the library service in Leicester, Redbridge, North Somerset and Angus. These are in addition to those around the country in the recent weeks. Last Autumn the MLA said that, while they awaited the Charteris report there were many councils of which they knew who were watching the outcome carefully, but they refused to say where they were. Public libraries aren't a private secret fiefdom of the quangoes and local councils-- the stakeholders in them are the people who use them. We should stop all this secret dealing. Shirley is right (again!)
Posted by: perkins at February 21, 2010 10:54 AM
Librarianship courses have always concentrated on teaching technical skills while barely lifting the lid of the general management toolbox. The course I attended simply got me onto the professional ladder where my real learning began.
The skills being taught today are often too theoretical and in many cases redundant, as good managers already in the workplace find better, cheaper, faster ways of getting things done. Syllabuses need to be brought up to date and made more responsive to changes in the workplace; existing professionals (not CILIP) should be hard-wired into this process.
The skills that are needed to run a large public service - customer care, change management, entrepreneurship, negotiation, strategic thinking - need to be there in latent form and developed through experience and mentoring by those with the experience. Employers and elected members also need to see those skills as desirable rather than a threat!
To get real benefit out of all this, we also need to hoik library services out of local authority control and into regional or sub-regional trusts able to deliver economies of scale and concentrate on delivering the best possible service for the lowest possible price without being used alternately as a political plaything and a budget patch.
On the subject of fawning, I know only a handful of professional libarians who have been able to sustain that approach. The majority of chief librarians have never held back from swift, direct and very frank exchanges with DCMS and MLA both individually and through SCL, a small voluntary body that should not be confused with the unloved, unfocussed and near-extinct CILIP.
Posted by: Apollo (former Chief Librarian) at February 22, 2010 12:56 AM