The Good Library Blog

I don’t think the data is due from local authorities to CIPFA until 16 July. Last year CIPFA took a further 10 months to publish to the public a minimal amount of aggregate data - surely a scandalous state of affairs for a body who exist to ‘champion high performance in public services’ as they declare on their website.

Isn’t the position now that nothing has to be published by a local authority about the costs and performance of its Library Service other that the ‘percentage of adults who have used a public library in the last year’.

Shouldn’t virtually all the library CIPFA data be available to the public within say 6 months i.e. by 30 September each year? What real accountability to the public is there if virtually nothing has to be published?

There is no real accountability! Britain has fossilised, the banks are once again getting away with murder, racism flourishes in the public sector and a ruling class obsessed with soft phraseology sits atop it all. What would it even mean if CIPFA produced the data sooner? They still won't decide anything!
I suspect the case is much the same with CILIP. I hear nothing, I suspect I will go on hearing nothing, and my only consolation is that at least this year I've given them nothing. Quite a square deal in some ways. My Associateship is now reduced to a useless piece of paper on the wall, and now I know that's all it ever was. In the meantime, Britain marches on to ever greater fossilisation accompanied by ever more paper "qualifications" which have done nothing more than replace common sense with brainwashed jargon.
I despair, I really do, but at least I feel free of the yoke of such qualifications. They don't mean anything. Nothing at all. And the same seems to be true of CILIP.

just read an article by Michael Morpurgo in The Big Issue who is flying the flag for libraries. Although I felt a bit worried when he mentioned French "mediatheques" which reminds me rather too closely of the woolly idea of rebranding libraries as Ideas Stores to "galvanise" people, his viewpoints (such as the possibility of subscription libraries) appear practical and realistic - and when the dust finally settles after an awesome series of cuts and the MLA/CILIP/CIPFA/DCMS' failure to decide anything without a 10-year consultation period, that's probably what we'll end up with as there won't be any public libraries left.
Not such an awful prospect - I know the Allan Ramsay Library in Leadhills and, much more obscurely, I actually catalogued the Roberton Subscription Library which is nearby and dates from 1809. Why do we not know of this other historical gem, you may ask? Because the cataloguing was done voluntarily on behalf of South Lanarkshire Council (AKA local branch of CILIP, CIPFA and so on) who then proceeded to screw me over and fail to carry out their promise, namely to transfer the collection to some Big New Facility in Motherwell. I will never, ever, forget the words of the council crepuscule whom I questioned about this:

"Oooh no, we cannae do that. The council widnae like it..."

This, in a nutshell and based on my actual experience, is why public libraries are probably doomed. This attitude is probably all over the public sector, rooted like cancer, and this is why I can often find no other solution to the problems of public libraries than marching on London.

Would Michael Morpurgo like to contribute to this blog? He worries about the future of democracy, and so do I. Partly I fear fascism, but the true horror which runs deep in my veins is the thought of crepuscules like the one quoted above continuing to run our lives. Perhaps the worst fate of all is to live a dusty life of mediocrity, and I fear we are well on the way to doing that.

This, in a nutshell and based on my actual experience, is why public libraries are probably doomed. This attitude is probably all over the public sector, rooted like cancer, and this is why I can often find no other solution to the problems of public libraries than marching on London.

Would Michael Morpurgo like to contribute to this blog? He worries about the future of democracy, and so do I. Partly I fear fascism, but the true horror which runs deep in my veins is the thought of crepuscules like the one quoted above continuing to run our lives. Perhaps the worst fate of all is to live a dusty life of mediocrity, and I fear we are well on the way to doing that.