As often happens on this list, the discussion about OPACS reveals a
deeper problem. The talk of cultural retail outlets set me awondering
about whether we're seeing reality as clearly as we ought.
It's about time public libraries, as presently constituted, stopped
pretending that they exist to satisfy their customers. It can only lead
to disappointment for all concerned.
Public libraries are in the control and rationing business. It's no use
wishing, or behaving as if, it were otherwise. It's the core of their
mission. Eking out limited resources to optimise their social benefit
is what libraries do. They can do it with a smile or they can be
sour-faced about it. But giving the generality of customers what they
want when they want it has never been a goal with any realistic chance
of being attained.
Internet terminals are a case in point. Whether or not the library has
dumb OPAC terminals wouldn't be an issue if there were enough
all-purpose terminals to go round. For all sorts of reasons public
libraries just aren't flexible enough to respond in that way to what
customers want. As arms of local government, they do not control most
of their key assets and satisfying the priorities of library customers,
actual and potential, comes a long way down the pecking order after
satisfying the priorities of the local council's policy makers.
Libraries operate in a command economy, as the People's Network neatly
demonstrates. Internet terminals were installed in libraries en masse
because the government wished it so, not because libraries themselves
were responding to customer demand.
In the present scheme of things a public library is unable to behave
like a customer-led business. If it is desirable that it should, there
is one big obstacle to be overcome first. And that is local government.
Take public libraries out of that command and control environment, and
there is a chance that they will be able to respond to the changing
requirements of their customers. Any service enterprise that fails to
do that, has a short future.
Robert Harden
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