----- Forwarded by Nick London/cs/nottscc on 18/01/2004 23:23 -----
Nick London
To: "Lewis,Aran M" <[log in to unmask]>
18/01/2004 23:19 cc:
Subject: Re: Friday ramble (was Command and control) (was FW: Is this the e nd for
OPACs?)(Document link: Nick London)
re: Aran's Friday ramble,
I am glad someone with some common sense and an understanding of the true
nature of public services has added their voice to this increasingly
orbital discussion thread.
While I found myself agreeing with some of Robert Harden's points about the
danger of assuming 'customer' demands are paramount, and of the rationing
role of the public librarian, the idea that then emerges about the benefits
of being 'free' of local government control is rather missing the point.
The whole reason for public libraries - or any other public service or good
- is that there is no commercial process which would provide a substitute.
There is no profitable market for giving access to the range of creative
fiction and information resources that every public library providing free
of charge. The kind of lending service that the commercial sector would
provide can already be seen in my local market place in Newark - a thriving
buy and exchange trade in popular 2nd hand paperback fiction.
Public libraries are a social benefit which are provided without being
expected to break even - like schools, flood protection, social services,
country parks, defence etc etc. They have all long been regarded as a
legitimate activity of government in one form or another. To suggest that
public libraries can be freed from all the constraints and burdens they
bear as part of local government is to ignore the fact that any other body
or arm of government will exert equal political influence. Trusts,
quangos, regional offices and the rest are all parts of the overall
government machine and all depend on taxation to fund the services they
control.
To be in public libraries is to be in politics. There is no escape, but
there is hope of some common sense as long as the politicians in charge are
the kind that face the electorate every so often.
Nick London
Principal Systems Officer
Nottinghamshire Libraries
"Lewis,Aran M"
<[log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask]
OV.UK> cc:
Sent by: Subject: Re: Friday ramble (was Command and control) (was FW: Is this the e nd for
"lis-pub-libs: UK OPACs?)
Public Libraries"
<LIS-PUB-LIBS@JISC
MAIL.AC.UK>
16/01/2004 17:35
Please respond to
"Lewis,Aran M"
London Borough of Lambeth: our disclaimer is at the end of this e-mail.
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Some interesting suggestions, Robert, but in your list of vital things you
omit the obligation to serve the local community, or even the obligation to
serve current library users. Without this, what is to stop the governing
body serving its own prejudices, or simply carrying out the agenda of the
politicians who appointed its members? They would probably decide who their
metaphorical "customers" were or ought to be, and what they ought to
receive. Public libraries do not have a business-type relationship with
most
of their users, who are therefore not really customers. The principal
customers of museums etc are the funding bodies - they are the ones who buy
the service, albeit on behalf of other people and with other people's
money!
Ownership of assets means having to pay for their upkeep. Councils struggle
to do this at present, and if public libraries were cut loose with current
budgets they could not afford to do it. Where would the money come from?
Sale of assets? Cutting staff, stock and opening hours? Sound familiar?! As
for raising investment funding, how can investment be profitable in a
service designed to "lose" (ie spend and not recoup) most of its income?
Any major national restructuring would be enormously expensive, and these
days would inevitably entail countless millions of taxpayers' money being
poured into the pockets of consultants instead of funding service
provision,
with no indication that the outcome would be an improvement on the status
quo. Local democracy is deeply flawed, and in dire need of improvement
(these are my own views, obviously, not my employer's!), but it does offer
a
mechanism whereby local people can chuck out the governing body if they
don't like what they are doing. We would do better to push to make local
authorities more responsive, in particular to get them to give the same
priority to public libraries and other services that local residents do (at
present their priorities are mostly dictated by central government), as the
alternative is likely in practice to mean handing this superb resource over
to distant unaccountable quangos with their legendary capacity for lavish
self-reward and irrelevance to service delivery.
If we are to adopt a different model, how about this? Everyone possessing
or
reading a book would have to pay a disproportionately large and
ever-escalating annual book licence, and the library authority could spend
its billions however it pleased, paying million pound salaries to senior
staff to be rude to people, abuse minorities, etc., if it felt like it, and
there would be nothing the licence fee payers could do if they didn't
approve. If it's good enough for the BBC...!
Cheers,
Aran Lewis
Senior Librarian, Stock Support Services
Lambeth Libraries
Carnegie Library
Herne Hill Road
London SE24 0AG
020 7926 6069
[log in to unmask]
SSS home page (internal):
http://intradoc/intradoc/groups/public/documents/a-default/021138.html
SSS home page (external):
http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/intradoc/groups/public/documents/a-default/019232
.
html
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Harden [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 7:21 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Command and control (was FW: Is this the end for
OPACs?)
>
> A very fair question, Aran. Not being an expert in not-for-profit
> business models, I haven't got a ready answer, just a few thoughts on
> what an independent public library sector might look like.
>
> I would look around for inspiration at other institutions which retain
> their independence while receiving state funding, such as some museums,
> charitable trusts, universities. What they have in common is their
> ability, indeed duty, to manage their assets solely in pursuit of the
> objectives for which they were founded. That means that their
> independent governing bodies own and control their real estate and
> plant. They employ their own staff. They can raise investment funding.
> They can generate income and use it for their own purposes.
>
> I imagine the government's regional structure would have to be the
> geographical basis for independent public library institutions in
> England with national institutions for the other parts of the UK. This
> could be expected to facilitate the distribution of state funding. That
> would mean 9 regional library authorities for England and one national
> authority each for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
>
> Whatever the organisational structure, the vital things are the
> ownership of assets and the freedom to manage them in the interests of
> the library's customer community.
>
> Robert Harden
> ______________________
> [log in to unmask]
> www.harden.dial.pipex.com
> ______________________
>
> On Wednesday, January 14, 2004, at 04:48 PM, Lewis,Aran M wrote:
>
> > Robert, if you take public libraries out of local government, where
> > would
> > you put them instead? No doubt we can all think of a number of
> > possibilities
> > and models, but what would you advocate?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Aran Lewis
> > Senior Librarian, Stock Support Services
> > Lambeth Libraries
> > Carnegie Library
> > Herne Hill Road
> > London SE24 0AG
> >
> > 020 7926 6069
> >
> > [log in to unmask]
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