Many thanks to colleagues for their interest in Somerset's Library Service, with several messages over the last 24 hours about the hunt for "missing millions in Somerset".
The Friends of Glastonbury Library - a very energetic, articulate and supportive group - arranged for Tim Coates to give a presentation to a group of invited campaigners, elected members and officers last Friday (28th January). The various messages since have picked up on at least two of Tim's themes : non-library-based costs and acquistions costs.
After the meeting, we agreed to meet again with FoGL to resolve these queries - hence the "Laptops at dawn in the hunt for the missing million" headline - that's now become "millions". We're looking in more detail at Tim's presentation and have identified some of the discrepancies - such as his calculation which deducted the net expenditure on Somerset's 34 libraries and 6 mobile libraries from the gross revenue expenditure shown in CIPFA. We'll work on those figures to get clarity and then sit down with FoGL, laptops at the ready.
We're also looking at our acquisition costs in the light of the comments attributed to Tim :"a book that cost 50p to produce, might cost £1 to the wholesaler, and £5.99 in the shop. The same book going through a council purchasing system will cost £20 to put on the shelf, because it has to go through so many hands". I'm not sure that Tim did say that, but he did report ("Who's in charge" Libri, 2004) that a £10.00 book cost one authority over £24.00 - I'm taking this to mean the acquisition costs were £14.00.
David Moger expressed a healthy dose of disbelief about this in one of yesterday's messages and referred to LibrariesWest and Somerset's lead role in that Consortium. So, this is assurance that, in terms of provision to the LibrariesWest Consortium, we use a cost figure which is less than a tenth of that calculated by Tim.
More no doubt will come of this and I'll do my best to update colleagues, provided we all survive the laptops meeting.
|