> Why does it HAVE to be the destination of choice? Are you serious (I
> sound like John McEnroe), but if they are not, what on earth would they
> be there for. There has to be a reason in a highly competitive world, to
> make people want to go to their public library.
Libraries are a publicly funded service, it is not their job to COMPETE
for leisure time with the private sector. It is their job to provide
access to a broad range of knowledge free at the point of use for the
general public. Their role is inclusive, not competing with WH Smith,
Amazon, Youtube or any other of the currently in vogue services that
supposedly do things so much better than public libraries do. It is this
mentality that will kill public libraries because it leads to short-term
thinking and a complete departure from the past to justify their existence
to people who don't understand why they are there in the first place. All
your comments prove to me is that we've lost the battle in communicating
to the politicians what libraries are for. It's not a victory to adopt
the langauge of the governemnt just to curry favour. Governments are
transitory, but public institutions are not. Certainly selling the soul
of a highly valued national service just to look good in the eyes of
people who deep down may actually despise what it stands for is risible.
I do not assume we are
> doing anything wrong, BUT we may not be doing what is needed and wanted?
Needed and wanted are not neccessarily the same thing. "Wanted" might be
500,000 copies of Jade Goody's autobiography or the latest Big Brother
DVD, but I hardly think they are actually "needed" unless all we want is
to count numbers of issues.
> "What is more important in a library than anything else - than
> everything else - is the fact that it exists." NOT any more I am afraid!
> Times have changed and are changing more rapidly!
>
> We've been enlightened enough for 150 years to understand that. What's
> changed? Everything, the world, communications, society Mytube , Ebay,
> Amazon et el.Competition!!
>
>> Are issues the bee all and end all of what a 21st century library is
>> all about
>>
>> The competition out there for reading material is quite severe, it is
>> easy to go else where. How are we going to make libraries the
>> destination of choice?
>>
>> Library staff have had the decisions for 150 years, and we are where
>> we are?
I don't know, where are we? If we don't value public libraries for what
they actually are, i.e. a centre for knowledge in their communities, then
we might as well shut them down now.
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