This is excellent
And I am sure should apply to all stock, not just AV
The argument is whether this role can be done (to some extent), from the
supplier by a librarian employed there., or in partnership between the
supplier and the librarian, or just the librarian? Using and exploiting
collections to their maximum for all stock, is the role of the library
surely
Good contribution
Thanks
f
-----Original Message-----
From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Garry Gale
Sent: 24 July 2007 11:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Audio Visual Supplier Selection
The one person we seem to miss out in this debate is the current library
borrower. I've been given permission by one of our users to make his
views known on this matter. Michel Faber has collaborated musically with
Brian Eno and De Rosa and has written about contemporary music in Wire
magazine. I understand he's also written some novels and collections of
short stories.
"When I walk into a large bookshop or a music megastore, I am resigned
from the outset to several unfortunate realities: firstly, the most
prominently displayed stock will have been chosen by some centralised
authority, and secondly, nobody working in the store will have much of a
clue about the stuff they're selling. They will basically be checkout
operators.
When I walk into a library, I hope for something different. I hope to
see things I would not see elsewhere, and, if possible, I would like a
staff member to be able to explain to me why these unfamiliar things are
worthy of my attention. I don't need a library to inform me that there
is a new Arctic Monkeys album or a new Harry Potter book...... And while
I can appreciate that such items would be much-borrowed --and thus cited
as proof of good customer service --their usefulness is questionable and
short lived. Questionable because the same item can be obtained in a
thousand other places. Short-lived because these are precisely the sorts
of items that will be clogging second-hand shops within a year or two.
Not because they're necessarily bad, but because there are zillions of
copies floating around the marketplace and inevitably lots of them will
be discarded. Which, for a library system that has bought ten copies to
meet the "demand", means that within a year or two, these ten copies of
an ex-best-seller are taking up valuable shelf space despite the fact
that the customer can buy them for a pittance in any charity shop or
discount store.
An intelligently run library system should aim to stock items which
customers will find just as valuable and intriguing two years from now
as when the items were newly released. Indeed, ideally, the items should
remain of interest indefinitely --and increase in desirability as the
years go by. This can only be achieved if the items are chosen with some
discernment. A good librarian should be able to guess (not always
correctly, but most of the time) which musicians and writers are
producing works that are likely to be valued by people in the future,
and which are producing works that are headed for the recycle bin of
popular culture.
Best wishes
Michel"
-----Original Message-----
From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David McMenemy
Sent: 23 July 2007 12:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Audio Visual Supplier Selection
> Oh Dear there is so much here that is of concern.
>
Sorry to hear that, I really must try to do better.
> Yes libraries are publicly funded and they compete for those funds
> within the local authority against demands of other services. IF the
> library cannot demonstrate its impact and value it has less chance of
> demanding the funds it needs not only to continue but to improve what
> it is doing. I didn't make the world we live in, but there are
> competing activities for today's society and other things that people
> (and listen to them, watch them, read some of the reports) want to do,
> and are doing. Society and the way people engage within it and with
> each other has dramatically changed.
>
You deliberately ignored my point. The public sector does not compete
with the private sector except in the minds of people who do not seem to
grasp what the two sectors exist to do.
> No point doing the job, if no one wants it, or they can better else
> where. This really is head in sand stuff you are promulgating., a sort
> of 'all our yesterday' ethos!
Is it really? My concern isn't yesterday, it's tomorrow, and the next
day, and next year, and a decade. The reason public libraries exist has
not changed. Yes service delivery will obviosuly evolve, but the reason
why that service is there has not altered in 150 years. What is
altering is how we value and measure them, and in that lies the danger.
In 10 years time if we continue to follow the mantras currently in vogue
we will be left with library collections that are based on high volume
best sellers and no breadth. This is not good for society. I'm sure it
would please you though.
Some things the others do they do do
> better than public Libraries e.g. speed of delivery, (and direct to
> the home), what youngsters want,( and of course they have the money
> and freedom to spend as they want., but even if they don't they are
> there and are competitors and cant be ignored!. Any service, has to
> have an eye on what it does, what it does well, what is its core
> service, what does it users and non users want., nothing can stay the
> same for ever it has to develop and move on., and one of the problems
> the public library has s it does not have the major funding for
> development that it does so need., and the fact that it is victim to
> the vagaries of public money and cuts is a major problem.
>
Don't disagree with any of that. What would you define then as the core
mission of public libraries?
> The mentality you refer to is not what will kill libraries, and is not
> at all short term, the thinking is looking at the environment we live
> and work in., what the future is likely to be and trying to predict
> what will life be like., this is just good sense, you need to take
> short and long term views. It is doing business well, which applies to
> whatever the service or business is for goodness sake!
Well firstly libraries aren't a business, but strategic planning is not
some new fangled concept that librarians don't understand. It's been
part of the curriculum of library schools for decades. Short term
thinking is responding to whatever government policy that rears its head
without proper debate and evidence that it is correct. At least we are
having a debate about this with good contributuions from people. We need
more debate and less blind following of either of the agendas, either
status quo or change for change's sake. Unfortunately in the UK we seem
to see professional debate as dirty word.
> What an admission that we have lost the battle to communicate with
> politicians. What I do agree with as we are at the end of the line
> when it comes to what the government and local authority has at its
> priority for the spending, so little choice there. If we haven't been
> advocating and communicating with politicians as we should have been,
> then there's the rub., we have had long enough to get that right. But
> profiles for libraries are low! Local governments and their policies
> are transitory., much of the world is and the rate of change is
> unbelievable and will get faster. We have a long way to go to catch
up.
I thought our current leaders valued libraries highly? You claim
profile is low, but we have Ministers continuously advocating how
important libraries are? It coudln't be that they say one thing and
mean another could it? No that could never be. If we just follow their
political philosophy at the expense of our own professional philosophy
everything will be OK!! Won't it?
> Fundamentally I think the public library sector, I am sorry to say,
> would not be safe in your hands, I am afraid your view is not a
> realistic vision of how things are now and how they need to be in the
> future!
How ridiculously patronising. We are fortunate that the public
libraries sector belongs to everyone and is not in any one person's or
group's hands. Long may that continue.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David McMenemy
> Sent: 20 July 2007 19:40
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Audio Visual Supplier Selection
>
>> 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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