There are also more recent examples of collaborative library innovation at the national level: dare I mention Electronic Access to Resources in Libraries, otherwise known as EARL? In the late 1990s library authorities in England, Scotland, and Wales, with the support of such organisations as LASER, took it upon themselves not only to establish individual web presences (often before their local councils; accordingto Rachel Peacock, Gateshead at the time was actually maintaining its council's website), but collaborative services, such as the precursor to Enquire, Ask A Librarian; Familia, local history and genealogy collections; Magnet, serial collections; EARLWeb,a subject portal; as well as a number of others, including collection of sites related to information on Europe.
I have had occasion to take a walk down memory lane as research for a number of things I have been writing. Not only did it involve reviewing at EARL offerings, but also tracking the changes to library authority web pages over the past ten years ( Libraries have certainly come a long way from the days when they would send their details on discs to EARL HQ, which would be then loaded on to EARL servers as individual web pages for each library). Anyone interested in a bout of nostalgia on this rainy Friday afternoon can look at the EARL pages or those of their own libraries by entering the urls into the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive. For EARL, that would be http://www.earl.org.uk (or try http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.earl.org.uk)
What happened to EARL? Well, LASER at the time (2001) was winding down, so essentially it would have required finding a new home. However, the times were against it, and the biggest reason for the winding down of a national consortium was the then rise of regionalism. In a sense, this regionalism both discouraged national collaboration, but also preserved its legacy: Co-East took on Ask A Librarian and Familia.
Another national initiative was taking hold at the same time, because it was centrally managed and funded by government: the People's Network. This has been the most recent national, collective giant step forward by UK public libraries collectively, and it could only have been accomplished with central support and management. I'll go out on a limb here and say there would have been no computers in UK public libraries on such a large scale without it; if it were left up to each local authority itself UK libraries would still be woefully behind other countries not only in what they could offer their communities but their own staff by way of digital resource and skill. We all griped about the NOF grants and implementation at the time, and it's true we never actually got a network to speak of, but it is a model really for how these things can and should be done.
And, of course, you know what I am going to say next (if you have stuck with me thus far): UK public libraries need another major boost, driven from the centre, to take the next step that will enable them to reach out to their communities. Only this time, the government is on about 'localism' instead of regionalism. 'Nuf said.
History lesson over. Apologies for the long post.
Linda Berube
First I tried national, then I went regional, next...?
What the heck am I going to do with all these T-shirts!?
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