Library funding
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010Today I visited a county library acquisitions department with bare concrete pillars (one of which had a notice “to demolish” chalked on it!), desks from the seventies, a carpet from the sixties, and computer equipment from the early nineties (woooh, a mouse with a ball in it!). Today I also finally started to read The Modernisation of Public Libraries – a Policy Statement. I didn’t get far before I wanted to start writing this…
Although there is no doubt that public libraries have received large chunks (£120m) of funding from National Lottery Funds, the thing that has been lacking is the ongoing funding. It’s all very well buying a bunch of computers 5-10 years a go, but now that those computers are wearing out, where is the commitment to replenish every 2 to 3 years? For those buildings that have been ‘made over’ with £80m Big Lottery Funds, in 10 years they will need to be ‘made over’ again as long-term commitment to fund the public libraries seems to be absent from Local Council thinking. The library authority I visited today has just bought a shiny new library management system, and within 2 weeks of going live had to close a whole branch library. They now have three libraries.
The policy statement goes on to say:
But, as every good librarian knows, public libraries are not about sitting back and passively waiting for people to borrow your books – they are about active engagement with the community, making links to other public services, and responding to the policy imperatives of the day.
My impression of public libraries, is that they spend all their time chasing after involvement in whichever national and local ‘policy imperatives’ are flavour of the month. They are all short term plans. What ever happened to framework for the future? did that achieve anything? or just lead into a fresh round of “well that would be nice, but we are being job evaluated; restructured; forced to make ‘efficiency savings’, so won’t actually have time to think long-term because my job won’t be here in two months time”.
Whatever happened to keeping a good range of books on a wide range of subjects? I have first hand experience of finding a perfectly good book being withdrawn from stock because it had not issued in almost a year. When a gentleman came to the enquiry desk and asked for it I was happy to tell him that although we had withdrawn it, I knew where it had gone, because I had rescued it and sent it to another library where I knew it would be valued. My point? Well, If we discarded every book that started to look tatty or had not been issued for years, there would be nothing for future generations to use. Today’s tatty book, is tomorrows antiquarian bookseller’s dream!
rant over… for now…
