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The public library in the future: a British reaction to 'Buildings, Books and Bytes.' - Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Perspectives on the Benton Foundation

Library Trends - June 22, 1997

THE BRITISH CONTEXT

The library situations in the United States and Europe have many features in common, but there are also significant differences, due partly to tradition and partly to different political situations and ideologies. The United Kingdom stands somewhere between the continent of Europe and the United States in library matters as in so many others. It should be noted too that there are wider differences within Europe, even within western Europe, than between the United Kingdom and the United States. My response therefore starts with a personal observation of the present situation in England.

In both the United States and the United Kingdom, public libraries have received a great deal of attention in recent years. In the United Kingdom, which is exceptionally well served with statistics of expenditure and use, thanks largely to the Library and Information Statistics Unit at Loughborough University (England & Sumsion, 1995; Sumsion et al., 1996; Sumsion & Creaser, 1996), several major reports have appeared recently, some of them produced at the instigation of the relevant government department of the time, the Department of National Heritage.

The reports deal with similar concerns to those in the Benton Report, but they are given greater point by recent government policy over the last decade or so, which has had several prominent features:

* minimal government

* reducing public expenditure

* "public sector bad, private sector good"

* payment for services good in principle

* concentration of power on central government and on unelected "quangos" (quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organizations).

As will be noted, these policies are motivated partly by economics, partly by ideology, partly by political considerations. The motives for most features are mixed--e.g., minimal government (ideological) means less public expenditure (economic), which means lower taxes (political). Most of them will be familiar across the Atlantic, except the centralization of power, which may appear (and not only to superficial observers) to conflict with the principle of minimal government, and which the British government is inclined to deny; the fact remains that many activities that used to be carried out at the local level, and many powers that were exercised there, are now the responsibility of bodies accountable only to central government--not, it may be noted, always to Parliament, to which quangos do not report. Local government expenditure has been "capped" in places at levels that make it difficult for local authorities to provide services approaching those of the past.

There is one feature of the United States that does not exist to the same extent in the United Kingdom--the tradition of community self-help. The British are generally good at giving to charities, but they are less used to supporting voluntarily local services such as schools and hospitals--and libraries. They expect these services to be provided from public funds, and many are moreover afraid that, if they do give extensively to local services, the government will see less and less need to take any responsibility for them. This may indeed be part of the government's intention as part of the process of weaning people away from the welfare state. As it is, however, most people wish their libraries etc. to have more funding and, even if they are willing to see local rates raised to achieve this, rate-capping makes it impossible.

The British are also reluctant to pay directly for public services they have received as a right--in the case of public libraries, for nearly 150 years. Libraries can and do charge for reservations of books on loan, for overdues, and (not very logically) for the loan of sound recordings; these charges are accepted. Many also make charges for some so-called "value-added" services to local business ("so-called" because "value-added" is a poor term for additions to basic library operations and services that are themselves value-added, in that selecting material and organizing it for use adds value). These are often little more than public relations exercises; they do something to help business but, at best, usually only recover marginal costs. Also, over 40 percent of public libraries that offer Internet services charge for them (compared with 3.6 percent in the United States). In any case, all these things combined do not bring in sums that are sufficient to make good reductions in funding (as noted above, they may even be used as an excuse for reductions).

There is debate on these issues in continental Europe as well, but it has been less intense. Similar economic and political pressures on public services exist there, but they are not so acute, as their governments are not so ideologically driven as the previous British government. Interestingly, the pressures are greater in some countries of eastern Europe, as they begin to work on the immense task of developing new economies from the wrecks of the old communist ones. This applies even to countries like Hungary which have strong communist elements in their governments; there is no going back to the old ways. As they try desperately to keep services going, they apply measures that are unthinkable in the United Kingdom, such as charging an annual fee for membership to public libraries. The public service ideology may be intact, but it is made in practice to yield to hard economic reality. The debate taking place in Britain is in fact of more interest to these countries than to western European countries.

Another factor is that public libraries in Britain have an exceptional tradition, so that decline is felt more keenly than it would be in, for example, Spain or Italy. British public libraries still compare favorably with the best in Europe (Hanratty & Sumsion, 1996), excepting those in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, many of which are better. Since of all European countries the Nordic ones are the most keen to maintain public services, even if it means high taxes, there is less reason for debate there, at least on financial grounds.

Public libraries in Britain, although they have been using computers since 1960, are also quite backward in their use of information technology; a survey in December 1995 (Ormes & Dempsey, 1995) showed that, while many larger libraries were connected to the Internet, fewer than 1 percent of service points (as opposed to library systems) were connected.

Restructuring and "rationalization" have been very popular in public services as they have been in industry. The aim is often to reduce expenditure and streamline administration (this is not always achieved), but the result is often to combine public library services with other departments to form departments such as Culture. The chief librarian then ceases to be what used to be known as a "chief officer"; (s)he has less authority, has to report through a superior officer, and may have less access to the local council to make a case for more funds. The fact that several chief librarians have been elevated to a superior post does not change the situation; indeed, some nonlibrarians have been appointed to be chief librarian. The net effect of all this is that public librarians have lost a good deal of status and power in recent years.

In the pursuit of efficiency, or in a desire to put pressure on services under their control, many authorities have imposed reviews on libraries--sometimes two or three within a few years. Yet another current factor in Britain is another round of local government reorganization (British governments embark on one every decade or so), which changes many local authority boundaries. As a consequence, some library authorities are effectively being deconstructed and recomposed: a disturbing and disruptive process.

These changes and pressures in combination generate a sense of excitement in some public librarians and a feeling of resignation, not to say exhaustion, in others. It is not easy to maintain a high level of motivation under all the circumstances. It is to the credit of public library staff that most of them have made great efforts to maintain and develop their activities, and services in many libraries have in fact improved. Several public libraries have used TQM (rarely a full-blooded TQM program, but the principles and some of the techniques) to improve performance, and service-level agreements have had success in raising standards as well as in proving to be a good public relations exercise.

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