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The public library service is in crisis.  Between 1992 and 2002, library visits dropped by 17% and book loans dropped by 25%.  Library book issues went down, while the commercial bookstores increased their sales. LIBRI  is a registered charity working to support and extend public library services in society, and will soon be launching a new website at www.libri.org.uk

And this week, libraries had their very own Lords debate.  In that debate, Libraries Minister Lord (Andrew) McIntosh (Labour’s Leader of the GLC, before Ken Livingstone) laid bare some of the problems -

“Expenditure on books averages only 9.6 per cent of total library budgets. It is also true that, as there is a decline…,  more money goes on administration and less on frontline services. That happens everywhere. We have to do something about that...  I am not convinced that we are getting the right deals out of publishers and booksellers on books, using our purchasing power.  I am certainly not convinced that we are doing the most economical thing. There is one study which shows that it costs as much to purchase and to index a book as it does to buy a book. That cannot be right. We have to find some way round that, and indeed we are actively doing so.”

These are fighting words from the Minister.  The LIBRI Trustees welcomed this week’s Lords debate – although as it was held on Budget Day, the spotlight of meeja attention was directed elsewhere. 

For full Hansard record click here

Where do you stand on public libraries?  Is their decline inevitable? Drop me a line

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Leave us alone

Yet our leaders will not allow us, privately and sensibly, to come to terms with these risks.  In speech after speech (even from Ken Livingstone and Met Chief Sir John Stevens) they ask us to believe that the heavens are about to cave in, and that Armageddon is nigh.  Yet that is not true.  We are asked to authorise more and more draconic measures of police and military intervention, far beyond the necessary minima - upon the pretext of “protecting us all”.  The wave of new Underground posters in London, warning against unattended luggage, will itself generate far more anxiety than any actual attack will ever effect.  And the broadcast, as well as the printed and electronic media, have a common interest in reinforcing the panic triggered by our leaders.    

Leadership should be about the projection of a far more balanced rationale, free of panic, free of alarmism, free of dramatisation.  In my observation of the public, I am deeply impressed by an overwhelming sense of daily continuity, a sane concern with the daily round, the common task.  Our leaders are clearly out of their depth, fomenting anxiety rather than allaying it. 

The challenge is to recognise and celebrate the favourable trends of the modern world, for they are evident - improving race relations, the mitigation of poverty, the reduction of ignorance, improved health, increased concern with the rights and freedoms of all the people of this world.