Tim Coates' Speech to Conference : Page 4
The danger in our society that I have seen is that those who work in government circles, as I call them, have come to believe that only they can devise the agenda for what people should do or how they should care. They believe that it is their right to determine the role of a public library - and I say they should not. What makes a public library good, is its own essence and what it does for individual people - not whether it adds or claims to contribute to employment, wellbeing or a reduction in crime or its social impact in any sense. It will do those things in its own way by making us all more civilised and educated.
The library service would be miles better and more useful to us all if it was not linked to government priorities, because we understand that it is writing, and reading what has been written, actually, that makes us civilised and not a library service without books.
I want today therefore to suggest a radical way forward . I want to suggest that the whole landscape within which the public library service operates is changed and not only that I want to propose a new structure and to tell of what I and others have done to put one in place. I am calling for a new order for public libraries and have taken the steps to set it up.
Everything I say and propose is within not only the words but also the intentions and meaning of the 1964 Public Libraries Act. I believe that what has been done in the last 20 years has moved us away from what the writers of that document wanted to achieve. I want to return to the meaning of the Act. It is neither out of date nor irrelevant.
In fact I have always been surprised at the extent to which those who run the library service have attempted to avoid the responsibilities of the 1964 Act and, for example, the recommendations of the Kaufman Select Committee of 2005. There was an outcry last year from local government when the Inquiry into the Wirral library service reminded councillors and council officers of what their duties are. That was astonishing, but it is obvious those people feel able and entitled to disregard the law and parliament if they disagree with it. And that is simply wrong – whoever they are and whatever positions they occupy.
Councillors are the key. For the past few years, in each council there is a senior councillor who carries the responsibility for the library service. When they are put in that post they generally come with their own instincts and experience and are surrounded by the advice of officers in the council to whom they must listen and upon whom they depend.
This could be a good arrangement but at present it doesn’t work properly. You
wouldn’t appoint an executive Chair of a large company (and these are quite large operations)
with so little experience and with so little understanding of his shareholders and the
market in which he is operating. Nor should or would you allow a structure in which
there is no independent accounting for how his management team perform – and
only their own say so for how good they are. If councillors are to be in charge they
need serious training for the job which is important, rewarding and fascinating ....
but
running public services is an onerous responsibility for which one needs preparation.
We need library councillors who are ambitious for improvement, not for closing things or
getting away with the minimum they can.
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