UNIVERSITY TO VILLAGE HALL
On 18th July 05, Libri published a report entitled “From University to Village Hall” This hard-hitting document can be found at:
http://www.libri.org.uk (pdf only)
The LLL comments on the report can be found in webpage:
Uni_to_V_Hall.htm
The MLA review of the report can be found at:
http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=4109

The Book Stock in a public library is usually considered by the users to be its most important asset. However, many users groups find it impossible to establish the size of this asset. A very simple method has now been proposed for estimating the number of books on a library's shelves.
More information: countthosebooks(2).htm

Brave New World

AT April 08

First Consultation on the Amendments to Copyright Exceptions Recommended by Gowers

On 8 January 2008 Lord Triesman, Minister for Intellectual Property, launched the first of a two part consultation on the recommendations made by the Dec. 2006 Gowers report on Intellectual Property.

Lord Triesman pointed out that it was necessary to ensure the IP protection systems are “robust enough - and sensible enough - not only to protect the rights holder from illegal activity, but to ensure that the consumer and user can make sensible use of protected works and also respect the rights attached to them.”

The consultation will cover recommendations for changes to copyright law that will:
· enable schools and universities to make the most of digital technologies and facilitate distance learning;
· allow libraries and archives to use technology to preserve valuable material before it deteriorates or the format it is stored on becomes obsolete;
· introduce a format shifting exception to allow consumers to copy legitimately purchased content to another format, for example CD to MP3, in a manner that does not damage the interests of copyright owners; and provide a new exception for parody.

The responses to the consultation will be analysed and then a further consultation on the resulting draft law will follow.

Further information:
http://www.dius.gov.uk/speeches/triesman_copyright_080108.html
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/policy/policy-issues/policy-issues-gowers/policy-issues-gowersreport.htm

AT Jan 08

AT Mar 08

The Literacy Disaster

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) is undertaken every five years (2001 & 2006) in over 40 countries around the world and measures the "reading literacy" & associated factors for children aged approximately 10 years old. Thus, in most countries, the Pirls investigation is aimed at children with four years of formal schooling. However, in some countries, including England and Scotland, it takes place after five years of schooling.

The score for England in 2006 was 539 and was 527 for Scotland. The highest 2006 score was 565 for the Russian Federation. The average score was 500 and the lowest score was 302 (South Africa).

The 2006 study found that children’s performance in England and Scotland had fallen in the previous five years. The reading performance of children in England had fallen from third to 19th in the world and Scotland also fell, from 14th to 26th. Top scoring Russia only managed to equal the Scottish score in 2001.

In England, the Department for Children, Schools and Families commissioned a separate report on the findings, from the independent National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). This concluded that lower achievement among the better readers had contributed most to England's overall fall, rather than the small increase in the proportion of weaker readers. Perhaps the most worrying comment from the NFER is that there had been significant increases in the proportion of English 10-year-olds with the "least positive" attitudes to reading and who said they very seldom read stories or novels outside school.

The fact that both England and Scotland had a 2006 score somewhat above the average value of 500 has been suggested as a mitigating circumstance. However, if allowance is made for the extra year of schooling provided in these countries, this appears very much like grasping at straws. It is obvious that the rate of children's progress in most other countries is greater than England or Scotland.

Ed Balls, Children, Schools and Families Secretary, suggested that the same story was emerging from the government's consultation on its Children's Plan as from the Pirls study. He said "I'm calling today for everyone's help to get our children reading more and to kick-start a new national debate about the value of reading." As the public libraries have traditionally provided the UK’s educational safety net, Mr Balls would do well to ensure that Library Services are provided with sufficient funds to take up his challenge.

More information: http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/pdfs/downloadable/PIRLSreport.pdf

http://timss.bc.edu/PDF/p06_international_report.pdf

Fifty eight Library Services in England have been given awards by the Big Lottery Fund to refurbish existing or build new public libraries. The size of the awards range from £250,000 to £2,000,000. Twelve of the winners were from London. They were:

London Borough of Brent £1,463,602 London Borough of Croydon £1,373,470 London Borough of Ealing £1,279,273 London Borough of Enfield £ 948,139 London Borough of Haringey £1,063,628 London Borough of Islington £ 791,389 London Borough of Merton £ 958,078 London Borough of Southwark £1,420,594 London Borough of Sutton £1,476,350 London Borough of Tower Hamlets £2,000,000 London Borough of Wandsworth £1,469,410 Westminster City Council £1,066,097

Full list of awards in England: http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/pr_301007_eng_libraries_awards

AT Dec 07

Loughborough University’s LISU research unit has published its Public Library Materials Fund and Budget Survey for
2006-08

LISU found that total library expenditure for the UK fell by 0.3% in 2006/07, with a further fall predicted for 2007/08. Although the reported fall was small, LISU suggested that it was particularly disappointing as, at this time last year, libraries were predicting an increase of 3% in spending for 2006/07.

Expenditure on materials fell by 1.5% in 2006/07 and a further fall of 2.3% is expected for 2007/08. Within this overall fall, spending on books continues to decline slowly and, although spending on audio-visual materials (including electronic resources) rose slightly in 2006/07, it is predicted to fall again in 2007/08, by 1.4%.

Staff expenditure represents approximately 60% of overall public library expenditure, so small percentage changes in this figure has a far larger affect than other elements in a public library service’s budget. LISU reported that staff numbers have fallen for the first time for many years, and are predicted to fall further in 2007/08. The most expensive staff members are the professionally qualified ones and much of the decrease has been in this area.

Free download from: http://www.nielsenbookdata.co.uk/controller.php?page=91

AT Dec 07

More information: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/petitionscalls

AT Jan.08

Making Assets Work On 19 September 2006, the then Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly announced a review of community management of public assets, chaired by Barry Quirk, Chief Executive of the London Borough of Lewisham. The Quirk Review reported to the Secretary of State at the end of March 2007 and the Review findings were published on 15 May, see www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1510515 for the report, “Making Assets Work”. The Government has now published its response to the Quirk Review. A practical action plan, "Opening the transfer window" sets out how Communities and Local Government will work with partner organisations to implement the review's recommendations in full. You can download a copy at www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1510746.

July 07

Saving Your Library
This is the subject of many emails and telephone calls to LLL.

Lewisham Council tried to close 3 of its public libraries a little while ago. You can read about the methods used to successfully fight against this at
localgroups/SaveYourLibrary.htm You can still email and telephone us, if you wish.

Library Buildings & Library Books The LLL Workshop on Historic Buildings, held on 6th September at Lambeth's Durning Library, was a great success. Don Bianco, from English Heritage, gave an excellent overview of the problem of preserving our historic public library buildings. The subsequent discussion confirmed the widely held view that library users are deeply committed to their rather elderly library buildings and are not impressed by the professionals' desire to exchange them for giant, new "flagship" libraries. Don has generously offered to help any London public library friends' group with a building preservation problem. He can be contacted at Don.Bianco@english-heritage.org.uk Inevitably, the quality and quantity of the stock within libraries was criticized at the meeting. There are few library users meetings where this does not happen and, presumably, will continue to happen until library managements accept that the book stock takes precedence over all other things in a library's budget. Throughout the country, more and more space is appearing between library shelves as de-stocking occurs and one wonders just how far this can continue. Is it possible to have a completely empty library? A nightmare scenario perhaps in the UK but not elsewhere in the world. As a non-unique example take Colfe's School Library in the Gambia - no books at all. If librarians must weed their book stocks at an ever increasing frequency, would it not be better to give the rejects to such libraries rather than almost giving them away to the British public?

AT Sep 07

Books on the Internet

HarperCollins, the publisher, has begun to make available selected books on its website. The free electronic editions are complete books, not extracts. Since November, HarperCollins has provided electronic extracts from about 15 of its current books and has obviously found that the initiative has paid-off in higher sales.

The HarperCollins move is a shrewd one. Although the entire contents of a book may be freely available via the internet, the rather clumsy nature of current computers, PDAs and e-book readers makes reading the complete electronic book an uncomfortable experience. Browsing the books, as in a bookshop, is another matter. The release of the Apple MacBook Air does not really alter the basic premise. Meanwhile:

• Random House has digitised all its new books and is now proceeding to do the same to its back catalogue.
• Tor, the science fiction publisher, is making one of its books available for free downloading each week.
• Borders, the US bookshop chain, has unveiled a new concept - a store where shoppers can mix and burn CDs, explore their genealogies and even publish their own novels.
• The digitalisation of out-of-copyright book collections by Google and Microsoft continues apace.
• The first production rollup display e-book/cell phone has been announced by Polymervision

What was predicted in the LLL technology webpage a long time ago is beginning to happen. The digitisation process is building momentum and will result in fundamental changes to the way public libraries operate.

More Information:
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/news/default.aspx , http://www.polymervision.com/frameset.php?id=&page=

AT Feb.08

2007 Comprehensive Performance Assessments

The 2007 Comprehensive Performance Assessments (CPA) were published on 7th February. These provide a measure of the quality of services provided by English councils to their local communities and their commitment to improving these services in the future.

Six of the 33 London boroughs are among the 13 authorities receiving the highest possible rating under CPA. The figures also show that 97 per cent of London’s boroughs are rated as improving well or strongly with 94 per cent gaining three or four stars (Harrow was the only borough to have less than 3 stars). Seven of the 13 inner London authorities were awarded 4 stars but only three of the 20 outer London boroughs were judged to have reached this standard.

The star rating gives a headline CPA result for a borough and thus provides an average picture for the performance of each Council. However, within this average, there are areas of high achievement and areas of low achievement. In almost every London borough, the cultural area was found to have performed below the average for the borough. The only exceptions to this rule are The City of London, Westminster and Richmond upon Thames. The culture area is where a borough’s public library service is usually grouped.
Click for a comparison of cultural performance with overall performance for all London authorities.

More information:
http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/ , http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/cpa/

AT. Feb.08

Busy Libraries

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) has published its 2007 ranking of the UK’s 20 most busy public libraries. The Norfolk & Norwich Millenium Library was the clear winner with 1,506,344 visits in the year and 1,158,080 issues.
The leading London library was Croydon Central Library with a 4th place based on visits (868,088) and 15th place based on issues (491,888). London public libraries performed better on the visits measure than on the issues measure.
CIFA’s data could possible suggest an issues problem in London’s public libraries and, more worrying, a general problem in inner London libraries (no representative in either table). With the high levels of deprivation in inner London and a great need to raise literacy levels, this would not be good news. However, judging the effectiveness of a borough’s Public Library Service on the performance of one “flagship” library does not take into account the other libraries which are usually better integrated into their local communities.
The inclusion of a borough library in the top 20 list could actually be a good reason to look more carefully at the overall library provision in the borough. One way to achieve a high ranking would be to reduce the service elsewhere in the borough i.e. restrict opening hours or simply close libraries. Such a policy would force people to travel to the “flagship” library and would, of course, result in the poor being penalised.

AT Jan.08

WiFi Future in Libraries

Review and Evaluation of WiFi in Public Libraries is available at: http://www.mla.gov.uk/resources/assets//W/wifipubliclibraries_10230.pdf

The subject of Library Volunteers is becoming a popular topic of conversation among members of London’s Public Library Friends groups and the new issue of CIPFA Library Statistics has some data to add substance to those conversations (see below).

Just over half of London boroughs have public library volunteer schemes,but there appears to be enormous variability in how the boroughs use those volunteers. Some have very few volunteers and use each of them intensively. Others operate in exactly the opposite manner.

Inner London boroughs (42% have volunteer schemes) are less enthusiastic about volunteers than their Outer London counterparts (60% have volunteer schemes).

Some boroughs (3 of the total of 17 boroughs with volunteer schemes) are so off-hand about this form of help that they are unable to say how many hours of work are freely given by their volunteers per year. However, on average, London’s public library volunteers give only one hour per week to their library service (allowing for holidays). For the widespread, major improvements in service which advocates of volunteer programmes suggest is possible, there has to be a great increase in this commitment. Relying on a large number of people coming forward is unrealistic.

As with all published statistics, the CIFA figures are historic and tell us nothing about what has happened since the end March 2007. Because of this, the picture painted of the Hackney library service volunteer activities is quite average – an average number of volunteers occasionally helping out in the borough’s archives. This picture changed radically in March 2007, when Hackney reopened a library which had been closed since 1996. This small library is completely volunteer run and has proved to be a notable success. A LLL delegation visited Woodberry Down Community Library and has come away impressed. A report on the visit can be viewed at: VolunteerLibrary.htm

AT Aug 08