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Public libraries are an important national resource with a vital role to play in establishing, nurturing and nourishing people's love of reading. Libraries also play an important part in life-long and informal learning providing access to books as well as other reading material whether on paper or, via the People's Network, in digital form. Libraries, together with their staff, are a trusted civic amenity—highly valued, safe public spaces and storehouses of advice, information and knowledge—without which the citizens of Britain would be very much the poorer.
The public library system in Britain costs about £1 billion per year, the vast bulk of which is provided by local authorities who must deliver an efficient and comprehensive service in their areas. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, acting through the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council—and in partnership with many others—has responsibility for the oversight of the service and the promotion of its quality. After some casting about, the Department has now settled on a system whereby libraries are measured against ten national standards. However, we believe that this list represents rather limited ambitions which, even so, are not being fulfilled. The top ten standards do not refer to extended opening hours, book loans, access or material for people with disabilities, value for money from the service or free access to the internet (all of which we regard as important). In addition, crucially, the standards that are in place are not backed up with effective mechanisms for ensuring continuous improvement or even simple compliance.
Therefore, the snapshot of library services revealed by our evidence is unsurprising. There were pockets of excellence but, overall, there were equal proportions of satisfactory and less than adequate services across the country. The data submitted to us showed that overall spending was up but, within this total, spending on books was down; as were loans of books and overall visitor numbers. We regard a situation in which core performance indicators, and gross throughput, are falling—but overall costs are rising—as a signal of a service in distress. This must be reversed.
Our key recommendations are designed to focus attention on libraries' fundamental role in promoting reading and we seek to distinguish clearly between core functions and desirable add-ons (prioritising resources in favour of the former). There need to be far stronger links between national library standards (which themselves need improving) and effective mechanisms to encourage and enable library services to meet, if not surpass, them. We also wish to see an action plan for the refurbishment of the nation's library buildings; one that includes clear indications of where the necessary resources, estimated at somewhere between £240 million and £650 million, will come from.
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