British Librarianship and Information Work 2001-2005

BRITISH LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION WORK 2001–2005

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BRITISH LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION WORK 2001–2005

Edited by J. H. BOWMAN University College London, UK

© J. H. Bowman 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. J. H. Bowman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data British librarianship and information work 2001-2005 1. Libraries - Great Britain 2. Library science - Great Britain I. Bowman, J. H. 027'.041'09049 ISSN 1752-556X ISBN: 978-0-7546-4778-2

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Contents Contributors Preface 1 National libraries Stephen Bury

vii xi 1

2 Public libraries Richard Ward

12

3 From social inclusion to community cohesion John Pateman and John Vincent

29

4 Community information Helen Leech

50

5 University libraries Jeremy Atkinson and Steve Morgan

57

6 Colleges of further education Andrew Eynon

82

7 Services to children, young people and schools Lucy Gildersleeves

90

8 Government libraries Peter Griffiths

109

9 Learned, professional and independent libraries Mary Nixon with Carol Allison

121

10 Library and information history Peter Hoare

138

11 Rare book librarianship and historical bibliography K. E. Attar

149

12 Art libraries Erica Foden-Lenahan

173

13 Music libraries Pamela Thompson

188

14 Media libraries Katharine Schöpflin and Richard Nelsson

198

British librarianship and information work 2001–2005

vi

15 Map libraries Robert Parry

214

16 Local studies Ian Jamieson

231

17 Archives Elizabeth Shepherd

248

18 British and European Union official publications Howard Picton and others

266

19 Patents Stephen Adams

299

20 The book trade Iain Stevenson

312

21 The internet and libraries Phil Bradley

328

22 Education and training Marion Huckle and Margaret Watson

340

23 Research David Nicholas

360

24 Library buildings Michael Dewe and Alan J. Clark

372

25 Cooperation Linda Berube

390

26 Marketing Linda M. Smith

400

27 Information literacy David Streatfield and Sharon Markless

413

28 Library management systems Lucy A. Tedd

431

29 Cataloguing J. H. Bowman

454

30 Classification and subject organization and retrieval Vanda Broughton

467

31 Indexing and abstracting J. H. Bowman

489

32 Preservation Alison Walker

501

Index

519

Contributors Stephen Adams, MRSC, CChem, MCLIP Director, Magister Ltd, Reading Carol Allison, BSc, DipLib, MA, MCLIP Librarian, Nottingham Subscription Library Jeremy Atkinson, BSc, MPhil, DipLib, MCLIP Director of Learning and Corporate Support Services, University of Glamorgan K. E. Attar, BA, PhD, MA Rare Books Librarian, Senate House Library, University of London Linda Berube, BA, MA, MS, MCLIP Co-East Regional Manager J. H. Bowman, MA, MA, PhD, MCLIP, FRSA Lecturer in Library and Information Studies, School of Library, Archive & Information Studies, University College London Phil Bradley Internet Consultant Vanda Broughton, MA Lecturer in Library and Information Studies, School of Library, Archive & Information Studies, University College London Stephen Bury, MA, MA, PhD, DipLib, FCLIP Head of European and American Collections, British Library David Butcher, BA, MCLIP Editor, Refer Alan J. Clark Co-ordinator, Designing Libraries Project, University of Wales Aberystwyth Michael Dewe Library Buildings Consultant Andrew Eynon, BA, Dip LIS, MCLIP, PhD Library Resource Manager, Coleg Llandrillo Cymru; Chair of CoFHE

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Erica Foden-Lenahan, MA, MCLIP Acquisitions Librarian, Tate Library & Archive Lucy Gildersleeves, MA, MCLIP Lecturer in Library and Information Studies, School of Library, Archive & Information Studies, University College London Peter Griffiths, BA, FCLIP Head, Information Services Unit, Home Office Peter Hoare, MA, FSA, HonFCLIP formerly Librarian, University of Nottingham Marion Huckle, BSc, MCLIP Head of Qualifications and Professional Development, CILIP Grace L. Hudson, MA, MPhil, MIL, MCLIP Deputy University Librarian (Academic Services), University of Bradford Jane Inman, BA, DipLib, MCLIP Technical Librarian, Warwickshire County Council Ian Jamieson, FCLIP Editor, The local studies librarian; formerly lecturer at University of Northumbria Helen Leech, BA, MA, DipLIS, MCLIP Area Librarian, Gillingham, Kent Sharon Markless Lecturer in Higher Education, King’s College London; Senior Associate, Information Management Associates Steve Morgan, BA, MBA, MEd, FCLIP Head of Learning Resources, University of Glamorgan Richard Nelsson Information Manager, Guardian Newspapers Ltd; Chair-elect, Association of UK Media Librarians David Nicholas, MPhil, PhD, MCLIP Director, School of Library, Archive & Information Studies, University College London Mary Nixon, BA, MA, DipLib, MCLIP

Librarian, Goldsmiths, University of London Valerie Nurcombe, BA, MCLIP Publications Secretary, SCOOP

Contributors

ix

Robert Parry, BA Senior Research Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Reading, and Curator of the University’s Map Collection, until 2004 John Pateman, MBA, DipLib, FCLIP Head of Libraries, Lincolnshire County Council, 2003– ; Head of Libraries, Hackney 1995–1998; Head of Libraries, Merton 1998–2003 Howard Picton, BA, MCLIP Parliamentary Affairs Manager, Bank of England; Secretary, Standing Committee on Official Publications (SCOOP) Chris Pond, OBE, MA, PhD, HonFCLIP, ACIPR Head of Reference Services, Department of the Library, House of Commons Katharine Schöpflin, MA, MA, MCLIP BBC Information & Archives 1996–2005; Chair, Association of UK Media Librarians Elizabeth Shepherd, BA, MA, PhD, DMS, DAS, RMSA Senior Lecturer in Archives and Records Management, School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, University College London Linda M. Smith, MCLIP Publications Manager, Libraries and Learning Resources, Nottingham Trent University; Chair, Publicity and Public Relations Group, CILIP Iain Stevenson Professor of Publishing, Centre for Publishing, University College London David Streatfield Principal, Information Management Associates Lucy A. Tedd, BSc, MCLIP Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of Wales Aberystwyth; editor of Program: electronic library and information systems Pamela Thompson, BA, HonRCM Chief Librarian, Royal College of Music, London John Vincent Networker, The Network tackling social exclusion in libraries, museums, archives and galleries; until 1996 a senior manager in the London Borough of Lambeth Library Service Alison Walker, MA, BLitt, DipLib Head, National Preservation Office Richard Ward, MLib Head of Library and Information Services, Hampshire County Council

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Margaret Watson, BA, MA, MCLIP formerly Acting Head of Department, University of Northumbria; President, CILIP 2003–2004; Chair, CILIP’s Qualifications Framework Steering Group

Preface This volume now supplants its predecessor as the latest in a long line. The first volume of The year’s work in librarianship covered 1928 and was published in 1929. Coverage was international, and the intention was chiefly to provide a review of the literature rather than an account of events. With some disruption to the sequence during the Second World War, the annual volumes continued until v. 17, which covered 1950. From 1951 the plan changed, largely because of the inception of Library science abstracts: the intention became the recording of major trends and developments, though still with a focus on publications, and the volumes covered five years at a time, under the title Five years’ work in librarianship. The first of these, for 1951–1955, was published in 1958. After three such compilations the focus changed again and the field was narrowed to Britain, the title becoming British librarianship and information science. From 1976–1980 onwards the book was divided into two volumes and was called British librarianship and information work. The five-yearly publication schedule continued and the last pair of volumes, covering 1986–1990, was published in 1993. All those volumes were published by the Library Association. Its successor CILIP, however, did not wish to continue them, and it was therefore a great delight to find that Ashgate were willing to take them up. It was an added delight that they wished not only to catch up with a 1991–2000 volume but to continue the series with the present one. As in the last volume, it is necessary to point out that inclusions of subjects have always varied from volume to volume and that this one is no exception. Regrettably, a few authors found that when the time came they were unable to furnish their contributions. There are therefore no chapters on industrial and commercial libraries, management, medical and health libraries, or multimedia, all of which had been originally agreed. On the other hand, some subjects, such as community information, colleges of further education, children’s services, and library buildings, make a welcome return this time; information literacy replaces user education and user studies. Contributors were given the same word limit as in the previous volumes, namely 7,500 words, but were encouraged to include as many bibliographic references as possible, so that readers may follow up topics that interest them. I have made no attempt to impose a uniform style on their writing, but I have tried to standardize spelling and have done my best to impose a uniform system of citation, though I have not tried to standardize every entry across all the chapters. This

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period particularly saw a very large number of government initiatives, projects and frameworks, many of which originated as reports, and I have again agonized repeatedly over capital letters and italics. I know that I have not achieved total consistency. Contributors were asked to provide any post-nominal letters that they wanted included. Some specifically asked for such letters to be omitted, but I can assure readers that they nevertheless possess appropriate qualifications. It is perhaps worth referring again to a body which appears many times in these pages. In April 2000 an organization was formed which was fleetingly called the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLAC). Within less than a month it had changed its name to Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, and remained so until February 2004 when it took again the name Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (now abbreviated as MLA). I have usually retained the form used by the author wherever it occurs. Re:source often appeared thus, with a colon, but I have taken the liberty of removing it. In conclusion I should like to thank my head of department, Professor David Nicholas, for his continued encouragement in this project, and to reiterate my thanks to all the contributors for providing material of such quality and for making it all such fun, and such an education. J.H.B.

1

National libraries Stephen Bury

Between 2001 and 2005 the world of information changed at an unprecedented rate: for example, in 2001 it would have been hard to predict the panoply of Google services from Google Scholar to Google Earth, or that Amazon would be selling the chapters of individual books over the web. This would pose great problems for any library but national libraries, relatively large, laborious in their governance structures, and with very large legacy systems, faced particular difficulties. This chapter will outline how the three national libraries of Britain responded to these challenges. It is written by a member of British Library staff, and it reflects his personal view. It is emphatically not the viewpoint of the British Library. Strategy All three national libraries undertook strategic reviews during this period, not only to meet the changes in scholarly communications but also to adjust to the revival of the Scottish Parliament and the creation of the Welsh Assembly, and to cope with a raft of governmental legislation: the Freedom of Information Act (in force from January 2005), the Disability Discrimination Act and the implementation of the European Copyright Directive. In 2001 the British Library launched a major consultation with its users with its New strategic directions for the British Library.1 There were over 5,000 responses, which largely endorsed the themes of working in collaboration and partnership, increasing the understanding of user needs, widening access to collections and services and accelerating the Library’s e-strategy. The leitmotif of the hybrid library was also present in the National Library of Scotland’s public consultation ‘A National Library for the 21st Century’ (2000/01), leading up to the ‘Breaking through the walls’ strategy, launched in March 2004,2 and in the National Library of Wales earlier consultation ‘Choosing the future’ (1999), with its emphasis on both physical and virtual access (the Visitor Centre and the Digital Library), resulting in its corporate plan 2000/01 ‘Digital Library, Open Library’. The Welsh Assembly’s strategic documents, Wales: a better country, Creative future and Making the connections also modulated the strategy of the National Library of Wales in 2004/05.3

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005

If a strategy was needed for national libraries to meet the demands the 21st century, it was felt at the British Library that a capacity to develop strategy as and when required was also needed. In May 2003 the Library appointed its first Head of Strategy and Planning, Caroline Pung. Early fruits of this development were the formulation of Redefining the library and Measuring our value.4 The former redefined the British Library’s role in the research information cycle and outlined the its strategies for research in science, technology and medicine in higher education and industry; the social sciences in higher education and the practitioner communities; and research in the arts and humanities in higher education and the creative industries. It also defined the strategic priorities of enriching the user’s experience, building the digital research library, transforming search and navigation, growing and managing the national collection, developing its people and guaranteeing financial sustainability. Economic impact assessment Measuring our value deployed the contingent valuation method (CVM) championed by the Nobel Prize-winning economists, Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow, to determine the direct and indirect value – economic, cultural, social and intellectual – added by the British Library to the nation.5 Traditionally, this had used the qualitative method of case studies. A carefully designed questionnaire measured the consumer surplus value of the British Library’s reading rooms, the document supply service and the very existence of the British Library: over 2,000 people were asked: x how much they would be willing to pay for the Library’s continued existence x what was the minimum payment they would be willing to accept to forgo the Library’s existence x how much they invested in terms of time and money to make use of the Library x how much they would have to pay to use alternatives to the Library, if such alternatives could be found. The conclusions were that the total value each year of the British Library was £363 million (of which £304 million was indirect value and £59 million direct value); for every £1 of public funding the British Library received annually, £4.40 was generated for the UK economy; and if the British Library did not exist, the UK would lose £280 million of economic value per annum.6 Management 2001–2005 saw further changes in the management structures of all three libraries. In 2001 Lynne Brindley, appointed in July 2000, completed a top-tier restructuring, abolishing the posts of director-general and introducing an executive team consisting of directors of Operations and Services, Scholarship and Collections,

National libraries

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Strategic Marketing and Communications, e-Strategy, Finance and Corporate Resources. Within Scholarship and Collections the distinct focus on special collections was replaced by a structure based on three areas: British, European & American, and Asia, Pacific and Africa. In February 2004 the new post of Head of Higher Education was created. The National Library of Wales completed its restructuring in January 2002 with the creation of three departments: Collection Services, Corporate Services and Public Services. It also abolished so-called ‘curatorial’ departments based on differentiation by medium of material. At the National Library of Scotland, Ian McGowan was replaced as Director by Martyn Wade in September 2002. In 2003 a new departmental structure was implemented with four directorates: Collection Development, Corporate Services, Customer Services (including cataloguing, education, reference services and interlibrary loans) and Development and Marketing. Staff development The strategies of all three national libraries prioritized their staff and their development as keys to delivering strategy. Each library had a different approach: the National Library of Wales gained Investors in People accreditation in November 2003, whilst in 2004 the British Library introduced a radical competency-based performance system which was intended to be eventually linked to performance pay: objectives were to be modulated by the way they had been achieved. The 21st Century Curator Project 2002 saw the launch of the British Library’s 21st Century Curator Project in order to explore how content experts could straddle traditional expertise in palaeography, historical bibliography etc., with skills in digitization, writing for the web, project management and the emerging new forms of scholarly communication – institutional repositories for pre- and post-print research papers, blogs, wikis, mash-ups, folksonomies, etc. Between 2003 and 2004 there was an Andrew W. Mellonfunded project with the New York Public Library to use curatorial exchanges, benchmarking and a conference, including an international panel of curators, librarians, and archivists, to see if there were common solutions to common problems.7 Research breaks, a research register, an externally validated research assessment exercise, an institutional repository, and professional competencies for the new performance management system were just some of the results of this initiative. On-site services All three libraries saw efforts to improve the reader and visitor experience. June 2004 saw the opening at the National Library of Wales of the Drwm, the second phase of a £5 million visitor experience project, funded by the National Lottery Fund. Phase 1 had been improved accommodation for the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales. Phase 2 created an air-conditioned 100 person space for

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005

films, live performances and lectures. Above the Drwm, the Hengwrt gallery was opened to allow such treasures as the Black book of Carmarthen, The book of Llandaf, Turner’s painting of Dolbadarn Castle or George Owen’s map of Pembrokeshire to be displayed to the highest possible conservation standard. Meanwhile, the Peniarth Room was refurbished for temporary exhibitions.8 In October 2004 the South Reading Room was re-opened with refurbished accommodation for manuscripts, maps and microforms. At the National Library of Scotland planning took place in 2004 to open up the front hall of the George IV Bridge building, long perceived as a barrier to access. Completion was planned for mid-2006 with further enhancements such as a selfregistration scheme for readers, smartcard technology and wireless broadband internet. The changes in the information patterns for science, patents and business led to different approaches by national libraries to reading room provision in these areas. The National Library of Scotland closed its separate science and business reading rooms in December 2001: physical materials would now be consulted in the general reading rooms, whilst SCOTBIS provided a virtual business information service.9 Meanwhile the British Library repurposed one of its Patents reading rooms into an enlarged Social Sciences Reading Room, and planned a Business and Intellectual Property Centre in the remaining Patents Reading Room. A pilot for this latter began in May 2004 with a planned building of training rooms and a networking area, funded by the London Development Agency, for an April 2006 opening. In the interests of social inclusion, the British Library simplified its admissions rules: what was required was a need to use the Library, proof of address and signature. A store directory and new signage were introduced. A series of events, performances and concerts were arranged to enlarge the size and composition of the traditional British Library audience. Again, all three libraries tried to address the social inclusion agenda of the Labour government, by attracting new audiences and developing new services, such as roadshows and touring exhibitions. The British Library attempted to join up its services for remote and onsite readers, as the electronic blurred this dichotomy.10 The front hall become one of the largest wi-fi (wireless fidelity, a term for a wireless local area network) spaces in the UK; readers were enabled (as at the National Library of Scotland from September 2004) to order reading room items in advance from the web. And indeed exhibitions at all three libraries had virtual galleries on their respective websites. Remote services Websites The period saw the emergence of different approaches (often within the same institution) to the national library website: was it an intermediary or guide to the services of that library? Was it the virtual equivalent, down to departmental structures, of the libraries? Was it another library, offering content to many who

National libraries

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would be unable to use the physical or inter-library loan facilities of that library? The 2001/02 annual report of the British Library described the website as ‘a comprehensive guide to the Library’s collections and services’: it had over 15 million ‘views of individual pages’. At the end of 2005 page hits stood at just under 41 million. The equivalent figure for the National Library of Scotland was just over 15 million. Digital content was one of the main drivers of this new traffic. For example, the addition of the original manuscript of Lewis Carroll’s Alice to the British Library’s Turning the Pages on 21 September 2005 resulted in over 1 million requests for images in both October and November. The three libraries became much more conscious of the centrality of their websites and made important developments in their appearance and functionality. In the British Library’s case British Library Direct, the application of Google’s search engine appliance to the site in 2004, the restructuring of the home page by target audience and the adaptation of the award-winning Turning the Pages format to the web were just some of the developments that moved and kept the Google ranking of the homepage at eighth. Document supply For the British Library the web offered both positives and negatives for document supply. It became possible to develop such services as ArtWeb, Articles Direct, Lexicon and British Library Direct for web ordering and electronic delivery, but at the same time it helped competitors to erode the high value segment of the document supply market that had helped cross-subsidize the broader British Library offer. A dual strategy of increasing prices (from 2001) and the radical cutting of costs (from 2003) ensured that Document Supply still made a positive contribution to British Library income in this period. It was difficult to break out of a cycle of increasing charges which might lead to a reduction in demand: for example, the British Library review of charges in 2000–01 was instrumental in the National Library of Scotland establishing SILLR – a new Scottish inter-lending rate. Digitization Each of the three national libraries was involved in preparing and then delivering digitization projects funded by the New Opportunities Fund.11 The British Library’s Collect Britain received £3,285,000 to make freely available around 100,000 maps, prints, drawings, sheet music, text and sound recordings. It was launched in October 2003 but was not fully completed until 2005. It was also a partner of the NOF-digitise project ‘Coming Here’, led by the Public Record Office (later the National Archives). The National Library of Scotland led a £4 million NOF-funded consortium to digitize Resources for Learning in Scotland (RLS), whist the National Library of Wales led a £1 million project, ‘Gathering the Jewels’, 2001 to 2003. The British Library continued to use a mixture of public and private funding of digitization, rather than grant in aid, the money provided by the Department for

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Culture, Media and Sport. The Canterbury tales and the Gutenberg Bible were digitized in collaboration with the Japanese University of Keio, whilst the Shakespeare Quartos (and the 31 quartos in the Bute Collection of the National Library of Scotland) were digitized working with the commercial publisher, Octavo, in 2004–05. Private funders enabled more treasures to be converted to Turning the Pages. The British Library’s desire to create critical masses of digitized materials was furthered when it secured £3 million from the Joint Information Systems Committee to digitize 3,900 hours of sound content, from Beethoven’s string quartets to interviews with artists, and 2 million pages of 19th-century newspapers.12 The National Library of Scotland worked closely with SCRAN (the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) as well as with private sponsors. Collection development e-legal deposit Perhaps the most notable achievement of this period was the entry of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 on the statute book.13 It came into force on 1 February 2004. It built on the voluntary deposit scheme which had been in operation since 2000, whereby publishers were encouraged to deposit hand-held electronic publications and microforms. This was governed by the Joint Committee on Voluntary Deposit (JCVD). Meanwhile, discussions took place with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the introduction of legislation: it was decided that the most appropriate route was a so-called ‘hand-out’ bill. It was introduced as a Private Member’s Bill by Chris Mole, MP for Ipswich, in December 2002. The British Library with the other legal deposit libraries, led by Dr Clive Field, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library, and John Byford, mounted a campaign to support the Bill: the British Library’s Press and Public Relations Department implemented its stakeholder strategy first developed during lobbying for the Comprehensive Spending Review and helped to clear the legislative hurdles. The Act extended the previous legal deposit legislation passed in 1911 and enshrined the principle that electronic or epublications and other non-print materials would be deposited in future under secondary legislation. It ensured that these publications could be saved as part of the published archive – and become an important resource for future researchers and scholars. For Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, this was ‘an historic piece of legislation and puts the UK among the first countries which will be collecting, by law, their electronic output’.14 Web archiving It had always been imagined that the secondary legislation for archiving websites, permitting domain harvesting, would be one of the latter ones to be introduced. But following the British Library’s pilot, Domain UK in 2001 and, for that matter, the Wales on the Web project (renamed in May 2004 as Wales on the Web – the all Wales portal), all three national libraries realized that there was a risk that much

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essential material for the documentation of culture might be lost, and teamed up with the Wellcome Institute and JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) in UKWAC, the UK Web Archiving Consortium. This operated on a selective permissions basis.15 The British Library was also a partner of an international web archiving consortium with the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Internet Archive to develop web archiving tools. Major acquisitions This period saw major public fundraising appeals for the Royal Philharmonic Society Archive for the British Library (completed 2003) and, in April 2004, the launch of an appeal by the National Library of Scotland for £31.2 million to purchase the John Murray Publishing Archive 1768–1920, one of the world’s most important publishers’ archives with material by Byron, Scott, Carlyle, Darwin and Livingstone. Other major acquisitions for the British Library were the papers of Lord Olivier, Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir John Gielgud; correspondence between Ted Hughes and Keith Sagar, Ted Hughes and Leonard Baskin, George Eliot and Jane Senior, and the Oscar Wilde Collection belonging to Lady Eccles. Resource discovery In June 2004 the British Library launched its Aleph-based integrated library system, bringing together 30 million bibliographic records and replacing 16 legacy systems: there were in excess of 1.6 million searches on it per month. This provided the opportunity to restructure cataloguing workflows, and to conform to MARC 21. Cataloguing and retroconversion backlogs were identified and prioritized for the first time in 2002, and an action plan developed to tackle them. A wider definition of resource discovery – of items not in a library’s collection – led to the National Library of Wales developing a portal, Wales on the Web, supported by the British Library’s Co-operation and Partnership Programme, from May 2001. Collection management The British Library continued to apply its life-cycle costing approach to its collections and to consider its extension to electronic materials. It completed its preservation assessment, based on the National Preservation Office (NPO) schema, and automated its preservation bidding system. A conservation research strategy was formulated. With the Library of Congress and other libraries, the British Library instigated the Cellulose Acetate Microfiche Forum in 2002 and produced guidelines.16 Plans for a Centre for Conservation at the St Pancras site of the British Library were agreed. Planning permission was received in 2004 and the £12.5 million raised to fund it. The building was expected to be complete in early 2007, and would provide state-of-the-art technical facilities for the Sound Archive as well as a world-class facility for all aspects of book conservation, including education and training, addressing a shortage of book conservation skills nationally.

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Library security As members of LIBER (Ligue des bibliothèques européennes de recherches), the three libraries signed up with the ‘Copenhagen Principles’ of 2002 to promote international cooperation in the face of thefts of library materials on an international scale.17 Storage The lack of storage space and the increase in the number of hardcopy publications coming through legal deposit, despite expanding electronic publication, confronted all three libraries. The National Library of Scotland worked with other libraries in Scotland to frame a Collaborative Academic Store for Scotland (CASS). In 2005 the British Library piloted a study with the White Rose partnership (the universities of Sheffield, Leeds and York) which led to a joint study with the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL), published in September 2005, and which called for a national research reserve.18 In 2004 the British Library decided to construct a high-density, fully automated low-oxygen storage solution for its freehold property at Boston Spa in Yorkshire. At the end of 2005 funding and permissions were in place to begin building what would be the largest of its type for library and archive use in the world. It was scheduled for completion in 2008. National cooperation The National Lottery provided £7.8 million to fund a national programme to microfilm local newspapers. NEWSPLAN was completed in 2004. 1,500 UK newspaper titles and a total of 20 million pages were filmed, including over 200 Welsh newspaper titles. Research Libraries Network All three national libraries were partners, along with the three higher education funding bodies and the research councils, in the Research Libraries Network (RLN), launched in July 2004 but based on the report of the Research Support Libraries Group (RSLG) of 2003. The purpose of the RLN was ‘to lead and coordinate new developments in the collaborative provision of research information for the benefit of researchers in the UK’.19 It was renamed the Research Information Network (RIN) in 2005. SUNCAT Part of the RSLG report identified research library infrastructure as a precondition for deep sharing of resources. RSLG and JISC began a Serials Union CATalogue (SUNCAT) pilot, launched in January 2005. Other library holdings were added in 2005.20 International cooperation Library staff from all three institutions took part in international conferences of the

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Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL), the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL), the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and LIBER. The Director of the National Library of Scotland chaired the planning group for the 68th IFLA conference, held in Glasgow in 2002, and the National Library of Scotland and the British Library were joint hosts of the 2002 CDNL. The British Library hosted the 2001 LIBER conference, whilst the National Library of Scotland hosted the CERL conference in 2004. There were many bilateral contacts. For example, the British Library took part in a workshop with the National Library of Russia in 2003, whilst the National Library of Scotland had close relations with the Russian State Library. The European Library (TEL) The TEL project, funded by the European Commission, began in February 2001. Its partners were the national libraries of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Portugal and Slovenia and it was led by the UK. TEL had the aim to create an operational virtual European catalogue of the national libraries of Europe by using a TEL library application profile and standard metadata submission. Following the development of a prototype, in June 2004 the Office of the European Library was established at the Hague and the European Library itself was softlaunched in 2005.21 Endangered Archives Programme In partnership with the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund, the British Library launched a £10 million joint initiative to help save the world’s endangered archives. The programme, administered by the British Library, advised by an international panel of experts allocated a first round of grants to institutions and academic researchers in 2005. Copies would be held in a master archive at the British Library.22

Notes 1 2 3

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New strategic directions for the British Library. London: British Library, 2001. Breaking through the walls: a draft strategy for the National Library of Scotland. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 2003. Creative future : a culture strategy for Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly, 2002; Wales: a better country: the strategic agenda of the Welsh Assembly Government. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly, 2003; Welsh Assembly, Making the connections: delivering better services for Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly, 2005. Redefining the library: the British Library’s strategy 2005–2008. London: British Library, 2005; Measuring our value: results of an independent economic impact study commissioned by the British Library to measure the Library’s direct and indirect value to the UK economy. London: British Library, 2004; Lynne Brindley and Elspeth Hyams, ‘A beacon for British knowledge and research’, Library + information update 5 (1/2), 2006, 24–6.

10 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005 Keith Arrow et al., Report of the NOAA Panel on Contingent Valuation. Washington, DC: US Government, 1993 (Federal register; 58). Available at: (accessed 31/5/06). This excludes the considerable value generated for non-UK British Library users, and the benefit to the UK economy of non-UK-domiciled users of the Reading Rooms. Twenty-first Century Curatorship: (accessed 31/5/06). Many of these temporary exhibitions also exist as a digital gallery: (accessed 31/5/06). SCOTBIS: (accessed 31/5/06). Providing services beyond the reading room. London: National Audit Office, 2004. Also available at: (accessed 31/5/06). Julie Carpenter, ‘What has NOF-digitise taught us?’, Library + information update 5 (6), 2006, 40–1. Archival Sound Recordings Project: ; British Newspapers: (accessed 31/5/06). Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003: 2003 chapter 28. London: HMSO, 2003. Also available at: (accessed 31/5/06). (accessed 31/5/06). UK Web Archiving Consortium: (accessed 31/5/06). Cellulose Acetate Microfilm Forum: (accessed 31/5/06). Copenhagen Principles: (accessed 31/5/06). Optimising storage and access in UK research libraries: (accessed 31/5/06). Research Information Network: (accessed 31/5/06). See also Stephen Bury, ‘Joining up: national collection development in the UK’ in National policy of the library collection development to promote education and culture in society. Riga: Association of Latvian Academic Libraries, 2003, pp. 27–33. SUNCAT: (accessed 31/5/06). The European Library: (accessed 31/5/06); Stephen Bury, ‘The pre-history of the European Library: the British Library and TEL’, Alexandria 17 (3), 2005, 143–7; Jill Cousins, ‘The European Library: from project to service’, Alexandria 17 (1), 2005, 35–48. Endangered Archives: (accessed 31/5/06).

Further reading The national library websites contain much useful material, e.g. press releases for the period 2001–5: British Library: National Library of Scotland: National Library of Wales:

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The British Library twenty-eighth annual report and accounts 2000–01. London: British Library, 2001. Delivering excellence: National Library of Scotland annual review, 2004–2005. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 2005. From knowledge to innovation: the British Library twenty-ninth annual report and accounts 2001–2002.London: British Library, 2002. Making a measurable difference: British Library annual report and accounts 2003–2004. London: British Library, 2004. National Library of Scotland: annual review 2003–2004, Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 2004. National Library of Scotland annual report. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 2002– The National Library of Wales annual report. Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2001–2004. Powering the world’s knowledge: the facts, achievements, images and figures: British Library annual report and accounts 2002–2003. London: British Library, 2003. Reaching Wales and the world: the National Library of Wales annual report 2004–5. Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2005. Redefining the library: the British Library annual report and accounts 2004–5. London: British Library, 2005. ROUTES (Reaching out, extending skills): (accessed 31/5/06).

2

Public libraries Richard Ward

Introduction After several decades of gentle public disinterest and a less gentle decline in use and seeming relevance the first few years of the twenty-first century saw a massive resurgence in the attention paid to libraries. For example, in 2001 the government published the Public Library Standards giving, for the first time, real meaning to the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act’s requirement that library authorities should provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient service’.1 The library standards, and their role within the CPA (Comprehensive Performance Assessment) process,2 obliged library authorities to look more closely at their library services. The People’s Network, a scheme funded initially by the National Lottery, brought high-speed internet connections to every public library in the country and was one of the main reasons for the increases in library visitors at a time when most other indicators were showing significant declines in use.3 The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) published Framework for the future: libraries, learning and information for the next decade,4 and handed over responsibility for its delivery to Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries (MLA).5 The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee inquired into the state of public libraries and produced a major report, concluding that libraries had lost their way and should return to concentrating upon books and reading.6 During the years under review there were several other reports – of varying influence. In 2002 the Audit Commission produced Building better library services, which argued for a customer-focused approach: providing more books, improving opening hours, refurbishing buildings and increasing awareness amongst non-users.7 The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) published a slim pamphlet Better public libraries, which drew attention to some of the principles which should lie behind good library design. 8 In 2004 the National Foundation for Educational Research published Extending the role of libraries, which recognized that the traditional role of libraries (the mass lending of books) was in decline, and pointed to actions which could be taken.9 Amongst the actions were niche marketing, co-locations with other services and changing the ways in which staff were deployed.

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10

The Laser Foundation sponsored PricewaterhouseCoopers to research into the impact made by public libraries and the report was published in 2005.11 It showed that libraries made a significant impact on people’s lives and contributed to wider policy priorities at both local and national level. In 2004 Douglas Grindlay and Anne Morris published their findings on the decline in adult book lending.12 They found that the loss was mainly of adult fiction, and that the underlying causes were probably increasing affluence making book purchases more affordable, and widespread use of the internet and home PCs. Other causes could be book fund cuts and reductions in opening hours. OCLC published a major survey into people’s perceptions of libraries and information services.13 This report covered users in North America, the UK, Australia, Singapore and India. Although its methodology was self-limiting (the research was carried out via the internet, and in English) there were several key messages: the library brand is the book; there is a strong attachment to libraries but that attachment is based upon nostalgia; and Respondents do indeed have strong attachments to the idea of the ‘Library’ but clearly expressed dissatisfaction with the service experience of the libraries they use. Poor signage, inhospitable surroundings, unfriendly staff, lack of parking, dirt, cold, hard-touse systems and inconvenient hours were mentioned many many times by respondents. The overall message is clear: improve the physical experience of using libraries.

Consultants PKF were asked by DCMS and MLA to look into the efficiency of English public libraries and they paid particular attention to the stock supply chain.14 The report however raised fundamental questions which the public library movement as a whole was still grappling with at the time of writing. This work was being carried forward by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The period under review was notable for the number of polemic publications and articles. The quality newspapers regularly carried think pieces bemoaning the loss of the library as the author remembered them in his or her youth. But of more significance was the publication of Charles Leadbeater’s Overdue,15 calling, amongst other things, for a national libraries agency; John Holden’s extended essay Creative reading,16 and the report which caused the greatest splash – Tim Coates’s Who’s in charge?17 So these were five years in which an unprecedented amount of scrutiny was given to public libraries with commentators agreeing that ‘something must be done’, but no clear consensus emerged. There were practitioners who believed that the era of mass loans of mainly light, undemanding literature had gone forever and that libraries – if they were to survive – needed to transform themselves in the way that Tower Hamlets, Kent and Hampshire created Idea Stores and Discovery Centres, and those who believed that all the problems could be solved if libraries got back to basics, crammed their buildings full of books, gave them a lick of paint and opened them long hours.

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Comprehensive, efficient and modern public libraries: standards and assessment Chris Smith, the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, recognized that his duty to superintend the provision of a comprehensive and efficient public library service was hampered by a lack of any clear definition of what comprehensive and efficient actually meant.18 To help him in his task he oversaw the introduction of 19 standards. These were designed as an aid to library managers in their planning; to library authorities in reviewing their services internally; to the Audit Commission in its Best Value inspections; and to users and government so they could make more informed judgements about the quality of services provided. For the first time government specified what standard of service it expected library authorities to provide for their users: x Public Library Standard (PLS) 1 laid down what proportion of the population had to live within a certain distance of a library. These proportions varied depending upon the nature of the authority: a rural county was not expected to achieve the same standard as an inner London borough. Mention was made of ‘convenient’ opening hours: at least 5 hours per week outside 9am–5pm on weekdays. x PLS2 was concerned with unscheduled library closures and the number of mobile library stops missed. x PLS3 was to ensure libraries were open adequate hours and was measured by a formula which produced aggregate hours per thousand population. As with many standards the measure was the top quartile for all authorities. x PLS4 raised the issue of how long individual libraries were open each week. Authorities had to report on the percentage of large libraries open for more than 45 hours and to consider extended opening hours, i.e. over 60 per week for those which were the ‘service point of first choice’ for populations over 150,000. x PLS5 expected all service points open for more than 10 hours per week to provide access to online catalogues. x PLS6 laid down that there should be at least 6 public access computers per 10,000 population. x PLS7 established that a normal book issue period must be at least three weeks. x PLS8 said borrowers must be allowed at least 8 books at one time. x PLS9 set down time bands within which readers’ book requests should be met. x PLS10 measured virtual library visits. x PLS11 looked at actual visits. x PLS12 – PLS15. These standards were to be based on the Public Library User Surveys (PLUS) and covered success in finding a specific book, in gaining a specific piece of information, views on the staff’s level of knowledge, and the rating of the staff’s helpfulness.

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x PLS16 was a quality index of book stock to be worked out in detail later. x PLS17 measured the number of items added to stock per thousand population. x PLS18 looked at the number of years it would take to replenish the whole lending stock. x PLS19 was concerned with the quality of the staff employed – those with information management qualifications and those with ICT qualifications. The Standards were introduced softly: authorities were given three years to achieve them, and any sanctions for non-achievement were played down. Performance against the standards was reported through the Annual Library Plan process: but that process itself, having been introduced in 1998, was being phased out. By 2004/05 the standards had been refined to ten, covering the distance people lived from a static service point, aggregate opening hours, number of libraries with internet access, number of electronic workstations, request supply time, numbers of visits, user satisfaction, numbers of books purchased and length of time it would take to replenish the lending stock. According to the Public Library Statistics 2004–05 no English authority met all ten standards.19 A handful achieved 9, and 19 achieved 8. The majority of authorities were clustered around 3 to 7 with 5 achieving 2, and only 1 authority only achieving 1. Some standards were far easier to meet than others: for example, almost every authority was able to report 100% of libraries providing access to the internet. Opening hours gave more problems – and the gearing effect of the way this standard was measured made it very expensive to achieve if an authority’s starting position was well below the requirement. There was also the temptation to achieve this target by increasing opening hours at libraries where the cost was lowest. An hour at a branch was as valuable for the standards as an hour at a central library, but the costs, and the benefits to the community, were far different. The number of electronic workstations available to users per 10,000 population was another flawed standard. Across England the average number achieved was 6, which met the standard. Most authorities achieved the standard, with a few exceeding it by a wide margin and hardly any failing dismally. This was not surprising when it was remembered that the initial funding came from the National Lottery but it was essentially arbitrary and meaningless. A more valuable standard could have been derived from an examination of utilization rates with a standard being set at a level which would allow judgements to be made on whether the right number were available. If utilization was at 100% there would probably be unfulfilled demand with some potential users being turned away. On the other hand if utilization was at 20% then arguably too many had been provided and the resources should have been diverted elsewhere. But this is to argue over detail. The important point was that the standards existed, and flawed though they may have been they were at least an attempt to define the ‘comprehensive and efficient’ phrase from the 1964 Act. Without the standards it is less likely that cultural services overall, and library services in

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particular, would have been taken so seriously in the Comprehensive Performance Assessment. Comprehensive Performance Assessment In our over-centralized democracy, government feels it has the right to superintend the actions and performance of local government to a degree far greater than anywhere else in the western world. Despite claims that there will be greater local freedoms the centrally applied straitjacket gets tighter. During the first years of the twenty-first century central government used the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) to raise service standards across local government. CPA was administered by the Audit Commission, whose website provides links to a vast amount of detail including inspection reports of individual library authorities.20 The CPA regime enabled local people to see how their council compared to others. It created the league table for authorities similar to those used to rank schools. The tables were derived from inspection reports, and by looking at other measures, such as performance against standards. An authority’s score was judged predominately by how well its education and social services performed, and on its use of resources. However, there was a culture block, and in that culture block the performance of libraries was of key importance. If an authority was on the borderline between two categories then a good (or poor) rating for libraries, and thus culture overall, might be sufficient to tip the measure one way or another. Authorities were classified into one of five categories: poor, weak, fair, good and excellent, and a judgement was introduced as to the ‘direction of travel’ an authority was taking. The idea was to stimulate continuous improvement – not just from the authorities judged to be poor, weak or fair but also amongst those deemed to be good or excellent. To maintain a good or excellent rating an authority had to improve its performance over the previous period. In at least some authorities this was sufficient to get the library service taken seriously when bids for resources, or more cynically, places where cuts could be made, were being examined. It was at times such as this that the position in the authority’s hierarchy of the chief librarian assumed an importance beyond the mere vanity of the officer concerned. With the tendency for authorities to have a few, large, service directorates it was almost unknown for the chief librarian to be a chief officer. That in itself did not matter particularly provided that the head of the department was aware of the importance of libraries and was prepared to make the arguments in the forums to which he or she had regular access and the librarian did not. Although I do not have the evidence to prove this claim – and perhaps a longer perspective is required – it seems plausible that library services did better when they were the largest component of a cultural directorate rather than being a relatively insignificant part of an education or adult services set up. Framework for the future Tessa Blackstone, then Minister of State for the Arts, said in her introduction:

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Framework for the future is a long term strategic vision for the public library service. … The proposals are presented as a framework to encourage imaginative innovation and greater operational effectiveness and efficiency…’21

Framework for the future described the strengths of libraries: providing neutral and welcoming community spaces; the stock holdings ranging beyond books to DVDs, videos, CDs and the internet; the range of services on offer – lending books, formal and informal learning, promoting reading ‘across the age range’; and access to information and advice. It went on to say that libraries had the potential to do more in ensuring that all sectors of society have access to the full range of knowledge and information which they need. The report highlighted the needs of the disadvantaged – the less affluent and those with literacy problems. Framework considered that libraries needed a modern mission based upon four principles: evolution, public value, distinctiveness, and local interpretation of national programmes. Interestingly, the principle of local interpretation of national programmes highlighted one of the factors of the public library service which was at the same time a strength and a weakness. Public libraries in England were provided by 149 separate library authorities. This gave the local councils and the local community pride and ownership in what they were doing but it meant that it was very difficult to get national programmes going and, although in aggregate, public libraries could be very influential in practice they were fragmented and their potential influence dissipated. The report itself was interesting and well illustrated and contained many examples of good practice. Whilst it lacked a ‘killer’ application which would become the saviour of the public library movement it did nevertheless provide a vision of a library service in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Delivery of the vision was to be handled by MLA. The Action Plan divided the tasks into work packages with nine strategic objectives. Each objective was to be achieved by actions with timescales, modest budgetary support from the DCMS, and perhaps most important, regular reporting of progress against clear targets. The four work packages were: building capacity to deliver transformation; books, reading and learning; digital citizenship; and community and civic values. Quite clearly more time would be needed to judge the success of Framework for the future. Indeed, as this chapter was being written the Tavistock Institute was undertaking a detailed review of the achievements to date. Delivering Framework for the future was an immense task. There was no single unified library service; libraries were part of local democracy. There was no strong inspection regime, and no rigorously enforced set of meaningful standards. The Framework action plan tried to overcome those difficulties with work to achieve national marketing strategies whereby a clear vision could be transmitted – but there were still citizens for whom the library service was an irrelevance, who did not know what it could do for them, and that most of it was free at the point of use. A few examples give a flavour of the action plan. Working with IdeA,22 peer reviews were introduced and seem to have been effective in the relatively small

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number of authorities fortunate enough to have been chosen. I can confirm from personal experience that the process was also of great benefit to the people carrying out the peer review. The promotion of reading and the various associated initiatives were widely welcomed. Examples included links with the Reading Agency, work with the BBC, and with publishers. The People’s Network continued to be developed – although it must not be forgotten that many library authorities felt badly let down in that there was no further National Lottery money forthcoming to enable aging equipment to be refreshed and the network expanded. Good work was done with a group set up to negotiate joint procurement deals with suppliers for electronic resources. These deals allowed the smallest branch to have access to reference works such as the Oxford dictionary of national biography which would once have been the preserve of a central reference library. Many services indeed made these resources available remotely to any patron with a library card, allowing them access at home or work, or in an internet café anywhere in the world. Under the banner of Framework for the future work began on increasing the number of books libraries could buy with their book funds. This work included an examination of the ‘impact of different models of acquisition, including benefits and barriers and potential costs’. Consultants PKF were contracted to produce a report, Public libraries: efficiency and stock supply chain review, which came out in 2005.23 Within the profession the report was broadly welcomed. Many of the issues flagged up were non-controversial – all authorities should adopt National Acquisitions Group (NAG) standard minimum servicing, for example; all authorities should review their stock procurement processes to ensure that where possible staff were re-deployed to customer facing roles; all libraries should review their support functions and understand to what extent these could be shared across local boundaries.24 The theory was impeccable but some of the other sections – on efficiency savings for example – were less impressive. This section comprises seven slight paragraphs containing assertions and hope. For example, a national agency for cataloguing and tendering was supposed to save 2% of employee costs or £8.5 million. It was blithely stated that ‘The costs of the national organisation would need to be met from re-allocating existing funding from the library authorities’ budgets’. The supplier selection part of the report was weak. Any suggestion that 100% of newly published book purchases could be placed through supplier selection was based on the flimsiest of evidence. The report ignores the fact that supplier selection had only been deemed successful in some small unitary authorities and that counties which experimented with supplier selection had since rejected it. Moreover the costs associated with supplier selection had been ignored. One of the submissions quoted in the report sums up the position admirably:

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Rationalisation of the number of consortia is needed in order for more business to be contracted by fewer consortia with fewer suppliers. Sub regional cooperation by library authorities will also help to share acquisitions costs. It will be important for any efficiency savings authorities need to make to be based on careful cost/benefit analysis. Seemingly simple solutions based round supplier selection and contracting out of essential support services may not be the best options. Growing emphasis on qualitative performance indicators eg Opening the Book stock quality health check mean that in house control of inputs and outputs will be crucial.25

Work on the stock supply chain continued into 2006 with the involvement of PricewaterhouseCoopers. It was expected that various improvement models would be considered, the one chosen being implemented from 2008. Other areas of Framework meriting mention include the work on e-government, once a priority for national government; the role of libraries as community spaces and supporting community cohesion and diversity; and the need to improve the quality of library buildings. Perhaps from a longer perspective Framework’s importance will be seen mainly as that it existed at all. It was a valiant attempt to bring coherence, consistency and a sense of future development to a fragmented sector. But, had there been a national library system would the People’s Network computerization scheme have been brought in on time and on budget? This country’s record on major national projects such as this was not good – but each separate library authority achieved its aims for its customers locally. The decline in adult book lending One of the most interesting pieces of research to be published during this period was ‘The decline in adult book lending in UK public libraries and its possible causes’ by Douglas Grindlay and Anne Morris.26 This was a key document and should be read by anyone interested in trends in public library usage over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The authors examined the possible causes of the decline in adult book loans which, although concern was expressed as early as 1973, became noticeable in the 1980s. They noted that at a national level book issues peaked around 1980 and then began a steady decline. This decline coincided with central government pressure on local authorities’ spending and with consequent pressures on library services’ budgets. In many minds this represented a simple cause and effect – library budgets are reduced (in real terms at least), so fewer books are bought, opening hours reduced and possibly libraries are closed so it is no surprise that use, as measured by book issues, falls. If this proposition is true then reversing the fall would be a simple matter of increasing the amount of money spent on books, and increasing the opening hours of libraries. However, Grindlay and Morris examined all the factors which might be involved in a decline before reaching some tentative conclusions. While more, rather than less, people have been reading since the decline in adult book

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005 loans began, there is limited evidence that the time that the average person in the UK spends reading books has decreased. The latter is likely to have been the major underlying cause of the decrease in loans, especially when combined with the increase in consumer book buying, which must have substituted for borrowing from libraries to a considerable extent.27

Decreased funding The authors noted that in the period preceding the five years under review real terms expenditure on libraries fell by 1% but there was ‘a large increase in the unit cost of employees’. Capital expenditure fell dramatically: in real terms it almost halved. There was a reasonable assumption that reduced capital expenditure meant libraries received less maintenance, fewer old buildings were replaced and fewer new libraries were built leading to shabby and unattractive surroundings not conducive to visits. When hard decisions about reducing budgets had to be made it was difficult to protect the spending power of the book fund. The ending of the Net Book Agreement enabled authorities to bargain for the best deals but Grindlay and Morris quote evidence that ‘rather than buying more books, library authorities used this as an opportunity to cut spending’.28 There is an important ‘chicken and egg’ question where book funds are concerned …; ‘Is the decrease in adult book loans caused by poorer choice and ageing stock resulting from reduced expenditure, or have library authorities reduced expenditure because people are borrowing less?’ According to Bohme and Spillar (1999) the answer is not yet clear, but the press certainly seem to believe that reduced book budgets are the cause … . While the Audit Commission (2002) believes reduced book funds have caused the decline in loans, it has acknowledged recently that book funds and opening hours may also have been cut as a response to reduced demand. Perhaps there is a vicious spiral in which one factor feeds into the other.29

Reductions in opening hours and library closures It is plausible that reductions in opening hours and the closure of libraries should lead to a fall in book issues. However, according to Grindlay and Morris, the actual impact was not clear. They report on research carried out by others30 that showed: ‘Even using time series analysis to allow for seasonal variations, there was no clear evidence that loans decreased after opening hours were cut, and in some libraries loans even increased over the period studied.’31 But there is evidence from elsewhere (e.g. Sheffield) that the effect may be noticeable over many years. As with reduced opening hours the effect of library closures was not as straightforward as might be assumed. There were library closures, and although in some cases these closures may have been mitigated by the introduction of mobile libraries, there was a clear loss of convenience of use. It was this lack of convenience – also part of the effects of the cuts in opening hours – that led people to lose what had been perhaps a fragile library-using habit. As Grindlay and Morris say: ‘Convenient location is a major factor that determines library use, particularly

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use on impulse; most users are unwilling to go out of their way and will often combine a visit to a library with other activities such as shopping.’32 Library regulations Grindlay and Morris wondered whether restricted loan times and fines for late return had played a part in deterring use. There was little research on the subject but it is clearly possible, as they said, that as standards of living rose people were less willing to borrow books (with all the drawbacks associated with having to remember to return them) when they could afford to purchase. Decreased reading of books It was an accepted fact that there was a significant number of people for whom reading had no interest and played no part in their lives beyond that needed for day-to-day living. It seems, however, that the number of people who cannot read at all was fairly small – and Grindlay and Morris, who found that the evidence for people’s reading habits was incomplete and difficult to analyse, did not feel that reduction in reading was in itself a cause of the decline in library issues. Reading of magazines increased, and there was, of course, the increase in other leisure time activities competing with reading. Television Grindlay and Morris did not find much evidence that increased watching of television contributed significantly to the decline in library book issues in the period before the five years under review. There seemed to be a natural limit on the number of hours of television watching that any one individual could cope with each week but there must be concerns – allied to increased affluence, discussed next – that the growth of satellite and digital television and the spread of intelligent video recorders allowing easy time shifting and in effect personalized television channels would lead to fewer people choosing reading as a leisure pursuit. Increased affluence and leisure opportunities This section of the report is of fundamental importance and it contains a quotation from the 1970s: I believe it is a fact that a substantial number of people, particularly fiction readers, use the public library as a last resort. This is a hard thing for a librarian to admit, but I believe it to be true. These people, if they have at their disposal the means to buy a colour television set, eat in a restaurant, drink in a pub, drive to the coast, or fly to the Bahamas, will not read books. And as affluence increases, they will use their libraries less and less; the fact will be reflected in issue statistics.33

Grindlay and Morris quoted the ‘librarian’s axiom’ from the United States which said that lending libraries prosper in times of economic downturn and do badly in

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the good times. If you have more exciting things to do with your time you are not going to read so many books – and thus it is likely that library issues will fall. Increased book purchases by readers The ending of the Net Book Agreement, leading to the wide availability of books at discounted prices; the aggressive growth of chain bookstores with attractive layouts including seating and coffee shops; the pleasure in being the first person to read a book; the ability to keep the book for re-reading or simply to cherish; and the greater disposable income available to most inevitably led to a growth in book buying and, as a natural consequence, fewer books being borrowed. This was reinforced by libraries which are perceived as shabby, ill-stocked, in the wrong place, and often closed. Computing and the internet It is commonplace to say that the internet will be viewed from a historical standpoint to have been as significant a development as the introduction of printing. Clearly, in terms of access to up-to-date information, in the ability to spread that information widely and simultaneously, traditional libraries were going to struggle in comparison. Many library authorities could now, for example, make available in all their service points expensive and sought-after reference works which would once have been limited to central reference libraries. In many cases these works could be accessed from home using a borrower number, removing even the need to make a physical visit to a library building. Librarians of thirty and more years previously would have been mystified at the need to speak of physical visits to a library and would have wondered what on earth was a virtual visit. Grindlay and Morris pointed to evidence about reading on the internet – the amount of time it takes, when it is carried out – and wondered if it had had an effect upon people’s book reading habits. The traditionalists and the modernizers Who’s in charge? Tim Coates was well known to a generation of booksellers, and lately to librarians. His passion for the public library service could not be doubted. He had shown concern over years for what he perceived to be a service which had lost its way and had neglected its core purpose. Moreover he felt that people did not want a modernized library service, merely one that was much as it always had been, only better in its essentials. He was also concerned that despite most library managers’ experience there was enough money in the system if only it were spent differently. Passionate in his beliefs though he was, the public platform on which he could air his views was limited, and he sought funding to produce a report with the aim of raising the debate. He approached Libri – a library charity – and Libri persuaded the Laser Foundation to fund the exercise. To give weight to his work he wished to

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base his report on an actual library authority and I agreed that he could use Hampshire.34 The report certainly succeeded in raising public libraries as an issue to be taken seriously and it was hard to disagree with many of the suggestions: libraries should spend more of their budgets on buying books; they should be open longer hours; they should be redecorated; there should be more market research; and there should be better governance. The report felt that there should be no distinction between professionally qualified staff and operational staff. In Coates’s view, this historic division of responsibilities meant that qualified librarians were not on the ‘opening rota’ for libraries and therefore did not add value equal to their cost. If all the staff were on this rota then library hours could be extended substantially. Similarly there were massive savings to be made in the way public libraries purchased their books – although no one in Hampshire (including our independent accountants) could agree with the ludicrous cost of purchase information given in the report. Who’s in charge? made an interesting suggestion about the management of individual libraries, recommending a very high degree of devolution with the person in charge being given total control of the budget available and within broad (but carefully monitored) performance management targets being left to get on with it. Select Committee In 2004 the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee scrutinized the public library system. Evidence was taken from Tim Coates, Miranda McKearney of the Reading Agency, John Holden of Demos, Heather Wills of the Idea Stores, Bob McKee of CILIP, Catherine Blanshard of the Society of Chief Librarians and Bill Macnaught of the Advisory Council on Libraries. Mark Wood and Chris Batt of MLA and Lyn Brown and Tony Durcan were also interviewed, as was the children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, and three ministers including Lord McIntosh of Haringey. Having questioned the witnesses and examined written submissions a report was issued in 2005.35 This report contained over thirty recommendations but the final paragraph of its summary makes it clear that the committee came down firmly on the traditional side of the debate. 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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The Committee wished to see library standards extended to include book loans, free access to the internet, the ratio of frontline to backroom staff, extended opening hours and the provision of material for people with disabilities. There would also have to be robust mechanisms for reporting on performance and a way by which remedial action could be triggered if necessary. Although the Committee was impressed by Idea Stores, it deprecated the loss of the word library, and wished to see that word maintained, but with a changed public perception of what it stood for. The Committee stressed that in its view libraries must be first about books and their conclusion and recommendation 6 states: ‘We recognise that libraries are viewed as safe public environments and as such have the potential to act as a suitable home for a service, meeting a wide range of community needs and wishes. However, it is equally clear to us that libraries must not be overloaded with objectives or expectations that strain their resources or inhibit the fulfilment of their core functions.’ The report should be read by anyone with an interest in the public library developments during this period. The response by the DCMS – by the time this was issued there had been a general election and David Lammy was the relevant minister having replaced Lord McIntosh – also repays reading.36 So there were two powerful strands to the argument about the future of public libraries: the arch-traditionalists and the modernizers. The modernizers were exemplified by Idea Stores and Discovery Centres. Idea Stores and Discovery Centres Idea Stores in Tower Hamlets, and Discovery Centres in Kent and Hampshire, share similar aims. ‘The plan is to create a series of bright, new buildings in local shopping areas, combining lifelong learning and cultural attractions with all the services normally associated with libraries from classic books to DVDs and CDs.’37 Tower Hamlets’ website continues: ‘The idea was born when residents told Tower Hamlets Council in their thousands that they would like to see their libraries located where they can get to them more easily and do more than borrow items while they’re there’: Imagine a place where you can get into a good book. Listen to a CD in comfortable, friendly surroundings or study quietly knowing that the knowledge you need is just a fingertip away. Imagine a place where skills and training advice is freely available and courses are offered in the same building. A place where you can learn informally at your own pace, mixing with other people learning all sorts of new skills. A place that will allow you to move on, in the same friendly and familiar surroundings, to more formal forms of learning if you choose. A place geared to help you get the most out of life. Imagine a place where you can take your whole family to use a wide range of services and enjoy a safe environment. A place where parents and children can learn together with other families in fun and stimulating surroundings. Imagine a place where you can relax in a quality café, take in an art exhibition or music performance. Imagine a quiet place where you can do your school homework, a place that is fun

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and exciting, a place where you can meet your friends, have lots of fun.

As their website said, and thousands of users attested, these ideas became reality in their Bow Street, Chrisp Street and Whitechapel locations. Discovery Centres were similar in concept to Idea Stores. The first modernized library to be re-badged as a Discovery Centre was that in Dover: a joint venture between Kent County Council and Dover District Council bringing together a modernized library service, adult education, and the District Council-run museum. Within the building were to be found a nursery, a café, a theatre, adult education, and arts and crafts activities. As the website said: ‘The Discovery centre is an exciting and fun place to visit – a smart modern building bursting with brand new technology that welcomes library users, adult education students, museum visitors and new users…Users of the Dover Discovery Centre will be inspired to explore, discover and learn.’38 The Dover Discovery Centre was a fine example of many bodies working together to provide services. The County Council ran the libraries but had to work with the District Councils which shared service provision within their areas. This made joined-up provision more difficult in two-tier areas of the country. Hampshire’s Discovery Centres learned from the Dover experience and explored the concept of re-vitalizing the library brand by a re-affirmation of its core values, and by seeking to enhance its value in the eyes of non-traditional users.39 The website makes clear why there was the need for Discovery centres and what they were meant to achieve, as these extracts show: For a number of years library use has been declining. Now there is a need to re-launch libraries with a broader range of services to ensure they serve the needs of the whole community. They offer an exciting way to enable more people to use the wide range of recreation and heritage services that Hampshire County Council and its partners provide via a single location, as well as bringing heritage and museum services to a wider audience. Existing library services are at the core of Discovery Centres. Book lending and reference books are the primary focus, together with CD, DVD and video loans, PlayStation games and Talking Books. Other services will depend on local requirements but may include museum exhibitions, local history resources, a café to encourage longer visits, areas to relax and read, art exhibition space, meeting rooms, IT facilities and events space. Discovery Centres will also offer longer opening hours so more people can access the services at times that suit them. Discovery Centres will result in more people using Hampshire County Council’s library, information and leisure services for longer periods of time, delivering greater learning and leisure opportunities and improving quality of life for Hampshire residents. A Discovery Centre begins with traditional library services, including lending and reference books – and then goes further. The concept is all about delivering more services within a modern, attractive environment, and making them available for longer and to many more people!40

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The Gosport Discovery Centre opened in 2005 and was not without controversy. A purpose-built 1970s town centre library was gutted and remodelled using bright and vibrant colours, new and funky furniture and welcoming layouts. It was not intended to look like a traditional library and it was meant to attract people who felt that libraries were ‘not for them’. In that aim it succeeded spectacularly with visitor numbers showing massive increases and significantly more people borrowing books. Unpublished market research carried out for the County Council showed that 66% of people thought the Discovery Centre was an improvement on what there was before, 16% thought it was worse, 14% thought it about the same and 4% were unsure. Those in a favour of the changes cited reasons such as improvements in the books, computers, a bright and welcoming modern feel to the building and the coffee shop. However, those against said the books were not as good as before and it was noisy. The number of activities carried out by users had increased: they might have said they were coming for books, or for the internet, but once in the building they typically made use of a range of other activities. And the younger they were the more activities they enjoyed. The key success of the Discovery Centre was that it shifted the age range of the users and made itself attractive to a user group more nearly representative of the population than had been the case for traditional libraries. This did have implications, of course, for not alienating the core users – who tended to be older, and less interested in change and new activities. The challenge the library service would face over the next few years was how to continue to widen the appeal of the service to younger people whilst still meeting the needs of the older users. Overdue: how to create a modern public library service Published in 2003, Overdue was Charles Leadbeater’s take on how libraries needed to change if they were to survive.41 Leadbeater felt that libraries should be ‘curiosity satisfaction centres’: Curiosity propels people into libraries to research their family history, find out about a business regulation, explore a novel, listen to some music, surf the internet or watch a video. The common thread is the excitement and satisfaction of curiosity.42

Leadbeater saw the problems of libraries as stemming at least in part from their being run by many local authorities with weak overall direction and control from central government. To solve this problem he recommended the establishment of a National Library Development Agency (NLDA) bringing together the library responsibilities of MLA and DCMS and the funding from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The role would be political, policy-making and funding, standard setting, improving performance, workforce development, innovation and advocacy.

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Complacency would be challenged, national marketing and advertising campaigns would be run and a coherence brought the sector. Unfortunately, interesting and valuable though this idea was, it did not catch the imagination of those likely to be able to make it happen. Conclusion It has proved remarkably difficult to follow the editor’s instructions and write this chapter as if one were looking back at the years 2001–2005 from the future. Bringing a dispassionate eye to events that one was bound up in has been a struggle. The five years would have been remarkable if all that happened had been the introduction of library standards and Framework for the Future. But we also had the start of the debate about the whole future of the service, summed up as: take the traditional route, doing what libraries have always done but do it better – essentially the Select Committee route – or accept that society has fundamentally changed and libraries need to change with it – the Idea Stores and Discovery Centre route.

Notes 1

Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Libraries, Information and Archives Division, Comprehensive, efficient and modern public libraries: standards and assessment. London: DCMS, 2001. 2 CPA – Comprehensive Performance Assessment – the mechanism by which central government monitors and grades local authorities, with published league tables so that local people can judge how effective their councils are and providing freedoms and flexibilities for the highest performing authorities. 3 The People’s Network evaluation summary. London: Big Lottery Fund, 2004. 4 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Framework for the future: libraries, learning and information in the next decade. London: DCMS, 2003. 5 Resource became the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) in February 2004 and is referred to as MLA throughout to avoid confusion. 6 House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Public libraries: third report of Session 2004–05. London: TSO, 2005. 2 vols. 7 Building better library services. London: Audit Commission, 2002. 8 Better public libraries. London: Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and Resource, 2003. 9 Anne Lines, Christopher Savory and Angharad Reakes, Extending the role of libraries. London: National Foundation for Educational Research, 2004. 10 Laser Foundation – a charitable foundation established after the close of LASER as an inter-library loan operation. Its dominant voice was that of the indefatigable Frances Hendrix. The author of this chapter is a trustee of the Foundation. 11 Libraries impact project. London: PricewaterhouseCoopers and Laser Foundation, 2005. 12 Douglas J. C. Grindlay and Anne Morris, ‘The decline in adult book lending in UK public libraries and its possible causes’, Journal of documentation 60 (6), 2004, 609–31.

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13 Perceptions of libraries and information resources: a report to the OCLC membership. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC, 2005. 14 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Public libraries: efficiency and stock supply chain review. London: PKF, 2005. 15 Charles Leadbeater, Overdue: how to create a modern public library service. A Laser Foundation report. London: Demos, 2003. 16 John Holden, Creative reading: young people, reading and public libraries. London: Demos, 2004. 17 Tim Coates, Who’s in charge? Responsibility for the public library service. London: Laser Foundation and Libri, 2004. 18 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Comprehensive, efficient and modern public libraries, 3. 19 Public library statistics: 2005–06 estimates and 2004–05 actuals. London: CIPFA, 2005 20 Audit Commission: . 21 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Framework for the future, 2003, 5. 22 IdeA, the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government, which accredits the peer review process and trains the reviewers. 23 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Public libraries: efficiency and stock supply chain review. London: PKF, 2005. 24 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Public libraries, 5. 25 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Public libraries, appendix IIIb para 2.22. 26 Grindlay and Morris, ‘Decline in adult book lending’. 27 Grindlay and Morris, ‘Decline in adult book lending’, 627. 28 Grindlay and Morris, ‘Decline in adult book lending’, 613 quoting L. Muir and A. Douglas, ‘Where now for the UK public library service’, Library management 22 (6/7), 2001, 266–71. 29 Grindlay and Morris, ‘Decline in adult book lending’, 613–14. 30 R. Loynes and R. Proctor, ‘The effect of reductions in public library opening hours on book issues: a statistical analysis’, Journal of documentation 56 (6), 2000, 605–23. 31 Grindlay and Morris, ‘Decline in adult book lending’, 615. 32 Grindlay and Morris, ‘Decline in adult book lending’, 616. 33 R. D. Codlin, ‘Downward trend’, New library world 74 (879), 1973, 195. 34 Coates, Whose in charge? 35 House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Public Libraries. 36 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Government response to the third report of the Culture, Media and SportSelect Committee, session 2004–2005: public libraries. London: TSO, 2005. 37 ‘What’s the great idea?’, Idea Store website: (accessed 31/5/06). 38 Dover Discovery Centre: (accessed 25/5/06). 39 Kent’s Discovery centre programme had begun when Yinnon Ezra and I worked there together. Its success however came after we had both left for Hampshire where Ezra was instrumental in persuading the authority that the Discovery centre approach was the right way for libraries to go. 40 Discovery Centres: (accessed 31/5/06). 41 Leadbeater, Overdue. 42 Leadbeater, Overdue, 15.

3

From social inclusion to community cohesion John Pateman and John Vincent

Introduction There was more activity with regard to public libraries and social exclusion between 2001–2005 than there had been over the preceding ten-year period.1 There were three main developments during 2001–2005: there were more efforts to locate public libraries within the national policy context of social inclusion and community cohesion; there was a vast amount of commentary on and scrutiny of libraries, from both within and outside the sector; and the previous emphasis on inputs and outputs was replaced by a greater focus on impacts and outcomes. In terms of the strategic context, there was a shift in language from social exclusion to social inclusion and then to social cohesion or community cohesion. This shift in language also represented a shift in focus, away from the needs of socially excluded people, and towards the need to develop a more inclusive and cohesive society. This development was triggered partly by the disturbances in Bradford, Burnley, Oldham and elsewhere in 2001. There was also a repositioning of social exclusion work within the overall strategic context and direction of public libraries. The main catalysts for this were Libraries, museums, galleries and archives for all2 and Framework for the future,3 the government’s ten-year strategy for public libraries. This was the first time in nearly forty years that the government had tried to define what ‘comprehensive and efficient’ meant in terms of the statutory responsibilities of public libraries as laid down by the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act. With regard to greater commentary and scrutiny, there was a plethora of research, reports and activity around the themes of exclusion, inclusion and cohesion. The spur for this was the re-election of the New Labour government and the continued work of the Social Exclusion Unit which did not change its name despite the shift in direction and policy. Among the major reports published during this period were: Building better library services; Developing a needs-based library service; and Who’s in charge?4 Inputs and outputs were replaced by impacts and outcomes. This started off with an attempt to quantify impact via Public Library Standards (2001)5 which

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were rationalized into Public Library Service Standards (2004).6 They formed part of the government’s Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) scheme for local government.7 Further attempts were made to qualify the impact of public libraries on local communities, via Public Library Impact Measures (2005)8 and Generic Social Outcomes (2005).9 A number of toolkits were produced to help libraries understand and measure their efforts at tackling social exclusion. The period 2001–2005 can therefore be seen as both a progression and an acceleration of developments with regard to public libraries and social exclusion which started in the previous decade. There were also other echoes from the past, some of which reflected the obsession of previous Conservative governments with the ‘three Es’ of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. These issues resurfaced in 2005 via reports such as Public libraries: efficiency and stock supply chain review10 and the exploration of ways of developing the local government services market.11 Our review of the period ends on a positive note with a government announcement that ‘There are 1.1 million fewer socially excluded adults’.12 Strategic context The paper Libraries and community cohesion examined the social and national context, raised challenges and offered ways for the library sector to move forward.13 There was a shift from an emphasis on social inclusion to a focus on community cohesion which was defined as ‘A shared sense of belonging based on common goals and core social values, respect for difference (ethnic, cultural and religious), and acceptance of the reciprocal rights and obligations of community members working together for the common good’.14 The strategic context for libraries was established by a number of organizations including: Resource (the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries – renamed in 2004 the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, or MLA); the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS); the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP); and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). The Public Libraries and Museums Act was passed in 1964. It stated that every local authority had a statutory duty to provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ public library service for all who lived, worked or studied in the authority. But it did not define what ‘comprehensive and efficient’ meant. This challenge was not taken up by successive governments as it was felt that these decisions should be made by local politicians. As a result public libraries had no overall strategic direction, priorities or objectives. This started to change after Resource was established in April 2000 as the successor to the Library and Information Commission and the Museums and Galleries Commission. Resource was ‘a strategic body empowered to advise government and the sector on the long term development of museums, archives and libraries for the well being and improvement of individuals and communities. Its vision is to ensure that museums, archives and libraries belong at the very heart of people’s lives; contributing to their enjoyment and inspiration, cultural values, learning potential, economic prosperity and social equity’.15

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In July 2000, Resource published a Manifesto that defined a number of core values for its work, including: ‘The services provided by museums, archives and libraries should be focused on the needs of actual or potential users’; and ‘These services should recognize and promote physical and social inclusion and cultural diversity’.16 Building on success: an action plan for libraries included a commentary on access to services: Social inclusion is a cornerstone of Government policy and its recognition and promotion is one of Resource’s core values. Public libraries are especially powerful agents for inclusiveness. They are open to all, non threatening and non judgemental. They are frequently the only point of access to information and learning that is available to the deprived, the excluded or the disaffected. Their special qualities in opening out to people excluded from other aspects of society are precious and must be nurtured and encouraged. Promoting greater equality of access to services forms a core element of Resource’s mandate. At the heart of equality of access is an understanding by service managers of the particular needs of individuals and groups within the community served.17

Building on success was one of a series of consultation documents which began to position public libraries within a strategic context. Others included Using museums, archives and libraries to develop a learning community: a strategic plan for action and Information and communications technology and the development of museums, archives and libraries: a strategic plan for action.18 The Resource Annual review 2002/03 summarized all the activity which they had been involved in concerning social exclusion.19 This included: the development of several toolkits and training materials; the creation of a Cultural Diversity Officer post and regional Cultural Diversity Networks; and support for the Quality Leaders Project20 (alongside support for Positive Action Traineeships in the museums domain). The key government document with regard to public libraries and social exclusion was Libraries, museum, galleries and archives for all: co-operating across the sectors to tackle social exclusion.21 This was a combination of two previous reports: Libraries for all, a draft social inclusion policy for public libraries in England; and Centres for social change, a draft social inclusion policy for public museums, galleries and archives.22 Libraries, museums, galleries and archives for all set out a number of policy objectives around access and audience development. These objectives, and the methodology for developing a strategic approach (the six-point plan), were taken from Libraries for all. There were also two new objectives for the library sector: ‘Outreach activities should be an integral part of the role of libraries, museums, galleries and archives’; and ‘libraries, museums, galleries and archives should consider how they can further develop their role and act as agents of social change’. CILIP established a Social Inclusion Executive Advisory Group which produced the report, Making a difference – innovation and diversity.23 This

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recommended that ‘CILIP should encourage LIS organisations to mainstream services to socially excluded people and promote diversity, recognising that for most this will mean organisation transformation’. Transforming libraries to meet community needs was also a key theme of Framework for the future: libraries, learning and information in the next decade which defined the public libraries’ modern mission as: the promotion of reading and informal learning; access to digital skills and services including e-government; and measures to tackle social exclusion, build community identity and develop citizenship.24 It was recognized that ‘people who find reading difficult and groups in the community most at risk of social exclusion may find libraries distant or even intimidating places rather than seeing them as symbols of community’. All libraries were encouraged to ‘engage groups and individuals that are hard to reach by identifying them and establishing what are their particular needs and then by redesigning services when necessary so that there are no barriers to inclusion’. Some libraries were already involving the communities themselves in the design and implementation of services. ‘Libraries must be adept at seeking, understanding and serving the needs of non-users, some of whom may be ill at ease in a library setting.’ The Report to Parliament on public library matters gave some examples of ‘social policy work with libraries’, such as the use of volunteers to increase community engagement, and improved access for disabled people, particularly those who were visually impaired.25 The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s Report on public libraries emphasized the importance of books and reading, but also recognized that libraries could offer more to the communities which they served: ‘Public libraries have always been part of tackling social exclusion (whatever this objective has been called over time) and we would encourage a continuing focus on those areas where libraries have a unique contribution to make to this end’.26 The Government response to this report agreed that a balance needed to be struck between books as ‘the core of libraries’ work’ and the need for libraries to ‘reach out to communities in many ways … in particular for those who are most vulnerable in deprived areas and elsewhere’.27 This could be achieved through greater community engagement and libraries that were ‘open at times that match local demand, for example in the evenings or on Sunday’. When Resource became MLA it continued to develop the strategic context for public libraries. A quiet revolution outlined the contribution which libraries could make to ‘the Shared Priorities that have been agreed between local and central government’, for example by ‘tackling unemployment, combating social exclusion, engaging disaffected teenagers who hang around street corners’.28 Investing in knowledge was ‘a five year vision for England’s museums, libraries and archives’.29 The priorities regarding community and civic values were: ‘delivering an inclusive service that reflects and helps build cohesive communities’, providing information and services for disabled people, and ‘providing library premises that meet the needs of 21st century communities’.

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On 21 June 2004 MLA ‘welcomed the government’s announcement of new funding of £2 million for public libraries. Public libraries provide safe, neutral, shared environments for people from all walks of life. They support formal education and learning, are centres of creativity, and serve as focal points for local communities. They are the unsung heroes of the public sector’.30 In 2004, MLA launched a new programme, ‘New Directions in Social Policy’, to prove the impact of museums, libraries and archives on key social outcomes and the Shared Priorities of local and national government. The first stage of ‘New Directions’ – Understanding the Policy Context – included the publication of three policy guides. Cultural diversity for museums, libraries and archives provided an overview of policies surrounding the term ‘cultural diversity’ both within and outside the museums, libraries and archives sector.31 Communities and inclusion policy for museums, libraries and archives explored the contribution museums, libraries and archives can make to neighbourhood renewal, community agendas and social inclusion.32 Health policy for museums, libraries and archives outlined how museums, libraries and archives can contribute to individual and community health through the new preventative health agenda of the NHS.33 These documents formed the core of an ongoing series of social policy briefing documents which MLA was committed to creating as part of ‘New Directions’. In 2005 two reports were produced, which contained echoes of previous attempts (in the 1980s and 1990s) to make public libraries more economic, effective and efficient. At an Intellect/SOCITM Supplier Forum in September 2005, Mark Upton from the ODPM gave a paper, ‘Developing the local government services market’, which considered ‘the development of a diverse market and new ways of working to support improvement and innovation …’.34 This formed part of a wider study of key local government supply markets and it contained some key messages for the sector. The proposed new models of library service provision were: collaborative working and trading models within local government; shared service arrangements across council boundaries; increasing the involvement of the private sector; increasing the role of the voluntary and social enterprise sector; increasing community ownership and management; and stock procurement and supply chain management. Stock management was considered in detail in the report, Public libraries: efficiency and stock supply chain review, which was commissioned by DCMS and MLA.35 The key finding of the report was that ‘efficiency gains and better value for money could be found, largely by library services throughout the country adopting the same processes and by purchasing books together. The greatest efficiency gains could be made if all library services placed the same requirements on suppliers and negotiated through one mechanism with the suppliers of books’. MLA rejected the case for a National Library Service, but agreed that further work was needed to persuade the sector of the benefits of collective purchasing and standardized processing requirements. 2005 ended on a positive note with the publication of The little book of public libraries which was ‘for people who love libraries and want to share their passion

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with others’.36 This advocacy tool was intended to ‘open your eyes to the valuable contribution libraries make to families, communities and society as a whole’. Public libraries were as much hubs of the community as churches, pubs and post offices, but with several big advantages: ‘they are public spaces where everyone is welcome; you can use them in different ways – to borrow books, music and films, search the internet, find out information, participate in events; there is expert help on hand if you need it; almost all services are free.’ Libraries had a role in ‘improving people’s quality of life; safer, stronger sustainable communities; healthier citizens’. This located libraries firmly within the national strategic context of the shared objectives between central and local government. Commentary and scrutiny A good summary of social exclusion policy and activity towards the beginning of this period appeared in the Social and racial exclusion handbook for libraries, archives, museums and galleries.37 Another good source of information was The Network newsletter: tackling social exclusion in libraries, museums, archives and galleries;38 this was the most comprehensive record of issues regarding social exclusion and libraries, museums, archives and galleries during this period. It contained a summary of projects and initiatives by service-providers, plus commentary and scrutiny of the service by library professionals, and also information about research and reports on public libraries produced by agencies and organizations outside of the sector, including the Audit Commission, universities, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), the Local Government Association, CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), the Laser Foundation39 and the Network itself. Building better library services noted the significant decrease in library issues and visits and concluded that libraries need to rethink services from the user’s point of view by: providing more of the books and information services that people want; improving accessibility by opening at times that suit people, sharing facilities with other services, and using the internet; ensuring that services are easy and pleasant to use – learning, in particular, from bookshops; building awareness among non-users of the services that libraries offer.40

An important piece of cross-domain research was carried out by the University of Northumbria: Neighbourhood renewal and social inclusion: the role of museums, archives and libraries compared the sector’s view of its contribution to social inclusion and neighbourhood renewal with that of other agencies and organizations involved in neighbourhood renewal and social inclusion activity.41 Developments in adult education were similar to those in public libraries. NIACE launched the ‘NIACE lifelines in adult learning series’ which provided ‘straightforward background information, accessible know how and useful examples of good practice for all practitioners involved in adult and community learning’. One of the titles in this series was Developing a needs-based library

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service which suggested that modernizing public libraries was not enough. They needed to be transformed via new strategies, structures, systems and culture. A needs-based library service would be able to identify, prioritize and meet community needs, and actively engage local people in the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of library services. The Local Government Association also took an interest in public libraries and funded research by the National Foundation for Educational Research, which was published as Extending the role of libraries as part of its educational research programme.43 The key findings concerned partnership working, funding, the role of library staff, national and local support and targeting user groups: ‘Libraries need to identify clearly their main target audiences and promote their services appropriately to these groups.’ The need for more targeted services was also explored in Welcome to your library.44 This was an evaluation report of a library project for asylum-seekers and refugees, which had been piloted by five London Boroughs. In her foreword, Lyn Brown (Chair of the London Libraries Development Agency) noted that: ‘Reaching the most excluded, vulnerable and disadvantaged people in our communities is, by definition, a very challenging task for any service, anywhere. Few services try, and even fewer succeed, so I am particularly delighted to be able to report a real success story that has had a marked and, in my view, very moving impact on people’s lives across our Capital City.’ A number of new library buildings were opened during this period, which caught the public imagination: Idea Stores in Bow and Whitechapel, Peckham Library, Bournemouth Library and the Norwich Millennium Library. The connections between design and exclusion were examined in two reports by CABE. Better public libraries suggested that ‘Quality design will have a major role in delivering a 21st century library service; drawing in the diverse communities they serve’.45 21st century libraries: changing forms, changing futures concluded that ‘imaginatively designed and responsive public library services can play a pivotal role in promoting greater social cohesion and a stronger sense of civic pride and local identity’.46 Buildings and books were the core back-to-basics message of Who’s in charge? which asked ‘who is responsible for the public library service?’ and recommended: treble the expenditure on books and reading material; increase opening hours by 50%; institute a programme of library redecoration and redesign.47 This could be achieved via a reallocation of resources, improved productivity and the introduction of new systems and methods of working. This report was widely reported in the national press and created headlines such as ‘Why libraries spend £24 for book that costs £10 in shops’ and ‘A minute’s silence, please, for the late public library’.48 A ‘crisis summit’ was called by the DCMS at which it was predicted that the library service ‘could be extinct in 20 years if the trend goes on’.49 The Laser Foundation commissioned a number of reports which challenged public library orthodoxy and prompted new ways of thinking. Overdue: how to create a modern public library service recommended a radical rethink, including

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putting social exclusion and the promotion of equality of opportunity at the core of a new ‘guerrilla’ service.50 Libraries: a vision – the public library service in 2015 (which was the outcome of a seminar organized for the Futures Group,51 a group of middle managers in public libraries who came together under the auspices of the Laser Foundation to discuss issues relating to the future of the public library sector) distinguished between core services ‘free at the point of delivery’ and premium services which could be charged for on ‘a full cost recovery basis’.52 The report suggested that ‘library services must follow retailing in being “customerled” … In the future there will be no “one size fits all” library. Each will reflect local needs’. The Laser Foundation also funded a number of innovative projects to test and experiment with new ways of delivering services.53 The Paul Hamlyn Foundation also funded a number of highly significant developments in public libraries during this period via its themes ‘Right to Read’ (for work with looked-after children and young people); and the ‘Reading & Libraries Challenge Fund’ which consisted of ‘Free with Words’ (for work with prisoners and young offenders) and ‘Libraries Connect’ (for work with groups that are frequently excluded from library services).54 The Network also contributed to the debate via a regular column on social exclusion and community cohesion in the Public library journal. For example, ‘Tackling the problem’ drew together information about some of the ‘tools’ that existed to help libraries tackle social exclusion, and ‘A question of cohesion’ looked at the role of libraries in developing cohesive communities.55 Contributions were also made by individual commentators. ‘Open to all? The public library and social exclusion’ was an executive summary of ground-breaking research which influenced policy and practice across the sector.56 Social class was identified as a major determinant of library use and non-use. ‘Why class matters’ examined the ‘class ridden attitudes’ which ‘are prevalent in all professions, including the library and information profession’.57 ‘Moving target’ argued that ‘class is still preventing many people from taking up the services that libraries offer for learning and skills development’.58 Another major theme which re-emerged during this period was the notion of designing library services which could meet community needs. Pateman suggested that ‘by focusing on community needs, public libraries can become a dynamic force for social change’.59 This was explored further in ‘Developing a needs-based library service’; ‘Structures to tackle social exclusion’; and ‘The essence of inclusion: Cuba and the Nordic states’.60 At the same time, there was also an emphasis on libraries’ needing to reach out to and engage with the most marginalized communities if they were to become inclusive services. Nicola Baker looked at Essex Libraries’ service to traveller sites, which won the 2004 Libraries Change Lives Award.61 ‘Tackling exclusion: gypsies and travellers’ also looked at services to this highly excluded group.62 Vincent highlighted some good practice for working with looked-after children,63 including the need to work out in the community (and this good practice, as well as

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experience drawn from a range of projects, was pulled together in The librarians’ training kit).64 Social inclusion was a theme at many professional events and conferences. ‘Reasons to be wrathful’ was a paper given at the Public Library Group conference, which urged practitioners to harness their emotions in the fight against exclusion.65 ‘Count in everybody’ was a challenge at the launch of the Diversity Council ‘to win the hearts and minds of library policy makers and senior practitioners, to change the culture of our profession and to create library services which are truly open to all’.66 ‘So, who are “proper” library users then?’ was a question raised at the 2005 CILIP Umbrella Conference, and the article continued: ‘Let’s not talk about “proper” and “improper” users, but see what we can do to make our libraries more welcoming and attractive to a wider range of people’.67 Papers on libraries and social exclusion were also given at conferences organized by NIACE,68 the Diversity Group,69 the Local Government Association,70 East Midlands Museums Libraries and Archives Council,71 CILIP,72 and the CILIP Career Development Group.73 Impact and outcomes While book issues were in decline during this period, library visits increased after the implementation of the People’s Network. A study carried out into Arts in England: attendance, participation and attitudes in 2001 found that 45% of those interviewed had attended a library in the last year.74 There were clear social class differences in library use: ‘Respondents from managerial, professional and intermediate occupations were more likely to have visited a library than respondents from other occupational groups.’ These findings were very similar to the Report on the 2000 UK time use survey: examining public use of museums, galleries, archives and libraries which found that library users were most likely to possess educational qualifications and be in a managerial or professional occupation: men with no formal qualifications were the least likely (9%) to visit a library; and anyone who had ‘A’ levels or above was most likely (51%) to have visited a library.75 Many Best Value reviews showed that 60% of the population were library members, but only 20–30% of people were regular library users. In order to drive up these figures, a range of performance indicators were introduced to measure existing levels of use and set targets for increasing these in the future. The government launched Public Library Standards in April 2001 with a three-year phase-in period.76 The aim of the Standards was to ‘set for the first time a performance monitoring framework for public libraries. Since then there has been a significant increase in library opening hours, improvements to stock and ICT provision, an increase in user satisfaction and visits’.77 Performance against the Standards was originally reported to DCMS via Annual Library Plans.78 These were later replaced by Library Position Statements,79 although this too came under review.80

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The 26 Public Library Standards were replaced by a streamlined set of ten Public Library Service Standards in April 2005.81 These Service Standards were designed to measure accessibility, ICT, performance/usage/satisfaction and stock. They went on to form part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment framework for local government.82 In Wales, a set of Standards was also adopted,83 and in 2005 an overall analysis of the Standards was published by CyMAL (Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales), as a result of which the Standards were extended for a further three years to 2008.84 Following some funding issues in the public library service, Northern Ireland’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure issued a consultation document in 2005 – the Ministerial foreword set the scene: But like everything else of course the library changes to meet new needs and to adapt to a new environment. It is funded from the public purse and as such needs to make the best use of the money it has. That is not just about saving money – it is also about providing value, and in library terms that means a good quality service, meeting the needs of the people who use it and enabling it to encourage new users. This is what this report is about, achieving a better quality library service, libraries which meet peoples’ needs, libraries which make the most of their power to change lives. Because they do change lives.85

Scottish public libraries were under an ongoing review too: The role of libraries in the 21st century is also under consideration as part of the current cultural policy review instigated by the Scottish Executive. The definition of ‘cultural rights’ and ‘cultural entitlement’ from a user’s perspective form a central plank of the Cultural Commission’s remit, and the public library service has a significant contribution to make in this context, through supporting reading and literacy, facilitating access to lifelong learning and information skills development, and working with partners to close the so-called ‘digital divide’. A further key element in the review will be the development of national strategies to protect and support Scottish cultural heritage, and to deliver quality information services for all.86

Work to develop impact indicators began in August 2002 when a Social impact audit was carried out for the South West Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.87 Several broad themes emerged from this audit (learning, community identity, social cohesion, economic value, equity and access), but no suggestions were made about how these could be measured. Another study, this time on Public libraries and community cohesion: developing indicators did set out to recommend some impact measures.88 But this report only managed to propose a framework for indicators, which consisted of a matrix matching library strategy, delivery and local engagement, with four key aspects of a library service: resources, expertise, place and symbol.

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The nettle was finally grasped by the DCMS, which launched the Public Library Impact Measures in March 2005: The Measures are intended to provide DCMS, MLA, and indeed services themselves, with a tangible means of demonstrating the impact that public library services make to wider community issues, around the themes of the central/local government shared objectives. Alongside the public library service standards, they will also help to demonstrate the quality of library provision to local people. It is envisaged that the impact measures will form part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment Culture Block next year.89

The ability of these measures to accurately measure community impact was questioned by some commentators. For example, does the amount of non-fiction stock on health issues on the shelves of a public library really measure the impact of that library on the health of the local community? An attempt to develop, improve and complement these impact measures was made by the Libraries impact project, which also focused on the shared priorities between central and local government: children, education, health and older people.90 MLA also contributed to the development of impact measures via Generic Social Outcomes, which were modelled on the Generic Learning Outcomes that formed part of the ‘Inspiring Learning for All’ framework.91 MLA has contracted consultants Burns Owens Partnership (BOP) to develop and pilot outcome measures to document the impact of the sector in three main areas related to communities: healthy communities, social capital and community identity and cohesion. The development of these measures (known as Generic Social Outcomes or GSOs), forms the second stage of the New Directions in Social Policy programme initiated by MLA in 2004.92

A number of toolkits were also produced to help library managers understand and measure their contribution to tackling social exclusion. In 2002 Suffolk County Council (with support from the Department for Education and Skills) produced a handbook to assist councils and other organizations assess their level of inclusion.93 Then, in October 2002, the Resource disability action plan and the self-assessment toolkit Access to museums, archives and libraries for disabled users were published.94 MLA then published the ‘Access for All’ toolkit: enabling inclusion for museums, libraries and archives,95 and checklists for Disability Access96 and Cultural Diversity.97 MLA also produced an ‘Inspiring Learning for All’ toolkit.98 EMMLAC (the East Midlands Museums, Libraries and Archives Council) published guides on How to develop a community profile and How to write an audience development plan.99 The Basic Skills Agency funded a major project that was delivered by the National Literacy Trust, looking at literacy and social inclusion, which, whilst much wider than just libraries, nevertheless saw the potential role for libraries in

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tackling basic skills needs. The final report was produced as a handbook, with valuable links across to government and other policies.100 Several attempts were also made to measure the impact of technology on tackling social exclusion. Inclusion through innovation: tackling social exclusion through new technologies explored the potential that ICT had to promote equality and improve life chances for disadvantaged people, and to transform the delivery of services to them.101 Challenging the digital divide? reported that: … the use of public access and support sites (such as UK Online centres) by those currently perceived as excluded from the benefits of ICT is generally low. The location of many public access sites in libraries, schools, further education colleges and other public sector venues may be a significant barrier for those who do not associate such institutions as being part of their lives.102

However, after the People’s Network (which gave free public access to the internet) was introduced into public libraries, visitor figures went up dramatically. A series of reports was produced, trying to assess the impact of the People’s Network. The interim evaluation of the People’s Network and ICT Training for public library staff by the New Opportunities Fund warned that there was an ‘ad hoc, responsive flavour to much of the work around social inclusion, with relatively few library services taking a targeted approach informed by community profiling and needs identification’.103 The Big Lottery Fund’s Evaluation summary found that ‘the People’s Network has been markedly successful in broadening the library’s user base and the credibility of the library service has been enhanced, helping librarians to reposition themselves at the heart of the local community’.104 The People’s Network: moving forward claimed that the People’s Network was ‘reaching a significant proportion of its target population among the more disadvantaged sectors of society’.105 However, the ability of the People’s Network to narrow the digital divide was impeded by the decision of a growing number of local authorities to charge for access.106 Books and bytes recommended that the People’s Network should ‘remain a free service that people can turn up and use’.107 But new technology alone was not enough – the whole service needed to change. Connecting the UK: the digital strategy, the government’s ambitious strategy for closing the digital divide, did not mention the People’s Network or the role of public libraries.108 In response, the MLA launched Longitude: ‘a toolkit of resources for public library staff to evaluate the long term impact of IT based services on users’.109 This was followed by Longitude II: ‘a Library Networking Impact Toolkit for a user driven environment. This Toolkit is for public library managers seeking to gather reliable information on the overall impact of their services, within local, regional and national contexts, and to demonstrate and exemplify significant impacts on individuals’.110

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Conclusion The period 2001–2005 can therefore be seen as both a progression and an acceleration of developments with regard to public libraries and social exclusion, which started in 1991–2000. The main change was that there were more efforts to locate public libraries within the national policy context of social inclusion and community cohesion. Libraries became now firmly embedded as contributors to the shared objectives of central and local government. Another feature of this period was the vast amount of commentary on and scrutiny of libraries, from both within and outside the sector. This level of attention contrasted sharply with the preceding period, particular the Thatcher and Major years, when public libraries were ignored, apart from a few attempts to make them more efficient. Issues of efficiency, economy and effectiveness did not go away, but there was more focus on trying to measure the quality, rather than just the quantity, of public library services. The emphasis on inputs and outputs was replaced by a greater concern regarding impacts and outcomes. One outcome, which was announced by the government on 29 November 2005, was that ‘there are 1.1m fewer socially excluded adults – those suffering multiple disadvantages – in Britain, according to new figures being released by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister today’.111 In 1997 there were 4.8 million adults (both of working age and pensioners) who experienced five or more disadvantages. In 2003, this number had fallen by 1.1 million to 3.66 million. The number of adults suffering from three or more disadvantages fell by 2.2 million people over the same period. In his first speech on social exclusion, Communities Minister David Miliband said that it was time to move social exclusion back into the spotlight: We should be proud of our progress. We’ve really turned the corner in the fight against exclusion. It’s time to shake off the lazy fatalism that the poor will always be with us. But we need to redouble our efforts. Social exclusion is not just about basic conditions. It is about not having access to the things most people take for granted – basic skills, a job, a decent home, a sufficient income and contact wit friends and family. It is about not having power over your life and your future. There are new challenges ahead. Society is changing – for example, the number of people living alone has jumped from 3.4m in 1971 to an estimated 8.5m in 2021. Living alone doesn’t in itself mean social exclusion, of course, but it can increase the risks. Older people are particularly vulnerable. We have a duty to ensure the ageing generation doesn’t become a lonely generation. We want to make sure that every public service in this country is held accountable for their performance in the poorest areas and for the most disadvantaged people, not just for the average. This means looking at how we can distribute funds more progressively, according to deprivation and need.112

The Minister pledged to take ‘five key challenges’ to each Whitehall Department to keep the fight against social exclusion at the heart of government policy: ‘establishing “floor targets” so Departments raise minimum outcomes; progressive funding which starts with those most in need; joined up and personalized services

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which put people first; rights being conditional on responsibilities; shared institutions and activities which bring people together.’ This speech was interesting for two reasons. First, it indicated that social exclusion was once again the government’s focus. The Social Exclusion Unit was established in 1997 by Tony Blair, but the language later shifted to social inclusion and then community cohesion. The policy wheel appeared to have turned full circle with the emphasis put back on the socially excluded and their needs. Second, the public library service was asked to meet the five key challenges of tackling social exclusion and will be held accountable for its performance in supporting those with the greatest needs. The ability to meet these challenges could determine the survival and development of public libraries over the next ten years.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5 6

7

8

9

John Vincent and John Pateman, ‘From equal opportunities to social exclusion’ in British librarianship and information work 1991–2000, ed. J. H. Bowman. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 37–61. Libraries, museums, galleries and archives for all: co-operating across the sectors to tackle social exclusion. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001. Framework for the future: libraries, learning and information in the next decade. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2003. Building better library services. Wetherby: Audit Commission, 2002; John Pateman, Developing a needs-based library service. Leicester: NIACE, 2003 (NIACE lifelines in adult learning; 13); Tim Coates, Who’s in charge? Responsibility for the public library service – a report by Tim Coates. London: Libri Trust, 2004. Comprehensive, efficient and modern public libraries: standards and assessment. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001. Public library service standards. London: Department of Culture, Media and Sport, [2004]. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). The Comprehensive Performance Assessments are carried out by the Audit Commission who bring together a range of factors to assess a Council’s overall performance; for further information, see: (accessed 3/4/06). Public library service impact measures – proposals for 2005/2006. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). The background to this development was laid out in a series of reports published in 2005: Burns Owens Partnership, New directions in social policy: developing the evidence base for museums, libraries and archives in England. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: ; Tracey Hylton, New directions in social policy: cultural diversity for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: ; Rebecca Linley,

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10 11

12

13

14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

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New directions in social policy: communities and inclusion policy for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: ; and Marcus Weisen, New directions in social policy: health policy for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: (all accessed 3/4/06). PKF, Public libraries: efficiency and stock supply chain review. London: Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 2005. Presentation by Mark Upton from the ODPM: ‘Developing the local government services market: presentation to the Intellect/SOCITM Supplier Forum’, 27 Sept. 2005. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). ‘1.1m fewer people socially excluded’, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister News Release 2005/0253, 29 Nov. 2005. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). John Vincent, Libraries and community cohesion: a paper for the South East Museum, Library and Archive Council. Winchester: SEMLAC, 2005. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). Building cohesive communities: a report of the Ministerial Group on Public Order and Community Cohesion. London: Home Office, 2001. Building on success: an action plan for libraries. London: Resource, 2001. Resource manifesto. London: Resource, 2000. Building on success: an action plan for libraries. London: Resource, 2001. Using museums, archives and libraries to develop a learning community: a strategic plan for action. London: Resource, 2001; Information and communications technology and the development of museums, archives and libraries: a strategic plan for action. London: Resource, 2001. Annual review 2002/03. London: Resource, 2004. See, for example: (accessed 4/4/06). Libraries, museum, galleries and archives for all: co-operating across the sectors to tackle social exclusion. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001. Libraries for all. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 1999; Centres for social change: museums, galleries and archives for all. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2000. Making a difference – innovation and diversity: the report of the Social Inclusion Executive Advisory Group to CILIP. London: CILIP, 2002. Framework for the future: libraries, learning and information in the next decade. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2003. Report to Parliament on public library matters. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2004. House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Public Libraries: third report of Session 2004–05. Vol. 1. London: Stationery Office, 2005. Government response to the third report of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Session 2004–05: public libraries. London: Stationery Office, 2005. A quiet revolution. London: MLA, 2004. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). The Shared Priorities were agreed between central and local government in 2002. They include: raising standards across schools; improving the

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quality of life of children, young people and families at risk, and of older people; promoting healthier communities and narrowing health inequalities; creating safer and stronger communities; transforming the local environment by improving the quality, cleanliness and safety of public space; meeting local transport needs more effectively; and promoting the economic vitality of localities. Further information is available at: (accessed 3/4/06). 29 Investing in knowledge. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2004. 30 ‘New funding to develop public libraries’, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council news release, 21 June 2004. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). 31 Tracey Hylton, New directions in social policy: cultural diversity for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). 32 Rebecca Linley, New directions in social policy: communities and inclusion policy for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). 33 Marcus Weisen, New directions in social policy: health policy for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: http://www.mla.gov.uk/documents/ndsp_health.doc, (accessed 3/4/06) 34 Presentation by Mark Upton from the ODPM, ‘Developing the local government services market: presentation to the Intellect/SOCITM Supplier Forum’, 27 Sept. 2005. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 35 PKF, Public libraries: efficiency and stock supply chain review. London: Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 2005. 36 The little book of public libraries. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. 37 Shiraz Durrani, Social and racial exclusion handbook for libraries, archives, museums and galleries. Nadderwater: Social Exclusion Action Planning Network, 2001. 38 The Network newsletter: tackling social exclusion in libraries, museums, archives and galleries. Nadderwater: The Network, 2001– (formerly Public Libraries & Social Exclusion Action Planning Network newsletter 1999–2001). Available at: <www.seapn.org.uk> (accessed 3/4/06). 39 LASER (the London and South Eastern Library Region) was an operational company which served for more than 70 years the cooperative interests of public libraries predominantly in London and the South East. The Laser Foundation was created from the transfer of the LASER company into a grant-making trust. Further information is available from: (accessed 3/4/06). 40 Building better library services. Wetherby: Audit Commission, 2002. 41 Sandra Parker et al., Neighbourhood renewal and social inclusion: the role of museums, archives and libraries. London: Resource, 2002. 42 John Pateman, Developing a needs-based library service. Leicester: NIACE, 2003 (NIACE lifelines in adult learning; 13).

From social inclusion to community cohesion 43

44

45

46 47 48

49

50 51 52

53 54 55

56

57 58 59 60

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Ann Lines, Christopher Savory, Angharad Reakes, Extending the role of libraries: final report. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research, 2004 (LGA research report; 23/04). Welcome to your library: an evaluation report by the Advice Development Project. London: Advice Development Project, 2004. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). See also: Helen Carpenter, Welcome To Your Library Project: developing public library services for asylum seekers and refugees in the London Boroughs of Brent, Camden, Enfield, Merton, Newham – final report. London: London Libraries Development Agency, 2004. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). Better public libraries. London: Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, 2003. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). 21st century libraries: changing forms, changing futures. London: Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, 2004 (‘Building futures’ series). Tim Coates, Who’s in charge? Responsibility for the public library service: a report. London: Libri Trust, 2004. Catriona Davies, ‘Why libraries spend £24 for book that costs £10 in shops’, Daily telegraph 28 April 2004. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06); Ian Herbert, ‘A minute’s silence, please, for the late public library’, The independent 28 April 2004. John Ezard, ‘Library experts “sidelined in crisis summit”’, Guardian 19 June 2004. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). Charles Leadbeater, Overdue: how to create a modern public library service. London: Demos, 2003. For further information see: (accessed 3/4/06). Libraries: a vision – the public library service in 2015. London: Laser Foundation, 2005. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). See: (accessed 4/4/06). Information about these funding streams and the projects they supported can be found at: (accessed 4/4/06). John Vincent, ‘Tackling the problem: some help’, Public library journal 19 (2), summer 2004, 18–19; John Vincent, ‘A question of cohesion’, Public library journal 20 (2), summer 2005, 26–8. Dave Muddiman et al., ‘Open to all? The public library and social exclusion: executive summary’, New library world 102 (1163/1164), 2001, 154–7; Dave Muddiman et al., Open to all? The public library and social exclusion. London: Resource, 2000. Vol. 1: Overview and conclusions; Vol. 2: Survey, case studies and methods; Vol. 3: Working papers (Library and Information Commission research reports; 84–86). John Pateman, ‘Why class matters’, Diversity: newsletter of the Diversity Council 3, March 2002, 14–16. John Pateman, ‘Moving target’, Public library journal 18 (2), summer 2003, 31–2, 34. John Pateman, ‘Libraries must change to survive’, Adults learning May 2003. John Pateman, ‘Developing a needs-based service’, Library + information update 3 (5), 2004, 34–7; John Pateman, ‘Structures to tackle social exclusion’, Library + information update 3 (6), 2004, 38–40; John Pateman and Charles Newby, ‘The

46

61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72

73 74 75

76 77

78

79

British librarianship and information work 2001–2005 essence of inclusion: Cuba and the Nordic states’, Library + information update 3 (11), 2004, 30–3. Nicola Baker, ‘Breaking the cycle of poor literacy’, Library + information update 3 (10), 2004, 38–9. John Pateman, ‘Tackling exclusion: gypsies and travellers’, Library + information update 3 (3), 2004, 42–3. John Vincent, ‘Working with looked-after children’, Public library journal 20 (1), spring 2005, 15–17. Much good practice was established as a result from seedfunding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Summaries of key projects can be found at: (accessed 4/4/06). John Vincent, Access to books and reading projects for young people in public care: the librarians’ training kit. Nadderwater: The Network, 2004. John Pateman, ‘Reasons to be wrathful’, Library management 23 (1/2), 2002, 17–22. John Pateman, ‘Count in everybody’, Public library journal 17 (2), summer 2002, 38–9. John Vincent, ‘“So, who are ‘proper’ library users then?”’ Public library journal 20 (3), autumn 2005, 10. ‘Moving Target’, NIACE conference, Imperial War Museum, Duxford, Feb. 2003. ‘Diversity – dare to win!’ Diversity Group Conference, University of Wolverhampton, 4 Oct. 2004. There is a brief summary of the conference in Diversity autumn 2004, 2 (available at: (accessed 4/4/06)). ‘Extending the Role of Libraries’, Local Government Association Conference, Local Government House, Smith Square, London, 22 Nov. 2004. ‘Agenda for change – how inclusive are our services?’ East Midlands Region Social Inclusion Seminar, EMMLAC, Leicester, 12 Jan. 2005. ‘Umbrella 2005’, CILIP conference, University of Manchester, 30 June–2 July 2005. See, for example, the papers presented at the Community Services Group sessions at: (accessed 4/4/06). ‘Mainstreaming Equality’, CILIP Career Development Group National Conference, University of Leicester, 14 Nov. 2005. Adrienne Skelton et al., Arts in England: attendance, participation and attitudes in 2001. London: Resource, 2002. Patrick Sturgis and Jonathan Jackson, Report on the 2000 UK Time Use Survey: examining public use of museums, galleries, archives and libraries. London: Resource, 2003. Comprehensive, efficient and modern public libraries: standards and assessment. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001. Public library service standards. London: Department of Culture, Media and Sport, [2004]. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). See, for example: Annual Library Plans: guidance for the preparation of plans in 2001. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). See, for example: Public library position statements 2003: guidance. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2003. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06).

From social inclusion to community cohesion 80 81 82 83

84

85

86

87

88 89

90

91 92 93

94

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The latest thinking is that these should be subsumed as part of a local authority’s Community Strategy and Plan. Public library service standards. MLA’s response to proposals for Comprehensive Performance Assessment from 2005. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Comprehensive, efficient and modern public libraries for Wales: standards and monitoring. Cardiff: National Assembly for Wales, 2001. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). The Welsh public library standards 2002/05: an overall analysis. Aberystwyth: CyMAL, 2005. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). Northern Ireland’s libraries: a framework for change. Belfast: Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, 2005. Available at: (accessed 5/4/06). Information from the ‘Scotland: Cultural Profile’ website at: (accessed 5/4/06). Jared Bryson, Bob Usherwood and David Streatfield, Social impact audit. Taunton: South West Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2002. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). Kevin Harris and Martin Dudley, Public libraries and community cohesion: developing indicators. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Public library service impact measures: proposals for 2005/2006. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2005. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Libraries impact project. London: Laser Foundation, 2005. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). See: (accessed 4/4/06). ‘“New Directions in Social Policy” – researching the impact’, MLA news eBulletin 138, 20 May 2004. Vincent McDonald and Debbie Olley, Aspiring to inclusion: a handbook for councils and other organisations. Ipswich: Suffolk County Council, 2002. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). Resource disability action plan. London: Resource, 2002; Access to museums, archives and libraries for disabled users. London: Resource, 2002 – neither of these publications was accessible on the MLA website on 4 April 2006. To some extent they have been superseded by the ‘Disability portfolio’, a set of 12 practical guides, all published: London: Resource: Annie Delin, Disability in context, 2003 (‘Resource disability portfolio’ guide 1); Sarah Playforth, Meeting disabled people, 2003 (Guide 2); Sarah Playforth, Training for equality, 2003 (Guide 3); Annie Delin, Audits, 2003 (Guide 4); Marcus Weisen, The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), 2003 (Guide 5); Sarah Playforth, Inclusive information, 2003 (Guide 6); Nick Poole, Using technology, 2003 (Guide 7); Annie Delin, Access on a shoestring, 2003 (Guide 8); Janet Bell, Accessible environments, 2004 (Guide 9); Linda Sargent, Outreach and partnerships, 2004 (Guide 10); Sarah Playforth, Consulting disabled people, 2004 (Guide 11); Annie Delin, Employment at every level, 2004 (Guide 12). All available

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at: (accessed 4/4/06). 95 ‘Access for All’ toolkit: enabling inclusion for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2004. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 96 ‘Access for All’ self-assessment toolkit. Checklist 1: Disability access for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, [ca. 2004]. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 97 ‘Access for All’ self-assessment toolkit. Checklist 2: Cultural diversity for museums, libraries and archives. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, [ca. 2004]. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 98 See: (accessed 4/4/06). 99 How to … develop a community profile: a guide for museums, libraries and archives. Leicester: EMMLAC, 2005. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06); How to … write an audience development plan: a guide for museums, libraries and archives. Leicester: EMMLAC, 2005. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 100 Viv Bird and Rodie Akerman, Literacy and social inclusion: the handbook. London: Basic Skills Agency, 2005. Prior to this, the project had produced a position statement which laid the foundations for the final report: Viv Bird and Rodie Akerman, Every which way we can: a Literacy and Social Inclusion position paper. London: National Literacy Trust, 2005. 101 Inclusion through innovation: tackling social exclusion through new technologies: a Social Exclusion Unit final report. London: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005. 102 Brian Loader and Leigh Keeble (eds.), Challenging the digital divide? A literature review of community informatics initiatives. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2004. 103 Evaluation of the People’s Network and ICT training for public library staff programme: interim report for the New Opportunities Fund. London: New Opportunities Fund, 2003. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 104 The People’s Network: evaluation summary. London: Big Lottery Fund, 2004 (Big Lottery Fund research issue; 7). Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 105 Peter Brophy, The People’s Network: moving forward. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2004. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). 106 Survey of charges for People’s Network. [UK]: Society of Chief Librarians, 2004. 107 Books and bytes: new service paradigms for the 21st century library: an evaluation of the People’s Network and ICT training for public library staff programme. London: Big Lottery Fund, 2004. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06).

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109 110

111

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Connecting the UK: the digital strategy. London: Cabinet Office, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit/Department of Trade and Industry, 2005. Available at: http://www.dti.gov.uk/industries/telecoms/pdf/digital_strategy.pdf>(accessed 4/4/06). ‘Measuring the impact of the People’s Network over time: MLA launches LONGITUDE toolkit’, MLA news 26 May 2005. Peter Brophy and Jenny Craven, Longitude II: a library networking impact toolkit for a user-driven environment. London: Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2004. Available at: (accessed 4/4/06). “1.1m fewer people socially excluded”, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister news release 2005/0253, 29 Nov. 2005. Available at: (accessed 3/4/06). Ibid.

4

Community information Helen Leech

Community information in public libraries generally consists of a central signposting database of clubs and societies. In the past this was available only to library users, but during these five years the rise of the internet convinced most library authorities to make their databases available on the web. This made the information easier to access – but also eroded the role of the library and the role of the librarian, as other services started to develop community information databases, as people changed the way they search for information, and as clubs and societies started publishing their own websites. The rise of community information websites During these five years public libraries increasingly took the opportunity to make information available over the internet. By the end of 2005 around six out of every ten library authorities were offering community information databases over the internet.1 More continued to be added all the time: in November 2005 East Lothian made its database, Inquire, available.2 The nature of these databases changed very little from the time that they were kept in card files. They listed local clubs and societies, were organized by subject and place, and gave contact details and meeting times. Two new fields tended to be added in these years: email address for the contact person, and URL for the organization website. Occasionally the remit of the service was widened to included halls for hire, places of worship, and other signposting information, and these are discussed towards the end of this chapter. Databases can be made accessible in a number of ways: examples can be seen at Lancashire, Sandwell, where the community information database could be found via the library web pages, and Westminster, where the database could be found via the community and living pages.3 The first used a database, the second provided information in a printed directory and made the directory available using an Adobe PDF file, and the third used a module within its library management system (GEAC). The norm for public library authorities was to follow the first example, and use database software hosted on a Council server. The move to put these databases online coincided with the move, by the clubs and societies themselves, to start publishing their own information in the form of

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web pages. By the end of 2005 around four out of every ten clubs had their own websites. (It is interesting to note that this ratio did not differ significantly between urban and rural areas.) Generally speaking, public library services did not engage with local clubs to help them create their own websites. Exceptions can be seen in a small number of authorities, examples being Medway and Kent. In Medway library services used free software to help local clubs to build their own websites, and in Kent they gathered together resources to assist clubs. The role of the local authority in supporting local groups online Public libraries continued to be undisputed centres for depositing and accessing information, a place where people could drop in posters or look for leaflets. It was a key role for librarians to collate this information to make it more easily accessible. However, libraries were no longer necessarily the first port of call for members of the public looking for local organizations. It became increasingly common for other services within local authorities to assist clubs to get online. There was a growing recognition of the role of local authorities in supporting local groups, neighbourhoods and charities. This role had long consisted of financial support for local organizations through local Compacts. More recently there was a growing awareness of the potential use of local organizations for supporting and delivering community services, which was recorded in the document Citizen engagement and public services: why neighbourhoods matter, published in 2005.4 This document argued for ‘double devolution’, the devolution of responsibilities and budgets to local groups keen to work for community improvement. Double devolution called for excellent communication with community groups. This meant, firstly, that the groups had to be identified, and secondly, that the infrastructure needed to be in place to talk to them. This led, in 2003, to community information being identified as one of the key e-government outcomes in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s strategy for supporting local government service delivery.5 As a result, a handful of local authorities developed units which, firstly, compiled local and community information online, and secondly encouraged local groups to publish contact and other details on the internet. The demarcation line between these units and library services was often blurred; the clubs and societies database sometimes underpinned the Council A–Z of services, and ex-librarians often staffed the units. Examples existed in Essex, Brent and Bromley. Examples where local authorities supported clubs to get online can be seen in Essex, which offered free websites to local groups.6 Another example can be found in Kingston.7 Records for websites created in this way fed into Council directories of local organizations, and these could be regarded as competition for those traditionally compiled by library authorities. A small number of library services reported that they were attempting to develop their community information databases to act as a central core for a wider

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Council database of organizations. One authority reported that ‘our practice in terms of updating is very good but not all departments are able to maintain the database as we have learnt to’.8 This seems to have been a common experience: librarians as a profession became more acutely aware of data protection requirements and information management than most other officers in local authorities. Competition from commercial information providers Local authorities were not the only bodies collating central registers of signposting information. Competition can be seen in the rise of websites provided by public service bodies or professional organizations. It became possible to search for doctors, plumbers or vets using a postcode to bring up results within one’s own area, information which previously would only have been found in printed directories in public libraries or by telephoning the professional organization involved. Commercial bodies such as UpMyStreet and KnowUK also provided creditable directories of local and community information.9 However, these websites tended to focus on specific types of information and none of these was able to challenge the public library’s role as collator of a wide range of non-profit-making information. Small clubs and societies are hard to trace, and are not of interest to the large commercial websites as the information about them is comparatively expensive to compile and of interest only to a small local population. Online search engines, too, did not yet have the ability to challenge public libraries as central places to find clubs and societies. Because small clubs have small websites, accessed by small numbers of people, they do not rank highly in returns delivered by the major search engines such as Google and tend to be difficult to find. New initiatives and partnerships There was increasing recognition of the power of new technologies to draw information together from disparate sources. This manifested itself in partnerships between library services, other services within their parent authorities, and other external organizations such as local health providers and the police. A small number of library authorities reported that they were using existing community information resources to put together subsets to support their authority’s various objectives, such as promoting healthy living. One example was the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which created a database to support local children’s services and related professionals.10 There were a number of projects across the country where library services drew together community information resources. The biggest example of this was WILL, What’s In London Libraries.11 WILL aimed to bring together the catalogues and community information databases of London’s public libraries, and at the time of writing included the community information files of eleven London authorities, which could all theoretically be searched at once.

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Another example of a partnership was the consortium known as SeamlessUK, which was led by Essex County Council and joined by Medway Council. The New Opportunities Fund provided funding for the project, which in November 2003 allowed Medway to launch its About Medway website, bringing together in a single place information about local resources, a community information partnership, and a way of delivering national information resources to local people.12 It included information from over 600 organizations, services and groups, and allowed users to find in one place information which previously had been scattered over several. A local information audit was carried out in order to discover what barriers existed to finding information. Working with SeamlessUK facilitated the understanding of the relevant standards. Largely speaking, however, partnership working for community information generally revolved around one local authority, and could include health providers, voluntary bodies, and learning providers. Examples were Brent, East Sussex, Wakefield, Devon, Islington, and Northumberland. Standards There were no widely-used standards for the provision of community information. The US MARC Community Information Format was the only standard dedicated to community information, and the author is not aware of its being used in the UK. At one point metadata showed promise as a means of structuring community information data, specifically Dublin Core, which was adopted and specified by central government in 2001.13 (Metadata is the background code that identifies particular parts of a web page, such as the title and creator.) However, it is clear that where Dublin Core was being used it was to structure the background pages rather than the database records. One example could be seen at Essex.14 Because people tend to ask for community information by subject, this requires structured indexes. Most authorities used lists that were developed in-house, but April 2005 saw the publication of IPSV, the Integrated Public Service Vocabulary. The IPSV was the result of the merger of the Government Category List, the Local Government Category List, and a taxonomy provided by SeamlessUK, which had originated in a community information team in Essex public library service. At the time of writing, the Vocabulary was used by over a hundred local authorities for metadata within their websites, and was starting to be considered for use with community information data. One example where this was happening was the community information database of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Other kinds of community information This chapter has concentrated on databases of clubs and societies. Every library service maintained these lists, although not necessarily on the internet. However, the definition of ‘community information’ differed from authority to authority and each authority tended to gather different bodies of information.15

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One body of information that tends to be universally offered by public library authorities is collections of leaflets. There was little change in the way library services collated and offered leaflets, despite the fact that increasingly this kind of information was being made available over the internet. Many library authorities still subscribed to Camden Council’s leaflets service, which provided them with a list of what public information leaflets were available. Two other types of information that libraries tend to collate are halls available for hire, and places of worship. Increasingly, these lists were made available over the internet, either embedded in the organization’s community information database, as can be seen in Islington, or as a separate database, as at Reading.16 Increasingly, however, these lists were maintained by other sections within local authorities. Finally, the rise of the internet eliminated the need for library services to collate certain kinds of information, specifically bus and train timetables, childcare information, and health providers. This information was now collated nationally.17 While it cannot be denied that it is enormously helpful to have this information available, it represents further erosion of the library service’s role in collating information and making it accessible. Conclusions, and the future Public libraries continued to be the undisputed centres for community information collation and provision, but it was not clear whether this role would develop – or whether it might fall away entirely. The continuing development of the internet was changing the way that people expected to find information. At the time of writing libraries were still the only bodies willing to spend the resources to draw together a wide range of information, but commercial organizations like Google, KnowUK and UpMyStreet, and local media organizations, were increasingly providing competition. In addition to this, the role of the librarian in this regard was being challenged by other bodies, often within the librarian’s own authority, which were taking on the roles of managing information and collating community information. The author’s opinion is that future success for public libraries would lie in adopting the new technologies which currently represented competition. Libraries should be using search engine technology to harvest from and signpost distributed data sources. With the rise of new technologies and the online club website, it was becoming increasingly difficult to justify manually and laboriously collating central databases of contact information, when this information was freely available from distributed websites. This leads to a logical interim step: libraries should be encouraging and supporting local organizations to get online, and encouraging best practice in the use of information management standards. Framework for the future, published in 2003, identified community and civic values as one of the key functions of the modern library service, and community engagement was increasingly seen as crucial both for local and library authorities.18 Public libraries needed to address

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their own and local authority agendas by supporting local organizations to get online.

Notes 1

2 3

4 5

6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13

14 15

16

There is no central list of library services’ community information databases, but all can be access through the library websites, and a full list of these can be found at the UK Public Libraries website: (accessed 6/06). East Lothian Council, Online databases of community organisations: . Lancashire lantern: the Lancashire life and times e-resource network: ; Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council: ; City of Westminster, Community and living: . Citizen engagement and public services: why neighbourhoods matter. 2005. Available at: < http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1163148> (accessed 17/7/06). Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Defining e-government outcomes for 2005 to support the delivery of priority services & national strategy transformation agenda for local authorities in England. Version 1.0. Available at: (accessed 17.7.06). Essex Online: your gateway to services and information across Essex: (accessed 17/7/06). Kingston ePublish: (accessed 17/7/06). The data protection laws were revised in 1998 to require holders of databases to update ‘personal information’ regularly. Many community information records for clubs include secretaries’ home addresses. UpMyStreet: for where you live : ; KnowUK: (accessed 17/7/06). Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Children’s service directory: (accessed 17/7/06). What’s in London’s libraries: (accessed 17/7/06). Helen Leech, ‘All about Medway’, Libray + information update 2 (12), 2003, 52–3. Office of the e-Envoy, E-Government Metadata Framework. London: Office of the eEnvoy, 2001. Available at: (accessed 17/7/06). Essex Online. A list of the kinds of information that may fall into the category of community information can be found in: CIRCE: better communities through better information. London: Library and Information Commission, 1999 (Library and Information Commission research report; 1). Islington Library & Cultural Services, Directory of local services: ; Reading Borough Libraries, Community

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information database: (accessed 17/7/06). 17 Traveline: ; ChildcareLink: (accessed 17/7/06). 18 Framework for the future: libraries, learning and information in the next decade. London: DCMS, 2003. Available at: .

5

University libraries Jeremy Atkinson and Steve Morgan

Introduction The start of the twenty-first century saw some major developments in British university libraries. The content of this chapter does not pretend to be comprehensive. Although some developments were not always adequately covered in the literature, they were often discussed widely in professional networking circles. The structure of the chapter aims to reflect these developments by adopting a division into three sections. The first three topics focus on the library user (Users and Services; Information literacy; Cooperation and collaboration). This is followed by consideration of the hybrid library environment in which the user operates (E-developments; Library as place). The third grouping represents aspects of management which ensure that the user and the hybrid library are brought together in the most effective way (Staffing and staff Development; Managing change; Finance; Compliance; Quality). Before embarking on the main content, we would like to highlight two developments that were significant at a national level. During the period 2004–2005 SCONUL (the Society of College, National and University Libraries)1 developed a vision statement to identify the key issues facing university libraries up to the year 2010.2 It also undertook a major strategic review with the aims of: x x

becoming a more strategic organization in terms of influence and leadership enabling a step change in its activity levels to take place in order to support delivery of its enhanced strategic agenda x responding to concerns about the visibility, impact and value for money of the organization. Despite being a large organization in terms of membership (all universities in the UK and Ireland are members as are many of the UK’s colleges of higher education), SCONUL continued to have a very small secretariat and was heavily dependent on senior library staff in member libraries giving freely of their time. A major refocusing of effort was thought to be necessary to ensure that SCONUL used this scarce resource wisely and appropriately.

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Changes agreed by the membership included a new financial strategy leading to increased income levels and a major revision of SCONUL’s committees and groups to form a new portfolio of fixed Working Groups and shorter life Task and Finish Groups, which were set up to lead on a range of high visibility areas of work. Some key priorities for expenditure were also agreed, focused on the issues of visibility, impact and value for money, not just for SCONUL itself but also for its member libraries. These included beginning to develop a toolkit to enable members to be able to demonstrate to their institutions the value for money and impact provided by library services, and the development of a new marketing and communication strategy for SCONUL. An important strategic development for university libraries was the formation of the RIN (Research Information Network),3 set up in 2004 for an initial threeyear period, supported by funding from the four higher education funding bodies, the three national libraries and the eight research councils. The mission of the RIN was to ‘lead and coordinate new developments in the collaborative provision of research information for the benefit of researchers in the UK’. The formation of RIN stemmed from the Final report of the RSLG (Research Support Libraries Group), which identified that existing providers of research information often worked in loose collaboration with the lack of a unified approach to produce a national framework to meet researchers’ needs.4 Representatives from university libraries played an important part in the early work of RIN, particularly in the membership of consultative groups, which were set up to form a bridge between the research and the library and information communities. Users and services The place of users near the beginning of this chapter is no coincidence, given their centrality to the university library service.5 This immediately raised a question: what we continued to call the individuals who engaged with these services – patrons, clients, customers, students and staff, users, readers, visitors, stakeholders, etc. Brophy provided a detailed summary of the increasingly heterogeneous nature of the service receivers.6 Offering services that could satisfy a plethora of groups with differing needs became problematic. Therefore a more focused approach to differentiation and segmentation was taken, requiring a more serious marketing approach.7 Marketing library services, although higher profile, continued to be perceived as a luxury or afterthought rather than a strategic imperative. Competition for the attention of students was fierce. The impact of the Google factor, mobile phone technology, cheap web-based book suppliers, increasing access to PCs and laptops, new handheld devices, all required high quality promotional alternatives to turn students’ heads in the library direction. Greater emphasis was placed on satisfying the needs of groups such as those with disabilities e.g. visual impairment, hearing difficulties, mobility problems, dyslexia, those from backgrounds where higher education was a new departure – and the concomitant problems of student retention, overseas students, higher education students based at further education colleges, and researchers.8 Finance loomed large in the lives of

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an increasingly vocal number of students: either the need to earn whilst studying (and its implications for access to services) or the recognition (manifested through greater student assertiveness and litigiousness) that payment of tuition fees entitled them to high standards of resource provision and course support. For those studying remotely – such as e-learners,9 distance learners,10 traditional under/ postgraduates accessing services from home and companies – service provision improved substantially. One of the dilemmas associated with service provision was the balance between providing generic services required by potentially all users and the niche services identified by particular groups. If services were to be truly customer-orientated, then the needs of both groups had to be met – a tall order. Considerable progress was made to strengthen service provision – both physically and virtually – for generic and specific groups. The opening hours of university libraries continued to increase, with more and more offering services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.11 During the extended hours services were selectively provided, e.g. selfservice or reference only options being offered.12 In general, students required access to printed material and a place to study, together with computer facilities. For some university libraries the five years saw a quantum leap in the provision of self-service facilities, e.g. self-service issue and return, renewals, reservations, inter-library loan systems, accessing individual borrower accounts, online student payment services, self-service photocopying, scanning, etc.13 Basically, this was catch-up time to bring provision in line with services offered by retail outlets including banks, building societies and supermarkets. How best to give support to the users who visited the library continued to exercise service managers and planners: the levels of staff required, their knowledge and expertise, and striking a balance between providing quality services whilst (in some cases through ‘paymaster persuasion’) pursuing efficiency gains. Providing reference and enquiry services – physically and virtually – became a more complex set of challenges. To the traditional face-to-face approach were added the synchronous (or real time) and asynchronous interactions.14 An example of the former would be the provision of chat software (putting a human face on the virtual library); the latter involved the delayed interaction of email and web-based communication media. Portals which promoted the library services to particular segmented groups became embedded in the library web page one-stop shop approach. Particular groups were supported by a range of human as well as electronic resources. As well as traditional support provided by subject librarians, a more integrated approach took root in many institutions, with the blending and overlapping of staff expertise. Study skills, disability technology facilities, pastoral or counselling support, software support were just a few of these developments. Students were less interested in the source of the support than in its effective operation.

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Information literacy Although neither a new phenomenon nor one limited to the university sector, information literacy certainly became high profile. Developed in the United States in the late 1980s, it was defined as: the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to obtain, through whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs, together with critical awareness of the importance of wise and ethical use of information in society.15

Andretta provided an excellent practitioner’s view of the topic, as did the contributors to the special issue of Library review.16 The first LILAC (Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference)17 in 2005 included some excellent papers and was the catalyst for a new website18 and journal (Journal of information literacy), the first issue published in 2006. Over the years the role of the academic librarian adapted to the changes in government policies, information technology and the needs of the student population. How this affected academic librarians in their day-to-day work was well documented by Langley et al.19 One of the key aspects of the role was information literacy. During the period in question continued attempts were made to ensure that students acquired the necessary transferable skills to become information-literate. A number of university libraries developed information literacy strategies or policies.20 Some produced toolkits to encourage best practice, for example at Newcastle University.21 Historically, the narrowly-based library and bibliographic instruction (concentrating on the book and its location) gave way to the more widely conceived user education (concentrating on the student him/ herself). This in turn evolved into the even wider information or informationhandling skills, a sibling of information literacy.22 Each of these steps required the student to possess, as a basic foundation, an increasingly sophisticated level of IT skills. The hybrid library, the all-pervasive nature of the internet, the variety of formats in which information was delivered necessitated serious reconsideration of what it meant to be information literate in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, some suggested that ‘information literacy programmes are about changing people’,23 and not just a new set of skills to be acquired. Poyner provided a comprehensive guide to information skills training, highlighting the identification of student information needs and devising programmes to meet them.24 In a significant development SCONUL developed the ‘seven pillars’ model of information literacy in which seven information skills lead to the achievement of information literacy. The skills are: x x x x x

recognizing information need distinguishing ways of addressing gap constructing strategies for locating locating and accessing comparing and evaluating

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x organizing, applying and communicating x synthesizing and creating.25 This model was taken up by many others for their own curriculum development purposes.26 It was generally agreed that any information literacy programme worked best when integrated into the curriculum and facilitated by a combination of academic and library/learning resources staff. The aim was to make use of a generic model that could be adapted for a range of different disciplines. Whether library staff were the right people to deliver information literacy programmes continued to be debated.27 The question was raised as to whether it might be more appropriate for librarians to train and/or involve academic staff as a way of persuading students of the benefits. It was recognized that librarians needed to understand more fully the different attitudes and motivations of academic staff in different contexts. Although there were always small pockets of success, there was much ground to be made up before academic and library staff were seen as a genuine partnership in steering students towards becoming information-literate. The Big Blue Project and the subsequent Information Skills Toolkit was another important development during this period.28 Given the developments in the USA and Australia, it was no surprise that the Project called heavily upon experiences in those countries to inform this model. Students value tasks that have some bearing on their assessment. The challenges relating to the assessment of information literacy programmes, like their previous incarnations, were discussed in Webber and Johnston.29 Cooperation and collaboration Collaboration continued to figure prominently on the agenda of university libraries in order to achieve improved services for users, a more cost-effective sharing of resources or joint project working in response to calls from JISC and other funding bodies.30 Collaboration at a national level was progressed by organizations such as SCONUL and CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries) and by a wide range of formal and semi-formal groups, particularly in the areas of staff development and training such as BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians), the University, College and Research Group of CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals)31 and the University Science and Technology Librarians Group. Significant development work was carried out by a number of regional collaborative groups. WHELF (Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum) carried out a major review of collaboration in its HELP (Higher Education Libraries in Partnership) project, including case studies on e-learning and journals, leading to an action plan for further development.32 WHELF also continued to be active in the areas of staff development and training. SCURL (the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries) carried out innovative work in developing CASS (Collaborative Academic Store for Scotland), began work on a Scottishwide institutional repository and was particularly active in special needs work.33

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The M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries in the east and south-east of England was particularly active in staff development and training through its CPD25 activities, and in access schemes and online resource discovery through its InforM25 service. InforM25 was developed to consist of four integrated schemes designed to provide users with simultaneous searching across the library catalogues of the large number of member institutions using standardized protocols, and with information about libraries and collections by geographical location, by subject discipline and by opening hours and access arrangements.34 NOWAL (North West Academic Libraries) further developed its well-regarded staff development activities and also arranged an innovative collaborative procurement exercise for netLibrary e-books with OCLC involving the acquisition of 12,000 priced titles within a 30-month contract.35 Other key collaborative developments at a national level during the period were the development of a UK-wide access and borrowing scheme for university researchers, SCONUL Research Extra,36 and further activity in the development of regional cross-sectoral access schemes, including LIN y Gogledd, which claimed to be the UK’s first free reciprocal borrowing scheme between public libraries and a university library.37 In addition a pilot scheme, UK Computing Plus was developed, which sought to allow reciprocal access to computers in host libraries, to complement the work of the UK Libraries Plus scheme.38 The delivery of university academic programmes in further education colleges continued to develop and a number of university libraries sought to define partnership agreements with their FE counterparts.39 E-developments At the beginning of the period Rusbridge wrote about the eLib (UK Electronic Libraries) programme as it was coming to a close.40 The eLib programme had been a major outcome of the Follett report41 in the mid-1990s and Rusbridge saw the programme as having successfully achieved its objective of a major cultural shift, with university libraries taking up new technologies almost as a matter of course. JISC had been the driver of the eLib programme and many of the e-developments in university libraries during 2001–2005 continued to be strongly influenced by JISC activities. In 2001 the main focus of thinking was around concepts such as networked learning, hybrid libraries and the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource),42 although authors such as Pinfield had identified a series of further challenges for institutions.43 By 2005 the use of new technologies in British university libraries had both widened and deepened: there was a wider range of high quality electronic resources available in all forms (e-books, e-journals, images, moving images, etc.), e-learning was more prevalent in universities with libraries taking a key role, digitization activities were more widespread, and libraries were involved in fundamental infrastructure changes in their institutions as e-approaches became more embedded, notably in the development of electronic theses, institutional repositories and records management.

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Conyers provided a useful overview of the extent of the availability of eresources in university libraries by the end of the period, with a significant move from print to electronic resources and a decline in the use of inter-library loans.44 Given the wide range of e-developments taking place in university libraries during the five-year period, it will only be possible to identify and summarize the key developments, with the references providing access to more in-depth information. One of the key issues for university libraries was the emphasis given to digitization of collections. At the beginning of the period the emphasis was on relatively small-scale digitization as part of projects45 or within individual library services.46 By 2005 the developments had become larger-scale, with HEFCE’s £10 million investment in a JISC Digitisation Programme involving digitization of large text, moving image and sound collections, and with a further tranche of funding promised for 2006.47 JISC was also involved in developing cross-sectoral strategic approaches.48 Commercial providers also became involved, for example in the University of Oxford’s mass digitization agreement with Google, involving the digitization of more than one million of the Bodleian Library’s books. During the period there was a distinct move from the internet being used in an ad hoc way by enthusiasts in higher education to e-learning having become an integral part of academic delivery, supported in a more routine way.49 Melling61 and Allan62 provided useful detail on the way in which librarians became directly involved in e-learning activities such as in the design and development of materials, delivery of e-content and the support of individual and group learning.50 There were a number of key projects related to delivery in particular subject areas51 or the development of specific tools and approaches, particularly around embedding information resources in learning environments.52 These developments began to impact on librarians’ roles and on services provided, with the need for more extensive cooperation between departments in the university.53 Librarians needed to obtain a more detailed knowledge of VLEs (virtual learning environments), and to a lesser extent virtual research environments, and be involved in a detailed way in their use and development.54 A key issue was the relationship between e-learning and digital libraries,55 with the INSPIRAL project analysing issues surrounding the linking of VLEs and digital libraries, focusing on institutional and end-user perspectives.56 For e-books a key strategic role was carried out by JISC’s E-Books Working Group.57 Progress by academic libraries in making e-books available in university libraries was much slower than with e-journals, although netLibrary supplied significant numbers of e-books to UK academic libraries during the period. A number of authors usefully explored the advantages and disadvantages of the medium.58 Important work was carried out by the EBONI (Electronic Books ON-screen Interface) project, funded under the DNER Learning and Teaching programme, which developed a set of guidelines for designing electronic textbooks, through evaluations with lecturers and students from a range of different disciplines.59 In 2001 Halliday and Oppenheim noted that the move to digital publishing by

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commercial publishers had done nothing to relieve the very high inflation rate on journal prices and highlighted the move to alternative models of journal production.60 Open access publishing gained momentum and was the focus of a report by the House of Commons Select Committee for Science and Technology.61 Following the previous Pilot Site Licence initiative (1995–1997) and NESLI (1998–2001), NESLi2 was implemented as the national initiative for the licensing of electronic journals on behalf of higher and further education from 2003 and piloted the use of a model licence for use in negotiating agreements with publishers.62 There were common problems for university libraries in dealing with large, bundled deals and in attempting to move from print to electronic collections.63 University libraries had for many years incorporated slide and video resources into their physical collections. Major progress was made during the period, particularly by JISC, in making networked image, moving image and sound resources available to university users, leading to the need for university libraries to incorporate these resources within their virtual collections and information gateways.64 A key development was the setting up of EMOL (Education Media OnLine), subsequently relaunched as Film and Sound Online, which was a JISCfunded set of online collections of film and video freely available to use either in full or as segments.65 2001–2005 was a period in which there was major investment in electronic resources by university libraries and JISC. Although there was a strong commitment and take-up by university librarians, there was an underlying concern about use and take-up of these resources by academic staff and students, who often showed a preference for using search engines such as Google.66 A number of important studies at individual institutions and by JISC-evaluated aspects of use of electronic resources and information-seeking behaviour. These included studies at Leeds Metropolitan University and Glasgow Caledonian University, the JUBILEE project, the JUSTEIS project, the EDNER project and the JISC User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.67 The outcomes of these studies pointed to a need for university librarians and JISC to be proactive in promoting the value of quality electronic resources and the importance of information skills training for students and academic staff. The development of electronic resources provision by university libraries was particularly important as universities sought to expand their distance and e-learning provision and provide an equivalent learning experience for students based off campus.68 Although access to electronic bibliographic databases in universities was well developed by 2001 and access to full text e-journals was relatively common, the provision of access to online theses was relatively underdeveloped and no UK national guidelines existed for the production and management of electronic theses and dissertations. During 2001–2005 there was significant progress, both in individual institutions and nationally.69 The JISC FAIR (Focus on Access to Institutional Resources) provided a focus for activity and the JISC-funded EThOS

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project started work to develop ‘a fully operational, easily scaleable and financially viable prototype UK online electronic theses service’.70 A key development for scholarly communication was the increasing emphasis on institutional repositories for the archiving of e-prints and e-theses. An important factor was the use of the (OAI) Open Archives Initiative, which created the conditions for making distributed archives interoperable.71 Leading UK institutions in these developments were Southampton, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Nottingham.72 The SHERPA project developed open access institutional repositories in a number of these research institutions.73 Other technology-based developments worthy of note included the use of RFID technology and blogs,74 progress in digital preservation,75 the move from ATHENS to Shibboleth authentication76 and libraries’ involvement in the development of records management policies and systems in universities.77 There were also significant developments in library management systems for universities with an emphasis on products facilitating access to e-content in an integrated way with books, journals and other library stock, including portal solutions, article-linking software and federated searching.78 Library as place As a result of the influential Follett report over 100 new academic library building projects were undertaken in the UK between the mid-1990s and the early years of the new century.79 Details of new academic library buildings in the UK can be accessed via SCONUL’s website.80 During 2001–2005, although clearly the process slowed down, significant development of the physical infrastructure of many library buildings took place.81 As well as some new buildings started from scratch, most university libraries participated in one or more of the following: x x x x x x x x

constructing extensions to existing buildings consolidating services on to fewer sites/into fewer buildings rationalizing the numbers of service points relocating services between buildings relocating services into different buildings on the same campus re-using existing space for a different purpose refurbishing existing buildings (interior and exterior) making existing accommodation work harder through the integration of services x making alterations to buildings to comply with legislation eg institutions are now obliged to ensure accessibility to all. The reasons for these developments were many and varied. They included the need to respond to financial constraints in higher education, to support changes to academic programmes (often related to student recruitment), to provide a range of teaching and learning spaces as a result of student demands and the advances in technology, and to incorporate the benefits of the virtual library into the changing

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physical environment. Many discussions debated the hybrid library (which during this five-year period continued to develop inexorably along the continuum between paper-based and electronic) and the balance of resources required by the academic communities. Did we need large book collections? Did we need buildings to house less-used physical resources? What about special collections, departmental collections or collections for particular groups like researchers? What about ebooks? How long before we moved to electronic-only journals collections? What about the archiving of print-only journals and digitization issues? All these considerations had implications for the physical space within universities and were discussed by Brophy.82 Emphasis was placed on the importance of flexibility and future-proofing of space. Both recognized that the existing usage of space would need to change over time and therefore required the potential to be reconfigured.83 The pedagogical and technological requirements of future students would clearly evolve. Learning spaces developed a blended approach that accommodated the physical and the virtual, each complementing the other. The physical began to take on a different persona. The types of services provided broadened into other support areas including study skills, counselling and financial support, services for disabled or dyslexic students, specialist media and IT services. The increasingly ubiquitous laptop appeared in the university library landscape – leasing, lending, owning – with appropriate accompanying work stations. Many buildings became wirelessenabled. Although not new, the zoning of library buildings became an accepted mechanism for trying to provide students with a choice of study environments. So group study areas or rooms (increasingly to enable students to prepare presentations), individual study carrels, workstations (for use of fixed or portable equipment), quiet areas, silent areas (and the challenges of differentiating between them!) and training suites were offered to users. One development that made a quantum leap during this period was that of social and learning space. Learning has always been a social activity but the rise of e-learning and the increased access to e-resources encouraged many universities to recognize student demand and provide social and learning space. The nomenclature varied – cybercafés, learning zones, learning centres, etc.84 In 2002 Glasgow Caledonian University opened its Learning Zone – just one example of a university reaching out to the student population. The multifunctional library buildings could thus provide a range of environments – for those requiring background noise, social interaction, relaxation (chill-out zones?), refreshments on tap,85 internet access, as well as the more traditional environment of silence. The different zones for different purposes, of course, threw up some management issues – not just of library staff and resources but also of noise, human traffic and behaviour.86 A greater emphasis was placed on security in the library buildings, given their vulnerability to theft of expensive equipment. This was particularly important for those sited in inner city locations. The use of closed circuit TV and swipe cards for staff and students became the norm.

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Staffing and staff development The importance of managing and developing staff showed no let-up. The management aspect was covered comprehensively by Jordan and Lloyd,87 whilst Brine, Oldroyd and Yeoh highlighted attempts to keep staff development high on the agenda.88 Although not extensively covered in the literature, one of the major discussion points in this period was job evaluation. As part of the National Framework Agreement the staff of each university including those providing library and information services were expected to participate in the exercise – most used either the HERA (Higher Education Role Analysis)89 or Hay models – in a drive to ensure amongst other things that individuals received equal pay for work of equal value. Whilst not yet completed for all universities, this protracted role analysis put library and information posts under intense scrutiny, with many winners, inevitably some losers and others still uncertain. The exercise succeeded in highlighting the changing roles in the library and information environment – new skills for new times. The role changes took place at different levels. As outlined elsewhere in this chapter, the leaders of services were bequeathed or acquired ever-expanding empires, taking on previously separate areas of responsibility. The skills and abilities required therefore could change quite dramatically.90 This was borne out in the extensive HIMSS Project, which explored the skills required of senior library and information staff.91 Not surprisingly, human resource, strategic, financial and change management skills, together with leadership and communication/interpersonal skills were seen as core requirements. The role of subject/information librarians also came under the spotlight.92 This culminated in a rare collective show of defiance as a result of the cutting of eight librarian posts at the University of Bangor.93 This acted as a wake-up call and prompted librarians across the sector to consider their own (in)dispensability. The change of roles was also demonstrated by the virtual demise of posts such as Chief Cataloguer or Systems Librarian and the rise of a range of exotically termed posts such as Knowledge Manager,94 Digital Resources Librarian, Metadata Manager, E-resources Coordinator and other learner support posts.95 Overall, there was a recognition that library staff required a wider skills base, regardless of their role,96 and that many staff benefited from acquiring project management skills.97 With the exception of Bangor, there was also a gradual reinforcement of the notion that, as well as library users having the facility to manage their library activities themselves and indeed study from a distance, being served, helped, advised and supported through human interaction was for many still an identified requirement.98 This period saw the launch of the CILIP Framework of qualifications, partly in an attempt to attract more high quality applicants into the profession and the university sector.99 However, the jury was still out. The difficulties faced by fixed term and project staff became evident following an extensive study.100 Another possible attraction to academic library work was the working pattern. This period demonstrated that flexibility was high on the list of many employees (and indeed of many employers), particularly those returning after undertaking family

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commitments. The European Working Time Directive, giving employees with young or disabled children the right to request to work flexibly, proved to be a breakthrough.102 Temporary or fixed term arrangements, home working, part-time working (various models) became increasingly acceptable options. Issues relating to performance management, although not covered widely in the literature, began to be discussed through informal networks including staff appraisal processes, reward systems, stress increasingly experienced by staff and absence management. The lack of succession planning for senior library staff, hitherto a topic mainly for the commercial sector, was increasingly a concern.103 Managing change The industry surrounding library management104 and management of change in particular continued apace.105 Although the university sector had become used to dealing with strategic change during the 1990s, in recent years the sheer complexity of the higher education landscape threw up huge challenges for staff – at micro and macro levels. Universities continued to be involved in a range of change events over the period, all requiring planning, preparation and a range of other skills. The University of Luton provided a comprehensive toolkit, developed out of a HEFCE Good Management Practice Project.106 Change management scenarios included: x mergers, partnerships and other collaborative ventures with other higher education institutions x realignment of library services in supporting institutional or academic review x convergence, deconvergence or establishment of changed relationships involving a range of support departments x restructuring of staffing in response to a range of external or internal factors x planning and implementing new building programmes, relocating to different premises or rationalizing premises (see elsewhere in chapter) x staffing changes brought about by the National Framework Agreement (ongoing) x new staff appointments – at institutional or departmental level – influencing strategic direction. In respect of the last point newly appointed service leaders drove some of the types of change outlined above (often factors outside their direct control) or brought in fresh ideas to make their mark on the new organization. Such ideas, quite naturally, included different ways of operating, e.g. leadership style, which affected in some way most of the staff in the service. The trickle-down effect of these changes clearly impacted in varying degrees throughout the institutions and their respective support services. It should be remembered that in many cases changes had to be given time to embed in the existing systems and structures. Given the amount and complexity of change, coupled with insufficient time for changes to coalesce, it

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was hardly surprising when issues around resistance and staff morale became prevalent. And all this before consideration was given to technological developments107 and dealing with external agencies,108 changes to teaching, learning and research methods, the fluidity of academic portfolios, the heterogeneous nature of the student body and the financial constraints within which higher education has to operate in the 21st century. The list is endless, as any good STEP/PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, Techological) or indeed the elongated PESTEL (add Environmental and Legal) analysis will testify. It was important that bodies such as SCONUL provided some vision for the academic library during this period.109 Universities needed a similar vision so that there was a unified focus for individual and collective energies. All these factors affected the way many people went about their work and how and with whom they interacted. It was these aspects of change which tended to get forgotten in a list of more concrete developments or moves. Ultimately, it was the people who made these activities succeed or fail and the cultural dimension to change is the least understood and the least amenable to practical solutions.110 Multiple change highlighted the importance of adopting proactive approaches to change, rather than letting change just happen.111 Strategic planning was deemed to be a powerful management tool in tackling change head-on so that a degree of control could be exerted.112 Atkinson provided some measures to enable change management to be carried out (relatively) painlessly, with particular emphasis placed on strategic planning.113 This process provided the opportunity to involve all the staff and gain ownership at an early stage. Although there would always be resistance in some quarters, there were mechanisms available to minimize it, if not avoid it altogether. The range of challenges thrown up by change management was well illustrated in Hanson.114 He provided a number of case studies of convergence and deconvergence (and also some institutions which decided against convergence) in universities. These detailed potted histories showed the different models that were followed. Most were carried out as a result of heads of service departing, i.e. opportunities were grasped. Many of the successes and failures of (de)convergence were dependent upon the ability to integrate staff coming from sometimes diverse cultures. Finance In general, financial issues did not loom large during the period, with most university libraries experiencing incremental growth in their budgets, but with pressures relating to above average inflation on subscription-based information products. In-depth financial benchmarking continued to be available to institutions through the annual SCONUL and UK higher education management statistics.115 There were pressures put on university library budgets and budget structures not only by above-average inflation on journals and subscription-based electronic resources,116 but also by consortial licence agreements and by complex ‘big deal’ arrangements for electronic resources, which often required an unprecedented flexibility in budget arrangements.117

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There were also continuing pressures on university libraries to raise income to supplement central university funding, with a few research-based libraries, such as the University of Oxford, mounting large-scale funding campaigns.118 Although there were a number of initiatives enabling libraries to make real progress in terms of e-delivery in support of their institution’s teaching, learning and research, specific developments in e-content provision produced a number of significant financial implications. There were often a number of major additional costs for those libraries wanting to make progress in this area. For example, the HERON service developed a well used charged-for service providing copyright clearance, digitization and delivery of book extracts and journal articles to UK higher education institutions, as well as a resource bank of digitized materials for rapid use, subject to copyright descriptions.119 Services such as HERON were guided in their approaches by the JISC-funded PELICAN project, which sought to develop an understanding of charging mechanisms for distributing commercially produced electronic material.120 In addition, following successful negotiations with Universities UK and SCOP (Standing Conference of Principals), the CLA (Copyright Licensing Agency) introduced a new trial licence, at additional cost to institutions, permitting the photocopying and scanning of copyright protected titles with effect from 1 August 2005.121 Compliance During the period there was a significant amount of legislation which impacted on universities and their library and information services and which presented a range of compliance challenges for service provision. The most significant were those relating to disability, copyright and intellectual property rights, and freedom of information. The SENDA (Special Educational Needs and Disability Act) legislation placed new requirements on those institutions providing post-16 education, including universities. In the university library sector there was a very positive response to this legislation by individual institutions, including physical changes to library buildings, study furniture and service points, provision of specialist equipment, and development of special services and support material, all of which were very well received by user.122 There was a particular emphasis on the provision of electronic information services for the visually impaired.123 There were also useful collaborative approaches in terms of sharing ideas and identifying best practice, notably by CLAUD in the south and south west of England124 and in Scotland.125 The increasing complexity of copyright compliance and the development of elearning and blended learning approaches in particular, resulted in a much greater workload in copyright clearance for universities, often centred on the library service.126 Those university libraries with a responsibility for copyright in the widest sense were also involved in ownership issues concerning intellectual property rights in relation to university lecturers and commercial exploitation.127 The introduction of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the consequent

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need for records management expertise also had a significant impact on university libraries and quite often resulted in a bringing together of responsibilities for copyright, data protection, freedom of information and records management under central information services management in those institutions where there had been an organizational convergence of library and IT services.128 Quality During the period there was a continuing emphasis on the performance measurement and evaluation of university provision and services and this was reflected in approaches taken in the university library and information services sector, both nationally and at the institutional level. The impact of the quality assurance processes of the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) on institutions continued to be significant, both in terms of workload and in ensuring that there was a ‘joining up’ of quality procedures across all parts of the institution. The SCONUL Working Group on Quality Assurance produced an aide-memoire, endorsed by QAA, to assist reviewers when they were evaluating library and learning resources under the Academic Review procedures.129 Academic Review was subsequently replaced by Institutional Audit in England and Northern Ireland and by related methods in Wales and Scotland, and the Group produced further guidelines to assist library and academic staff to prepare for Audit in terms of learning resources provision.130 The National Student Satisfaction Survey was introduced, although coverage of library provision and services was very limited. Outcomes from the Survey were recorded on the Teaching Quality Information website, enabling students and other stakeholders to make comparisons between institutions.131 A range of survey methods was used by university libraries during the period, usefully investigated by West, Secretary of SCONUL’s Working Group on Performance Improvement.132 Of 65 respondents, 62 were carrying out user surveys, with significant use of the standard SCONUL satisfaction survey and the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) LibQUAL+ instrument.133 University libraries viewed the ability to benchmark data as being a major advantage of LibQUAL+ and the Working Group on Performance Improvement carried out work to develop a mechanism for libraries using the SCONUL satisfaction survey to be also able to benchmark data.134 In universities, attention also turned to developing ways to measure the outcomes of learning, teaching and research and in library and information services specific work took place on measuring the impact of services provided for users.135 SCONUL worked with LIRG (the Library and Information Research Group) on a joint initiative looking at the impact of higher education libraries on learning teaching and research.136 Twenty-two libraries were involved in assessing the impact of particular services on new innovations in their institutions. Consideration was also given to the relationship between the funding levels provided for a university library and institutional outcomes in terms of quality assessment.137 Progress was also made in trying to develop standard approaches for

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performance measurement for electronic services and resources.138 The HEFCEfunded eVALUEd project was concerned with developing an online toolkit to help library managers evaluate their services, particularly the use of their electronic services.139 A related e-measures project, also funded by HEFCE, tested out a range of measures relating to a range of electronic services and resources and their use within a pilot group of 25 higher education libraries.140 The rapid development of online resources during the period provided librarians, in theory, with a range of statistics to enable them to assess the use and value of these resources. In practice, the lack of consistency and standardization in these statistics and the lack of a formal international structure for providing these statistics caused problems for British university libraries. Project COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) sought to address these problems by beginning to develop an international Code of Practice governing the recording and exchange of online usage data, beginning with journals and databases.141

Notes 1

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8

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SCONUL was founded in 1950 as the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries. It changed its name in 2001 after admitting colleges of higher education. Website: (accessed 7/7/06). SCONUL Vision: (accessed 7/7/06). Research Information Network: (accessed 7/7/06). Research Support Libraries Group, Final report: (accessed 7/7/06). Maxine Melling and Joyce Little (eds.), Building a successful customer service culture: a guide for library and information managers. London: Facet, 2002. Peter Brophy, The academic library. 2nd ed. London: Facet, 2005. Eileen Elliott de Saez, Marketing concepts for library and information services. 2nd ed. London: Facet, 2002; Jennifer Rowley, Information marketing. Aldershot: Gower, 2002. SCONUL, Access for users with disabilities. London: SCONUL, 2003 (SCONUL briefing paper); Library review 54 (8), 2005: Disability issues; Kay Foster, ‘Libraries and student retention: some thoughts about the issues and an approach to evaluation’, SCONUL newsletter 28, 2003, 12–16; Helen Singer, ‘Learning and information services support for international students at the University of Hertfordshire’, SCONUL focus 35, 2005, 63–7; Suzanne Livesey and Peter Wynne, ‘Extending the hybrid library to students on franchise courses’, Library management 22 (1/2), 2001, 21–5; Emma Robinson, ‘Academic liaison and research support – agendas for change – reflections drawn from implementation of a new model in a research environment’, SCONUL newsletter 27, 2002, 44–50; Diana Garfield, ‘Support for research: support for learning’, SCONUL focus 33, 2004, 25–8. Ruth Jenkins, ‘Supporting e-learning at University of Birmingham’, SCONUL newsletter 25, 2002, 53–6; Maxine Melling (ed.), Supporting e-learning: a guide for library and information managers. London: Facet, 2005; Carol Black and Lindsey Martin, ‘Supporting staff in a virtual learning environment’, SCONUL newsletter 30,

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11

12 13 14 15

16 17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24

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2003, 19–22; Steve Lee, Laurence Patterson, Dave Monk, ‘Supporting e-learners 24 u 7 throughout Wales and beyond’, SCONUL newsletter 29, 2003, 48–53. Peter Brophy, Shelagh Fisher and Jenny Craven (eds.), Libraries without walls 5: the distributed delivery of library and information services. London: Facet, 2004; Julie Hitchin, ‘Supporting distance learners at the University of Central Lancashire’, SCONUL focus 34, 2005, 31–6; Christine Stevenson, ‘Distance no object: bridging the library and information gap for distance learners’, SCONUL newsletter 28, 2003, 8–11. Maureen Wade, ‘24 hour library opening at LSE’, SCONUL focus 33, 2004, 31–3; Laura Oldham, ‘Life in the last lane – well nearly: 24 hour opening pilot at University of Liverpool, Harold Cohen Library’, SCONUL focus 35, 2005, 55–8. Leigh Richardson, ‘Self services: the present state of play’, SCONUL newsletter 28, 2003, 18–21. Judith Reed, ‘Self service machine at the University of Worcester’, SCONUL focus 36, 2005, 53–65. R. D. Lankes, ‘The necessity of real-time: fact and fiction in digital reference systems’, Reference and user services quarterly 41 (4), 2002, 350–5. Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston, ‘Assessment for information literacy: vision and reality’ in Information and IT literacy, ed. Allan Martin and Hannelore Rader. London: Facet, 2003, pp. 101–11. Susie Andretta, Information literacy: a practitioner’s guide. Oxford: Chandos, 2005; Library review 54 (4), 2005: Information Literacy issues. LILAC Conference 2005: papers: (accessed 7/7/06). New Information Literacy website: (accessed 7/7/06). Anne Langley, Edward Gray and K. T. L, Vaughan, The role of the academic librarian. Oxford: Chandos, 2003. Jacquie Weetman, ‘“Seven pillars of wisdom” model: a case study to test academic staff perceptions’, SCONUL focus 34, 2005, 31–6; Sheila Webber, ‘Information literacy in higher education: a review and case study’, Studies in higher education 28 (3), 2003, 335–52; SCONUL Advisory Committee on Learning Outcomes and Information Literacy, Learning outcomes and information literacy. London: SCONUL, 2004; Jo Parker, ‘Putting the pieces together: information literacy at the Open University’, Library management 24 (4/5), 2003, 223–8. Newcastle University: (accessed 7/7/06). Jo Webb and Chris Powis, Teaching information skills. London: Facet, 2004. J. Stephen Town, ‘Information literacy: definition, measurement, impact’ in Information and IT literacy, ed. Martin and Rader, pp. 53–65. Ann Poyner, Enabling end-users: information skills training. Oxford: Chandos, 2005; Susie Andretta, ‘Legal information literacy: a pilot study’, New library world 102 (7/8), 2001, 255–64. Hilary Johnson, ‘The SCONUL Task Force on information skills’ in Information and IT literacy, ed. Martin and Rader, pp. 45–52. Allan Martin and Hannelore Rader (eds.), Information and IT literacy: enabling learning in the 21st century. London: Facet, 2003.

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31 32

33 34

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005 Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston, ‘UK academics’ conceptions of, and pedagogy for, Information Literacy: project webpage, University of Sheffield and University of Strathclyde: (accessed 7/7/06); Claire McGuiness, ‘Attitudes of academics to the library’s role in Information Literacy education’ in Information and IT Literacy, ed. Martin and Rader, pp. 244–54. JISC’s Big Blue toolkit and Final report, 2002: (accessed 7/7/06); Louise Makin, ‘“Out of the Blue” – achievement of the Big Blue Project’, SCONUL newsletter 26, 2002, 33–6. Webber and Johnston, ‘Assessment for information literacy’. Stella Pilling and Stephanie Kenna (eds.), Cooperation in action: collaborative initiatives in the world of information. London: Facet, 2002; David Ball, Managing suppliers and partners for the academic library. London: Facet, 2005. CILIP University, College & Research Group: (accessed 7/7/06). WHELF: (accessed 7/7/06); Elizabeth Kensler and Andrew Green, ‘WHELF: wherefore, whereto?’ SCONUL focus 34, 2005, 72–4; Jeremy Atkinson and Elizabeth Kensler, ‘HELP is at hand: reviewing and developing Welsh academic library collaboration’, New review of academic librarianship 10 (2), 2004, 105–17; Jeremy Atkinson and Elizabeth Kensler, ‘With a little HELP from my friends: developments in Welsh academic library collaboration’, SCONUL focus 33, 2004, 51–4. SCURL: (accessed 7/7/06); Jill Evans. ‘An overview of SCURL’s current activities and projects’, SCONUL focus 35, 2005, 74–6. M25 Consortium: (accessed 7/7/06); Di Martin, ‘INFORM25: the M25 consortium initiatives on resource discovery’, New review of academic librarianship 10 (2), 2004, 139–53. NOWAL: (accessed 7/7/06); Colin Harris. ‘NoWAL: developments in staff development and training and procurement of e-books’, New review of academic librarianship 10 (2), 2004, 119–27; Peter Wynne, ‘The NoWAL netLibrary e-book collection: a case study of a consortial agreement’, New review of academic librarianship 11 (1), 2005, 81–94. Maria Hiscoe and Susan Baker, ‘SCONUL Research Extra: conception, birth and early life’, SCONUL newsletter 29, 2003, 42–4. Gillian Anderson, ‘Free access – not ivory towers – in north-west Wales’, SCONUL newsletter 27, 2002, 56–8. Sara Marsh, ‘UK Computing Plus pilot project final report’, SCONUL newsletter, 29, 2003, 44–57. Kathryn Arnold, ‘The partnership experience: De Montfort and its Associate Libraries Network’, SCONUL newsletter 27, 2002, 49–54. Chris Rusbridge, ‘After eLib’, Ariadne 26, Jan. 2001: (accessed 7/7/06). Joint Funding Councils’ Libraries Review Group, Report. Bristol: HEFCE, 1993. Chairman Sir Brian Follett. (The ‘Follett report’.) Stephen Pinfield and Lorcan Dempsey, ‘The Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) and the hybrid library’, Ariadne 26, 2001: (accessed 7/7/06); Peter Brophy, ‘Networked learning’, Journal of documentation 57 (1), 2001, 130–56.

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47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58

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Stephen Pinfield, ‘Managing electronic library services: current issues in UK higher education institutions’. Ariadne 29, 2001: (accessed 7/7/06). Angela Conyers, ‘E-resources in SCONUL member libraries: what the statistics tell us’, SCONUL focus 36, 2005, 65–7. Andrew Hampson, ‘Practical experience of digitisation in the BUILDER hybrid library project’, Program 35 (3), 2001, 263–75. Rosalind Pan and Richard Higgins, ‘Digitisation projects at Durham University Library: an overview’, Program 35 (4), 2001, 355–68; Gordon Brewer, ‘The University of Derby Electronic Library: a case study of some economic and academic aspects of a local digitised collection’, Program 36 (1), 2002, 30–7. JISC Digitisation Programme: (accessed 7/7/06). JISC, Digitisation in the UK: the case for a UK framework. 2005: (accessed 7/7/06). Rachel Forsyth, ‘Supporting e-learning: an overview of the needs of users’, New review of academic librarianship 9 (1), 2003, 131–40. Maxine Melling (ed.), Supporting e-learning: a guide for library and information managers. London: Facet, 2005; Barbara Allan, E-learning and teaching in library and information services. London: Facet, 2002. Matthew Sparks and Ann Cross, ‘Enterprise College Wales: libraries and e-learning in practice’, SCONUL newsletter 24, 2001, 48–52. Tracey Stanley and Asimina Sotiriou, ‘The Portole project: supporting e-learning’, New review of academic librarianship 9 (1), 2003, 141–7. Pete Johnston, ‘After the big bang: forces of change and e-learning’, Ariadne 27, Mar. 2001: (accessed 7/7/06). John MacColl, ‘Virtual library environments: the library and the VLE’, Program 35 (3), 2001, 227–39; John MacColl, ‘VLEs in the learning landscape’, Relay: the journal of the University College and Research Group 53, 2002, 7–9; John Paschoud, ‘Why librarians should care about VLEs’, Relay 53, 2002, 10–13; Ian Winship, ‘VLEs and information delivery’, Library + information update 2 (1), 2003, 40–1; Jacqueline Chelin, ‘Virtual learning environments: overview and issues for institutional managers’, SCONUL newsletter 28, 2003, 43–7; Michael Fraser, ‘Virtual research environments: overview and activity’, Ariadne 44, July 2005: (accessed 7/7/06). John Akeroyd, ‘Information management and e-learning’, Aslib proceedings 57 (2), 2005, 157–67. INSPIRAL project: (accessed 7/7/06). Louise Edwards and Hazel Woodward, ‘Shaping a strategy for e-books: the role of the DNER’, Vine 31 (4), 2001, 5–11. Chris Armstrong, Louise Edwards and Ray Lonsdale, ‘Virtually there? E-books in UK academic libraries’, Program 36 (4), 2002, 216–27; Penny Garrod, ‘Ebooks in UK libraries: where are we now?’, Ariadne 37, Oct. 2003: (accessed 7/7/06); Lucy Tedd, ‘E-books in academic libraries: an international overview’, New review of academic librarianship 11 (1), 2005, 57– 79.

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005 EBONI: (accessed 7/7/06); Ruth Wilson, ‘E-books for students: EBONI’, Ariadne 27, Mar. 2001: (accessed 7/7/06). Leah Halliday and Charles Oppenheim, ‘Developments in digital journals’, Journal of documentation 57 (2), 2001, 260–83. Paul Ayris, ‘Open archives: institutional issues’, Vine 31 (4), 2001, 34–7; David C. Prosser, ‘From recommendations to practice: the next steps towards open access’, SCONUL focus 32, 2004, 24–7; Charles Oppenheim, ‘Open access and the UK Science and Technology Select Committee Report Free for All?’, Journal of librarianship and information science 37 (1), 2005, 3–6. NESLI2: (accessed 7/7/06). Paul Evans et al., ‘Big deal usage: a case study with Emerald Fulltext’, Library + information update 4 (11), 2005, 30–3; Nicholas Lewis, ‘Are we burning our boats?: survey on moving to electronic-only’, SCONUL focus 31, 2004, 57–61. Jeremy Atkinson, ‘Developments in networked moving images for UK higher education’, Program 35 (2), 2001, 109–18; Balviar Notay and Catherine Grout, ‘Looking for more than text’, Ariadne 45, Oct. 2005: (accessed 7/7/06). EMOL: (accessed 7/7/06). Jan Brophy and David Bawden, ‘Is Google enough? Comparison of an internet search engine with academic library resources’, Aslib proceedings 57 (6), 2005, 498–512; John MacColl, ‘Google challenges for academic libraries’, Ariadne 46, Feb. 2006: (accessed 7/7/06). Andrew Hewitson, ‘Use and awareness of electronic information services by academic staff at Leeds Metropolitan University: a qualitative study’, Journal of librarianship and information science 34 (1), 2002, 43–52; Angel de Vicente, John Crawford and Stuart Clink, ‘Use and awareness of electronic information services by academic staff at Glasgow Caledonian University’, Library review 53 (8), 2004, 401– 7; John Crawford, Angel de Vicente and Stuart Clink, ‘Use and awareness of electronic information services by students at Glasgow Caledonian University: a longitudinal study’, Journal of librarianship and information science 36 (3), 2004, 101–17; Graham Coulson, Kathryn Ray and Linda Banwell, ‘The need for a converged approach to EIS provision? Evidence from the JUBILEE project’, Library review 52 (9), 2003, 438–43; Christine Urquhart et al., ‘Uptake and use of electronic information services: trends in UK higher education from the JUSTEIS project’, Program 37 (3), 2003, 168–80; Chris Armstrong et al., ‘A study of the use of electronic information systems by higher education students in the UK’, Program 35 (3), 2001, 241–62; EDNER: (accessed 7/7/06); Jill R. Griffiths and Peter Brophy, ‘Student searching behaviour in the JISC Information Environment’, Ariadne 33, Oct. 2002: (accessed 7/7/06); Peter Brophy, ‘Evaluating the Joint Information Systems Committee’s Information Environment: the EDNER and EDNER+ projects’, Vine 34 (4), 2004, 143–7; Linda Banwell et al., ‘The JISC User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework’, Journal of documentation 60 (3), 2004, 302–20. Peter Brophy, Shelagh Fisher and Zoe Clarke (eds.), Libraries without walls 4: the delivery of library services to distant users. London: Facet, 2002; Peter Brophy, Shelagh Fisher and Jenny Craven (eds.), Libraries without walls 5: the distributed

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delivery of library and information services. London: Facet, 2004; Anne Ramsden, ‘The OU goes digital’, Library + information update 2 (2), 2003, 34–5. Simon J. Bevan, ‘Electronic thesis development at Cranfield University’, Program 39 (2), 2005, 100–11; Richard Jones and Theo Andrew, ‘Open access, open source and etheses: the development of the Edinburgh Research Archive’, Program 39 (3), 2005, 198–212; John MacColl, ‘Electronic theses and dissertations: a strategy for the UK’, Ariadne 32, July 2002: (accessed 7/7/06); Susan Copeland and Andrew Penman, ‘E-theses: recent developments and the JISC “FAIR” programme’, SCONUL newsletter 28, 2003, 39– 42; Susan Copeland, Andrew Penman and Richard Milne, ‘Electronic theses: the turning point’, Program 39 (3), 2005, 185–97. EThOS: (accessed 7/7/06). Richard Jones, Theo Andrew and John MacColl, The institutional repository. Oxford: Chandos, 2006; Robin Yeates, ‘Institutional repositories’, Vine 33 (2), 2003, 96–101; Ruth Martin, ‘ePrints UK: developing a national e-prints archive’, Ariadne 35, Apr. 2003: (accessed 7/7/06). Jessie Hay, ‘Targeting academic research with Southampton’s institutional repository’, Ariadne 40, July 2004: (accessed 7/7/06); Susan Ashworth, Morag Mackie and William J. Nixon, ‘The DAEDALUS project, developing institutional repositories at Glasgow University: the story so far’, Library review 53 (5), 2004, 239–64; Stephen Pinfield, Mike Gardner and John MacColl, ‘Setting up an institutional e-print archive’, Ariadne 31, Apr. 2002: (accessed 7/7/06). SHERPA: (accessed 7/7/06); John MacColl and Stephen Pinfield, ‘Climbing the scholarly publishing mountain with SHERPA’, Ariadne 33, Oct. 2002: (accessed 7/7/06). Pippa Jones, Wendy Calvert and Alison Depledge, ‘RFID technology: the way forward at Leeds University Library’, SCONUL focus 33, 2004, 41–5; Alan Hopkinson and Rajesh Chandrakar, ‘Introducing RFID at Middlesex University Learning Resources’, Program 40 (1), 2006, 89–97; Ian Winship, ‘Weblogs and RSS in information work’, Library + information update 3 (5), 2004, 30–1. Neil Beagrie, ‘Preserving UK digital library collections’, Program 35 (3), 2001, 215– 26; Leona Carpenter, ‘Supporting digital preservation and asset management in institutions’, Ariadne 43, Apr. 2005: (accessed 7/7/06). Simon McLeish, ‘Installing Shibboleth’, Ariadne 43, Apr. 2005: (accessed 7/7/06). Steve Bailey, ‘Records management and the challenge to HEIs’, Library + information update 2 (8), 2003, 34–5; Margaret Procter, ‘One size does not fit all: developing records management in higher education’, Records management journal 12 (2), 2002, 48–54. Catherine Ebenezer, ‘Trends in integrated library systems’, Vine 32 (4), 2002, 19–45; Andrew Cox and Robin Yeates, ‘Library portal solutions’, Aslib proceedings 55 (3), 2003, 155–65; Chris Awre, ‘Portals: enabling discovery for all in higher and further education’, Vine 33 (1), 2003, 5–10; Anne Ramsden, ‘The library portal marketplace’, Vine 33 (1), 2003, 17–24; Ruth Stubbings, ‘MetaLib and SFX at Loughborough University Library’, Vine 33 (1), 2003, 25–32; Andrew Brown and Neil Smyth,

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005 ‘Serial Solutions and LinkFinderPlus at the University of Wales Swansea’, Program 39 (2), 2005, 147–59. SCONUL, Library building projects database. London: SCONUL, 2002– . Available at: (accessed 7/7/06). SCONUL, Library buildings database: (accessed 7/7/06). Clive Evans, ‘Library buildings visit: LSE Lionel Robbins Library and King’s College London Maughan Library, November 2003’, SCONUL newsletter 30, 2003, 6–8; Seamus McMahon, ‘Design issues: new library development at University College Cork’, SCONUL newsletter 30, 2003, 11–13; J. Adam Edwards, ‘SCONUL buildings visit 2005’, SCONUL focus 36, 2005, 75–7. Peter Brophy, The academic library. 2nd ed. London: Facet, 2005. B. Clark (ed.), Future places: reinventing libraries in the digital age: proceedings of the 12th international seminar of the IFLA Section on Library Buildings and Equipment, 2002. Frankfurt: Saur, 2003; JISC InfoNet, Good practice and innovation: (accessed 7/7/06). Edward Oyston, Centred on learning: academic case studies on learning centre development. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Christopher West, ‘Cafes in UK Higher Education libraries’, SCONUL focus 35, 2005, 53–5. Matthew Lawson, ‘Implementing good conduct guidelines: changing user behaviour in an academic library’, SCONUL newsletter 31, 2004, 65–7. Peter Jordan and Caroline Lloyd, Staff management in library and information work. 4th ed. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Alan Brine, Continuing professional development: a guide for information professionals. Oxford: Chandos, 2004; Margaret Oldroyd (ed.), Developing academic library staff for future success. London: Facet, 2004; Jean Yeoh, Val Straw and Caroline Holebrook, ‘Staff development and continuing professional education: policy and practice in academic libraries’, SCONUL focus 33, 2004, 16–20. HERA (Higher Education Role Analysis): (accessed 10/7/06). Pat Noon, ‘Developing the academic library managers of the future’ in Developing academic library staff for future success, ed. Margaret Oldroyd. London: Facet, 2004, pp 41–66; Jon Purcell and K. Moore, ‘A change for the better: making organisational change work for your library’, Relay 55, July 2003, 13–16. Pete Dalton and Clare Nankivell, Hybrid information management: skills for senior staff: final research report and recommendations. Birmingham: University of Central England, 2002: (accessed 7/7/06). Stephen Pinfield, ‘Changing role of subject librarians in academic libraries’, Journal of librarianship and information science 33 (1), 2001, 32–8; Richard Biddiscombe, ‘Learning Support Professionals: the changing role of subject specialists in UK academic libraries’, Program 36 (4), 2002, 228–35; Anne Langley, Edward Gray and K. T. L. Vaughan, The role of the academic librarian. Oxford: Chandos, 2003; Philippa Levy and Sue Roberts (eds.), Developing the new learning environment: the changing role of the academic librarian. London: Facet, 2005.

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Tony Tysome, ‘Librarians under threat’, Times higher education supplement 11 Feb. 2005, 8; Angela Jones-Evans, ‘Bangor University Library Service: an update’ (Editorial), Journal of librarianship and information science 37 (3), 2005, 115–17. Helen Hayes, ‘Knowledge management: knowing what we know’, Relay: the journal of the University, College and Research Group 56, 2004, 1–5. Ruth Wilson, ‘Learner support staff in Higher Education: victims of change?’, Journal of librarianship and information science 35 (2), 2003, 79–86. Information Services National Training Organisation, Skills foresight in the Information Services sector 2000–2007. Bradford: ISNTO, 2001; Information Services National Training Organisation, Skills foresight in the Information Services sector 2003–2009. Bradford: ISNTO, 2003. Barbara Allan, Project management: tools and techniques for today’s information professional. London: Facet, 2004. Phil Sykes, ‘Putting library staff back into libraries’, SCONUL focus 34, 2005, 4–9. Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Framework of qualifications. London: CILIP, 2005. John Fielden, ‘Resolving the human issues in LIS projects’, SCONUL newsletter 26, 2002, 5–10. Sue White and Margaret Weaver, ‘Lifelong learning at work: staff development for the flexible workforce’ in Developing academic library staff for future success, ed. Oldroyd, pp. 113–28; CILIP, Flexible working: the work-life balance. 2002–03: (accessed 7/7/06); Jackie Brocklebank and Heather Whitehouse, ‘Job sharing in academic libraries at the senior management level’, Library management 24 (4/5), 2003, 243–51; Judith Cattermole and Julie Howell, ‘Job sharing at a senior level: a personal perspective’, SCONUL newsletter 30, 2003 37–40; Graham Walton and Catherine Edwards, ‘Flexibility in HE hybrid libraries: exploring the implications and producing a model of practice’, Journal of librariansip and information science 33 (4), 2001, 199–208. European Union, The European Working Time Directive. 2003. Pat Noon, ‘Receiving the secret: do we care about succession planning in higher education libraries?’, SCONUL focus 33, 2004, 4–10; Fiona Parsons (ed.), Recruitment, training and succession planning in the HE sector: findings from the HIMSS project. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2005. Patricia Layzell Ward, ‘The management of library and information services: a review’, Library management 22 (3), 2001, 131–55; Patricia Layzell Ward, ‘The management of library and information services: review of the literature’, Library management 23 (3), 2002, 135–65; Patricia Layzell Ward, ‘Management and the management of information, knowledge-based and library services 2002’, Library management 24 (3), 2003, 126–59; Sue Roberts and Jennifer Rowley, Managing information services. London: Facet, 2005. Terry Hanson (ed.), Managing academic support services in universities. London: Facet, 2005. HEFCE, Good Management Practice Project (Luton reference): <www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management> (accessed 7/7/06). David Baker, Strategic management of technology: a guide for library and information services. Oxford: Chandos, 2004. David Ball, Managing suppliers and partners for the academic library. London: Facet, 2005.

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British librarianship and information work 2001–2005 SCONUL vision: (accessed 7/7/06). Ian Smith, ‘Achieving readiness for organizational change’, Library management 26 (6/7), 2005, 408–12. Judith Stewart, ‘Basically, you do miss your mates: managing the people side of moving a library’, SCONUL newsletter 29, 2003 65–9. Sarah McNicol, ‘Challenges of strategic planning in academic libraries’, New library world 106 (11/12), 2005 496–509. Jeremy Atkinson, ‘Managing change and embedding innovation in academic libraries and information services’, New review of academic libraries 9, 2003, 25–41. Hanson (ed.), Managing academic support services. SCONUL, Annual library statistics. London: SCONUL. Annual; Claire Creaser, UK higher education library management statistics. London: SCONUL. Annual. Sonya White and Claire Creaser, Scholarly journal prices: selected trends and comparisons. Loughborough: LISU, 2004. Michael Roberts, Tony Kidd and Lynn Irvine, ‘The impact of the current e-journal marketplace on university library budget structures’, Library review 53 (9), 2004, 429–34. Reg Carr, ‘Stirring up other men’s benevolence: library fundraising in Oxford’, SCONUL focus 34, 2005, 10–15. HERON: (accessed 7/7/06). Rachel Hardy, Charles Oppenheim and Iris Rubbert, ‘Pricing strategies and models for the provision of digitized texts in higher education’, Journal of information science 28 (2), 2002, 97–110. Copyright Licensing Agency: (accessed 7/7/06). Jenny Langford and Jill Lambert, ‘Implementing the requirements of SENDA in Aston University Library and Information Services’, SCONUL focus 33, 2004, 21–5; Karen McAulay, ‘Studying with special needs: some personal narratives’. Library review 54 (8), 2005, 486–91. Allison Jones and Lucy A. Tedd, ‘Provision of electronic information services for the visually impaired’, Journal of librarianship and information science 35 (2), 2003, 105–13. Claud: (accessed 7/7/06); Sandra Jones, Recommendations to improve accessibility for disabled users in academic libraries. Bristol: CLAUD, 2002. Sheila Whyte, ‘Auditing SCURL Special Needs Group members’, Library review 54 (8), 2005, 459–63; Chris Pinder, ‘Customers with disabilities: the academic library response’, Library review 54 (8), 2005, 464–71. Elizabeth Gadd, ‘An examination of the copyright clearance activities in UK higher education’, Journal of librarianship and information science 33 (3), 2001, 112–25. Stuart Hannabuss, ‘Intellectual property rights and university employees’, Library review 50 (3), 2001, 117–22. Steve Bailey, ‘Assessing the impact of the Freedom of Information Act on the FE and HE sectors’, Ariadne 42, Jan. 2005: (accessed 7/7/06); Mike Heaney, ‘Freedom of Information at Oxford University Library Services’, SCONUL focus 35, 2005, 32–5. SCONUL, Aide-memoire for reviewers evaluating learning resources: (accessed 7/7/06).

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SCONUL, SCONUL guidelines for QAA institutional audit in England: (accessed 7/7/06). Teaching Quality Information: (accessed 7/7/06). Christopher West, ‘A survey of surveys’, SCONUL focus 31, 2004, 18–22. Selena Lock and J. Stephen Town, ‘LibQUAL+ in the UK and Ireland: three years’ findings and experience’, SCONUL focus 35, 2005, 41–5. Claire Creaser, ‘Benchmarking the standard SCONUL User Survey: report of a pilot study’, SCONUL focus 34, 2005, 61–5. Sharon Markless and David Streatfield, Evaluating the impact of your library. London: Facet, 2006; Stella Thebridge and Pete Dalton, ‘Working towards outcome assessment in UK academic libraries’, Journal of librarianship and information science 35 (2), 2003, 93–104. Special issue on the LIRG/SCONUL impact initiative. Library and information research 29 (91), 2005: (accessed 7/7/06); Philip Payne, John Crawford and Wendy Fiander, ‘Counting on making a difference: assessing our impact’, Vine 34 (4), 2004, 176–83. Charles Oppenheim and David Stuart, ‘Is there a correlation between investment in an academic library and a higher education institution’s rating in the Research Assessment Exercise?’, Aslib proceedings 56 (3), 2004, 156–65. Jane Barton, ‘Measurement, management and the digital library’, Library review 53 (3), 2004, 138–41. Stella Thebridge and Rebecca Hartland-Fox, ‘Towards a toolkit for evaluating electronic information services’, SCONUL newsletter 27, 2002, 37–43; Sarah McNicol, ‘The eVALUEd toolkit: a framework for the qualitative evaluation of electronic information services’, Vine 34 (4), 2004, 172–5. Angela Conyers, ‘E-measures: developing statistical measures for electronic information services’, Vine 34 (4), 2004, 148–53; Angela Conyers, ‘E-measures: ready for the count? Measuring use of electronic information services’, SCONUL focus 31, 2004, 53–6. Peter T. Shepherd, ‘The COUNTER Code of Practice: implementation and adoption’, SCONUL newsletter 29, 2003, 22–6; Peter T. Shepherd, ‘COUNTER: towards reliable vendor usage statistics’, Vine 34 (4), 2004, 184–9.

6

Colleges of further education Andrew Eynon

Introduction In previous editions of this series colleges of further and higher education were considered collectively in relation to library provision. However, from the 1990s many of the old colleges of higher education moved into the university sector or sought university status. The significant difference in funding and inspection regimes between further and higher education institutions has meant that I have concentrated solely on issues affecting further education (FE) colleges. I have, however, included a section on the delivery of higher education provision through FE colleges. Changes in the further education sector The period 2001–2005 saw major changes in the further education sector across the whole of the UK. During this period new funding bodies for further education were created in England and Wales, and two major revisions to the inspection processes took place for English and Welsh colleges. In addition, in England two new inspectorates for the sector came into being, and there were major changes to funding and educational priorities. All of these policy and funding changes had an impact on the delivery of library and learning resource services (LRSs). In England the most significant change in the sector was as a result of the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which created the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). The LSC became operational in April 2001 as the new funding body for FE, replacing the old Further Education Funding Council (FEFC). Most significantly, the inspection functions of the FEFC were now divided between the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), the schools inspectorate, which was given the remit for inspecting provision for 16–19-year-olds, and the new Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI). Similarly in Wales, the old Further Education Funding Council for Wales (FEFCW) was replaced by Education and Learning Wales (ELWa). In Wales, unlike in England, the inspection process remained, as previously, with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (Estyn). Significantly, in both England and Wales the new funding bodies also during this period assumed funding for school sixth forms. In Scotland and Northern Ireland there were fewer such changes. In Scotland the Scottish Further Education Funding Council (SFEFC) remained, whilst in

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Northern Ireland change was hampered by the failure to establish a devolved government in the province. One of the main outcomes of the new funding regimes was the pressure for smaller further education institutions to merge in order to rationalize staffing and accommodation costs and this of course had an impact on learning resource provision and staffing. In Northern Ireland, the most extreme example of this trend, it was proposed that the number of FE institutions in the province should be roughly halved. Inspection It was in the area of college inspections that the major impact on learning resource services was felt. In England, learning resource services were initially assessed under key question 3: how do resources affect achievement and learning?1 In effect this marked little change from the previous inspection regime although the new inspectorate gave clearer guidance on its expectations of learning resource services. The inspection handbook included recommendations that: x services include sufficient electronic resources (in addition to traditional print-based resources) x learners receive an induction into the service x learning resource centres (LRCs) include quiet study areas x resources be centralized (i.e. not held in departments) so as to maximize their accessibility and to ensure resources are closely managed x users be consulted about services x provision be made for distance and work-based learners.2 In Wales learning resource services were initially inspected under key question 4, which covered support for learning. This meant that there was a greater emphasis on the role of learning resource service staff in supporting students, rather than concentrating on the physical aspects of learning resource service provision, such as the number of study spaces and the size of the library collection. To help nonspecialist library inspectors Estyn produced the Aide memoire – learning resources, which provided quantitative performance indicators (mainly based on the 1996/97 CILIP FE survey results) and qualitative indicators such as whether the learning resource service had a mission statement, whether there were service level agreements with staff and learners, etc.3 These guidelines were reissued, unaltered, when the inspection regime was revised in 2004 although learning resource services were now inspected as part of key question 7: the management of resources. In 2005 Ofsted reduced the number of key questions in its inspection scheme and consequently learning resources came under key question 5: how effective is the leadership and management in raising achievement and supporting all learners? It was hoped that this move would raise the profile of learning resource services as they were now being inspected under the more important auspices of college

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leadership and management. There were subtle changes to the guidance notes for colleges, with greater emphasis put on the need for equality of provision within LRCs (taking into account issues such as ethnicity and disability). The guidance notes also emphasized the importance of the links between curriculum and learning resource service staff and the provision of resources to those studying in the community (in addition to work-based learners). However, the reality for many further education learning resource services was the continuation of the old inspection regimes’ tendencies to give learning resources only a cursory mention in inspection reports. Consequently there was much interest in the development of self-assessment or peer accreditation systems to more fully evaluate the effectiveness of learning resource services. Quality toolkits Scotland led the way in pioneering the development of quality toolkits for the selfassessment of learning resource services. In 2002 the Scottish Further Education Funding Council (SFEFC) funded a project to draft such a toolkit. The Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) undertook the project, in cooperation with staff from the Scottish HMI, the Scottish Further Education Unit and SFEFC. The toolkit was published in 2003 and contained a framework for self-assessing learning resource services against seven elements:4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Learning resource organization – examining interoperability and the effective use of a library management system. Staffing – covering the qualifications, skills and review of LRS staff. Integration of ICT – looking at the use of VLEs and electronic resources. User support – assessing LRS support for programme delivery and off campus support/delivery of learning resources. Accessibility – the advice and support available for using learning resources and online access to library resources. Inclusiveness – LRS compliance with accessibility and diversity issues. Quality assurance and improvement – the production of quality standards and effective promotion of services.5

Each element contained a summary of ‘quality indicators’, ‘key characteristics’ and sources of evidence that could be used to evaluate one’s service. Furthermore, the toolkit also included an innovative system of grade illustrations, based on real world examples, of how a particular learning resource service would ‘look’ for each of four grades. These were mapped to the Scottish inspection grading system and grade illustrations were included for each element. The toolkit was designed for use in conjunction with the performance indicators published in SLIC’s college guidelines.6 The success of this toolkit prompted a similar project in Wales, which resulted in the publication in 2005 of a toolkit for Welsh FE college learning resource

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services produced by fforwm (the Welsh association of colleges) and funded by CyMAL (Museums, Archives and Libraries, Wales).7 The Welsh quality toolkit used seven key questions, which were mapped to the Estyn Common Inspection Framework (these equated to the elements used in the Scottish toolkit). The Welsh toolkit also used quantitative and qualitative performance indicators which were drawn from a variety of sources including Estyn, CoFHE and CoLRiC. In addition, certain performance indicators were developed by the project team for inclusion in the toolkit. The key questions used in the Welsh toolkit covered the following areas of learning resource provision: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Provision of effective learning environments – are learning resource centre study and ICT facilities adequate? Qualifications and experience of LRS staff – are there sufficient staff and are they appropriately qualified and experienced? Resourcing – does the service meet the needs of its users in terms of the range of resources provided? Integration of ILT – is the service proactively encouraging the use of ILT, including VLEs? User support – does the support provided by LRS staff enhance the quality of the learner experience? Accessibility – is the service inclusive and accessible to all learners? Quality systems – does the service have a robust quality assurance process?

In order to build upon the self-evaluation aspects of these toolkits there was a renewed interest in peer assessment as a means of providing an independent review of learning resource provision. Peer evaluation Peer assessment was far from new in further education: the Council for Learning Resources in Colleges (CoLRiC)8 had a long-standing peer accreditation scheme which had been running for over ten years and was used by further education colleges across the UK. Local peer accreditation schemes, most notably the one established by the Merseyside Circle of College Librarians, had been running a similar length of time. More recently the Yorkshire Museums, Archives and Libraries Council funded the creation of a peer evaluation scheme amongst FE colleges in Yorkshire and Humberside. The CoLRiC peer accreditation scheme offered a graded quality mark for the learning resource service based on an assessment by two trained CoLRiC assessors. Colleges paid a fee for this scheme based on whether or not the institution was a CoLRiC member and on the size of the institution. Colleges were assessed against a clearly defined set of qualitative criteria, under three headings: mandatory criteria, core criteria and supportive criteria. Within these three sets of criteria there were requirements to be met by both learning resource managers and senior college

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managers. A summary report was presented to the college, highlighting good practice and identifying areas for improvement. The Merseyside and Yorkshire schemes were more informal and did not make a charge for carrying out assessment. Instead they relied on a reciprocal arrangement between institutions, which created a pool of assessors to draw upon. In common with CoLRiC, the Yorkshire scheme made provision to train its peer assessors. Both the Merseyside and Yorkshire schemes used a team of two assessors to carry out the peer evaluation, and as with CoLRiC these assessors are experienced learning resource managers. Instead of a graded outcome and the awarding of a quality mark these regional schemes concentrated on the production of a detailed report highlighting service strengths and weaknesses. In creating these peer evaluation schemes FE librarians also looked to good practice in other sectors, in particular to the very detailed scheme for Health Service librarians – Helicon – which included detailed checklists for the actual peer assessment visits.9 Benchmarking and performance indicators One of the main problems facing operational managers in FE learning resource services during this period was the lack of benchmark data to set quantitative standards for learning resource performance. The 6th edition of the CoFHE guidelines, published in 2000,10 had not contained any quantitative recommendations owing to the poor response rate to the CILIP FE survey of 1996/97 (the findings of which were not published until 1999). In 2003 CILIP carried out a new survey of FE learning resource provision to rectify this deficiency. This survey generated a much higher response rate than the previous one. The response rate as a whole was 59% of colleges in the UK, with many regions achieving much higher figures.11 The survey gives a detailed picture of learning resource services in the UK, and the results were published in separate regional tables to enable regional benchmarking to take place. The presentation of the results, however, makes it difficult to spot trends in provision because the 2003 survey results were not compared with the earlier CILIP surveys (the findings of which were of course very dated and where in many cases the questions were not comparable). The Colleges of Further and Higher Education group (CoFHE) of CILIP used the findings of this survey for the quantitative recommendations in the 7th edition of the CoFHE guidelines published in 2005.12 The 7th edition of the CoFHE guidelines, following the example set in the 5th edition, outlined ten qualitative recommendations for learning resource provision. In addition, the guidelines set ten quantitative performance indicators covering areas such as number of study spaces, library spend per student, library staffing ratios, provision of stock and ICT equipment. Following on from the precedent set in the survey, ratios were measured against actual student numbers rather than fulltime equivalents (FTEs). This was because it was felt that services should relate to actual learners rather than composite ones. However, this rationale disadvantaged smaller (usually sixth form) colleges which had a relatively small student popula-

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tion but where the students were predominately full-time (and hence would have had a relatively high FTE count). HE in FE In many further education institutions higher education continued to expand during this period, although by 2005 the impact of tuition fees and the slowdown of expansion in the HE sector meant that HE in FE was probably about to enter a period of contraction. There were, however, many positive developments in this provision, including a relaxation in the attitude of HE institutions in making available their electronic resources to franchise students. Relations between FE and HE partners, in terms of resourcing, became more formalized with many institutions having service level agreements or partnership documents. Although the CoFHE guidelines no longer covered HE provision there were many other sources of benchmarking data for HE in FE provision, most notably the SCONUL benchmarks. Furthermore, in December 2004, CILIP updated its guidelines for the provision of learning resources for HE students based in FE institutions. These guidelines were made available solely in electronic format.13 In addition to general guidance, CILIP produced a checklist of performance indicators for HE provision. These indicators covered a variety of areas of provision, including: funding, partnership agreements, course review, user support, communication, quality assurance, accessibility and staffing. Sixth form colleges The 2003 CILIP survey had of course covered provision in sixth from colleges, but it had long been recognized that tertiary colleges were a very distinct part of the FE sector and it has already been mentioned that the CoFHE guidelines’ use of total student numbers to set performance indicators did not adequately reflect sixth form college norms of provision. In 2005 CoLRiC carried a survey of sixth form colleges, the first since 1993.14 Unlike the picture in FE in general, the sixth form sector appeared to have benefited from increased resourcing, with library expenditure increasing by 60%. The survey also found significant increases in library collections, issue figures and visitor numbers. The survey also indicated that salaries in the sector had increased and that 93% of libraries had been reported as one of the college’s strengths in inspection. E-resources The JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs) continued to play a significant role in raising standards in FE library provision. The RSCs provided staff development to FE library staff in a wide range of ICT/ILT skills. Furthermore, the RSCs continued to play a major role in embedding e-learning and e-resources into libraries and the curriculum in the FE sector. This was most notable in the creation of subject guides, specific to FE, for online resources.15

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There was a major expansion in use of Virtual Learning Environments in the sector, often supported by the RSCs. These were used by college library services for the delivery of inductions, providing resources for distance learners and for developing and delivering information skills to learners. Professional activity FE librarians continued to be represented across the UK by two main bodies: CoFHE and CoLRiC. Both bodies held annual national conferences – from 2002 CoFHE ran its conference in conjunction with the University, College and Research Group on a biennial basis – and both produced newsletters or bulletins on a regular basis and had JISC-mail lists for members to keep up to date with issues of professional interest. In addition, in Scotland FE LRS staff were supported by Scottish Further Education Unit’s librarians group, whilst similarly in Wales fforwm had a Learning Resource Managers’ network. CoLRiC, founded in 1993, is an independent voluntary organization dedicated to enhancing and maintaining excellence in learning resource services in further education. In addition to the peer accreditation scheme already mentioned, CoLRiC sponsored a Beacon Award for excellence in the delivery of learning resource services and a professional development award for individuals who demonstrated excellence and innovation in professional practice. At the time of writing this continues. CoLRiC produced a second edition of its ‘working papers’ which helped library managers in a variety of professional duties, covering areas such as job descriptions, quality systems and policy documents.16 Furthermore, CoLRiC collected annual benchmarking data as part of its ‘snapshot’ survey of learning resource usage and recommended questions for learning resource surveys. In addition to its survey of sixth form colleges, CoLRiC also carried out research about the perception of learning resource services among college principals. The results of this survey, published in 2005, showed a much more favourable view than the negative perceptions usually attributed to senior managers.17 CoFHE began to build up a bank of case studies of best practice on its website, starting with information relating to new FE library builds. The website has also been used to maintain electronic copies of articles from the CoFHE bulletin and conference papers. The Bulletin became a Newsletter in October 2003, but reverted to a Bulletin with articles of professional interest in 2005. Many areas of professional interest were covered in the Bulletin, such as the Disability Discrimination Act, innovative induction practice, the impact of devolution on FE in Scotland and Wales, intranets, VLEs, dealing with challenging behaviour and metadata. Conclusion Although the FE sector receives little mention in the academic library press, I hope that I have demonstrated that there was much innovative practice in librarianship going on in the sector, most notably in the fields of quality toolkits and peer

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evaluation. Many other areas of significant FE library activity lack in-depth research, such as the delivery of information skills and reader development activities.

Notes 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17

Office for Standards in Education, Handbook for inspecting colleges. London: Ofsted, 2002. Ofsted, Handbook, 38–9. Estyn, Aide memoire – learning resources. Cardiff: Estyn, 2002. Guidance notes given to college inspectors. Scottish Library and Information Council/Scottish Further Education Funding Council, Resources & services supporting learning: a service development quality toolkit. Glasgow: SLIC/SFEFC, 2003. Catherine Kearney, ‘Library service development toolkit makes self-evaluation easy’, Broadcast 63, 2004, 46–8. Scottish Library and Information Council, Libraries in Scottish further education colleges: standards for performance and resourcing. 2nd ed. Glasgow: SLIC, 1997. fforwm, Services supporting learning in Wales: a quality toolkit for evaluating learning resource services in further education colleges. Cardiff: fforwm, 2005. See for more details. Chris Fowler and Val Trinder, Developing excellence in library and knowledge services: accreditation of library and information services in the health sector. [UK]: Health Libraries & Information Confederation (HeLicon), 2002. Kathy Ennis (ed.), Guidelines for learning resource services in further and higher education: performance and resourcing. 6th ed. London: Library Association, 2000. UK survey of library and learning resource provision in further education colleges. London: CILIP, 2003. Available from: (accessed 31/5/06). Andrew Eynon (ed.), Guidelines for colleges: recommendations for learning resources. London: Facet, 2005. (accessed 31/5/06). Gill Pacey, ‘CoLRiC VI form colleges library survey’, CoLRIC newsletter 37, 2006, 1– 4. Lis Parcell, ‘New resource guides’, CoFHE bulletin, 97, 2002, 11. The CoLRiC Working Papers are now available from the CoFHE website: (accessed 31/5/06). Council for Learning Resources in Colleges: .

7

Services to children, young people and schools Lucy Gildersleeves

Following the service cutbacks and restructurings of the 1980s and 1990s, library services for children and youth arguably experienced a new lease of life in the first years of the 21st century. National agendas for addressing education, welfare, crime and social inclusion were radically reshaping policy across government departments. Children, young people and families were priority groups, with literacy and community engagement being key drivers. Out of this the government defined a new proactive role for public libraries in delivering on learning, health, social inclusion and citizenship goals, set out in Framework for the future.1 Children’s and youth services became important and media-visible players in libraries delivering on this. School libraries and school library support services (SLS) were working with a rapidly changing educational context of curriculum developments, extended schools and partnerships. Traditionally public library children’s services had been committed to reaching out to those caring for and working with children, and to the children and young people themselves, using a variety of activities both within and outside the library venue – arguably more so than adult services. From 2000 there was a substantial shift in the perception of the public library role away from resource provider and encourager of readers towards active partner in outreach and community participation. The balance of professional staffing and activity tipped away from stock functions and supporting visitors to the library towards seeking out children and families, particularly from groups not traditionally using libraries, and drawing them into reading and learning. There was extensive development of familyfocused early years programmes. More recently children’s and youth library services were challenged to find new ways of using creative and participative ways of enabling and engaging young people, as demonstrated by Fulfilling their potential.2 The Children Act 2004 required English local authorities to establish Children’s Trusts by 2008, bringing together health, social and education services for children and families and paying particular attention to children at risk.3 They were also required to appoint a Children’s Director responsible for these services

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and to produce a single annual Children and Young People’s Plan encompassing them. The Act also laid a duty on each local authority to make arrangements to promote cooperation between departments and other appropriate bodies to improve children’s well-being, and a duty on these partners to take part in this cooperation. Library services for children and youth were therefore connected into this partnership. The four focal areas of child protection identified were early intervention, improving coordination of children’s services, improving support for parents and carers, and development of a childcare workforce strategy. This legislation in turn underpinned the suite of major government strategy documents defining a framework of services for children and young people situated within the remit of the Department for Education and Skills, including Every child matters: change for children, Every child matters: change for children in schools, Youth matters and the Department’s Five year strategy for children and learners.4 Children’s and youth library services in the early 21st century were also set against a background of intense political concern over national literacy levels and education problems impeding young people from becoming active citizens able to find and use information to tackle life questions, achieve economic well-being and participate in political decision-making. The opportunities for children’s and youth libraries, school libraries and schools library support services (SLS) to contribute to achieving national policy and to be seen as key players delivering into local government targets were therefore probably greater in 2005 than at any previous point. At the same time a survey of members of the Association of Senior Children’s and Education Librarians (ASCEL) in November 2005 found that both public children’s library services and SLS were facing significant challenges in handling the new structures, priorities and funding contexts created by the national reshaping of local government children’s services, and in sustaining the new roles and initiatives expected.5 Principal drivers for children’s and youth services From 2000 there were a number of significant policy drivers shaping children’s and youth library services and school libraries. Start with the child, a major review of library services for children and youth, based on research commissioned by Resource (from 2004 the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council – MLA), identified a number of essential factors in effective library provision, including: x x x x

appropriate environments and services services that are relevant and responsive appropriate help for children and young people and those who support them support from the wider community to use and benefit from the services.6

The review highlighted various key roles, in particular early years work, reader development initiatives, study support and support of 14–16-year-olds. It noted several areas for improvement, including staff development, better communication

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and involvement of parents and carers, and more coherent approaches to dealing with information literacy and study support across the public library and schools. It also identified some problematic issues, notably the financial impact on SLS of Fair Funding, more joined-up