Gill Furniss MP, Shadow Minister for Steel, Postal Services and Consumer Protection – and Chair of the APPG.
Parameters Defining a purpose for public libraries provided a stable foundation from which the Reckitt foundation took its look into the future. Richard Heseltine said: “When the trust started to think about the future of libraries in our cities, we felt that we needed a really clear and concise understanding of what libraries were here for. What is their core distinc- tive purpose? And we tried to define that separately from the means by which that purpose is fulfilled.” The trust’s conclusion was that “the fundamental purpose of libraries and li- brarians is to help people to expand their knowledge and understanding of them- selves, their lives and the world about them in the wider interest of building strong knowledgeable communities.” These were similar to Julian Dia- mond’s statement that libraries have the potential “to be key strategic assets for cities in the development of social resilience and economic prosperity”. However there was a general recogni- tion that any principles will be tested in an age when so much is changing. Nick Poole set store in the founding princi- ples of public libraries, “they were built around the universal principles of access to learning; of civic engagement and ac- cess to knowledge.” But he also suggest- ed that professionals need to step back a little to see where to go next: “We talk about libraries being in difficult second album territory, lets own the successes of the past but lets let go of them slightly to look ahead to future ones.”
Ask the audience
In most cases the purpose of libraries have been defined using historical references or professional expertise. All delegates also acknowledged the importance of asking their communities’ views on what services to provide – not so much for guidance on fundamental purpose.
December-January 2017/18
Douglas White from Carnegie suggested that this process would not be a straight- forward task: “There’s a lot to be said for proper UX (user experience) research to actually understand what people’s behav- iours are”. He said that asking what they want may not be enough. “It’s like that Henry Ford quote: ‘If you ask people what they want they say “faster horses”’ – you actually have to understand what people do and what they want.”
Future library
Common ground was most clear when it came to the likely form of a future library. The panel converged towards the concept of a library, not as a place, but as a plat- form. The most vivid of these came from Richard Heseltine who said: “Compare a library to a smartphone. A smartphone is a platform on which a personalised collec- tion of apps is assembled. The task of the librarian is to create a platform on which different apps are assembled to meet the needs of specific groups or communities but some will be common to all libraries. “This is a metaphor. I’m not talking about a wholly digital library that exists as a series
of apps. In this metaphor a service which lends printed books is an app. In fact it’s probably useful at this point to switch from talking about apps to talking about enter- prises. So the library is a platform on which various enterprises are built, and these enterprises are the specific ways in which librarians help people to expand their knowledge and understanding to release their creativity and imagination.” Caroline Brazier said that the British Library was already pushing a similar model: “We work with public libraries to provide a range of cultural events and business workshops. These are things that libraries are not necessarily doing themselves, but working in partnership with experts from the wider community, to bring them in and use libraries as the platform. A multi-use platform. That’s exactly what libraries should be. We need to see libraries as places where almost anything can happen.”
Julian Diamond said Arup also sees “Libraries as multi-use destinations” adding that “there’s a range of examples, of places that have created environments with librar- ies at their hub: sources of entertainment,
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NEWS Gill Furniss
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