IN DEPTH
Getting back in the loop
Has the Sanderson Review of public libraries successfully swapped direct demands for cash with new routes to resources? We take a look with help from Jon Davis, Customer Service Manager at Kirklees Council, and co-chair of CILIP’s Public and Mobile Libraries Group (PMLG).
IN the foreword to his 2014 Indepen- dent Library Report for England William Seighart said that “there have already been far too many library reviews in recent years which have come to nothing” and “not enough decision makers at national or local level appear sufficiently aware of the remarkable and vital value that a good library service can offer.” Nine years and two reviews later, Baroness Sanderson, addresses these challenges again in An Independent Review of English Public Libraries commissioned by Arts and Herit- age Minister, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. She says that while she may be covering familiar territory, she hopes “where there is repetition, that it only proves the need to keep working on those challenges that have proved especially difficult to overcome”. And she starts by repeating the most repeated of them all: “A lack of recognition across government, locally and nationally, of the work that libraries do. This is not a new problem. As far back as 2003, the then DCMS Libraries Strategy called for ‘greater recognition … of the role of the public library service as a delivery agent across a range of local government services and objectives’.”
Data blindness
This is the main reason why the review puts a data hub at the top of its wish list. And
20 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob Mackinlay(
rob.mackinlay@
cilip.org.uk) is a journalist at Information Professional
while Dame Sanderson repeats the claim that having good data will be a powerful advocacy tool, she doesn’t think this will fix things on its own.
“When libraries have tried to evidence the value that they bring,” she says, “they are often told that it is not Magenta or Green Book compliant and therefore does not meet agreed government guidance on evaluation methods or project appraisal.” According to the government, The Magenta Book is “a comprehensive
January-February 2024
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