Baroness Sanderson of Welton.
overview of evaluation in government… written for policy, delivery and analysis professions”. So, if your organisation or sector can’t produce data that fits into this evaluation model, you will be invisible.
Close the loop To fix this she points to the Evaluation Task Force, set up by the Government in 2020 “to ensure proper scrutiny of real world results”.
“DCMS should work to ensure that the role of libraries is included in their work,” Baroness Sanderson says. “It is a fact, largely unrecognised, that librar- ies help meet a range of government objectives spanning several different departments. In time it would be hoped that an important loop can be closed, whereby libraries are able to attract sustainable funding from those depart- ments which benefit from their work.” Jon Davis, PMLG Chair, supports the data hub recommendation which, he says, “neatly dovetails with some of the work already done by Libraries Connected and ACE around accredita- tion” adding: “In the final analysis, the National Data Hub would be the essential first step to creating a realistic set of National Library Standards, something that the profession has been campaigning around for years.”
He also agreed that the cost of maintaining a data hub should be borne centrally, saying that “since the Secretary of State’s duty to superintend libraries is a statutory one, then surely DCMS should pay for it.”
Public blindness
Although the public’s affection for their libraries is undeniable – and helpful
January-February 2024
when it comes to defending them against closure – this is not the same as public awareness. Dame Sanderson says: “Time and again, people noted the general lack of awareness of libraries among the public and more specifically, a lack of under- standing about the range of services they offer.”
Rather than advertising she suggests branding to raise awareness, with the NHS as one example.
“I am not the first person to suggest this. William Sieghart made the same recom- mendation in his report saying, ‘we would like to see some greater consistencies in libraries, such as branding and signage’. When I asked why this suggestion had not been taken forward, I was told that brand- ing is the domain of local authorities and it would therefore be difficult to agree a national strategy.”
But she said: “I don’t accept this is a rea- son not to try. The decision, ultimately, will come down to the agreement of local authorities but in the first instance, it is up to the centre to provide them with the pros and cons of such a proposition.” Jon said national branding would need
to be kept in step with a national offer, saying the NHS “has a clear and recognis- able national offer… The same is not yet true for public libraries.” But he also said that any national branding would need to avoid damaging strong local allegiances. Of his local library membership he said: “Whilst I feel they might welcome being part of a national library access offer, they would definitely wish to retain their local identity, so any attempt at national branding would have to be careful to avoid anything which might detract from the local identity of a library.”
New Front door? Explaining the motivation for her third recommendation of “closer involvement of the British Library”, Dame Sanderson says that the sector is “a complicated land- scape with no obvious ‘front door’ for those wishing to engage with public libraries.” She said the disbanding of the MLA (Museums and Libraries Association) in 2012 “left a fragmented structure” with the single point of contact dispersed among DCMS, DLHC, ACE, CILIP, Libraries Connected and ASCEL.
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