Hereford and Worcester
County Council
County Hall, Spetchicy Road,
Worcester WR5 2NP

Mr R Bowes
AsLib
Information House
20-24 Old Street
London
EClV 9AP

Dear Roger

Thank you for your invitation to submit evidence on the Public Library Review. The timescale has necessitated this Council adopting an approach which has resulted in a less comprehensive document than it might have wished, not because of the time available, but because the cycle of meetings meant that it could not be considered by the Committee as a whole. The submission, prepared by me in consultation with the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of my Committee, is couched in fairly general terms, therefore, but I hope that it will help inform the Review. More detailed information on any of the specific initiatives mentioned in the document can be provided on request and I have attached our recently approved annual plan as an appendix.

You will also find enclosed a second submission, prepared by a group of professional staff within the Department. Inevitably it represents something of a consensus view, but again I hope you will find it of value, both in its content and as reflecting the interest and concern of staff generally.

Putting my third hat firmly in place, I may tell you that the Society of County Librarians will be submitting evidence, either in its own name or via A.C.C. Members of the Executive Committee are meeting on 7th July to agree a response.

Best wishes.

sincerely

MICHAEL MESSENGER
COUNTY LIBRARIAN AND ARTS OFFICER

The main purpose of the public library is to assist people to develop as individuals and play a full part in the community by helping to satisfy their demands for education, information, artistic experience and recreation.

The service should be publicly funded and, in the main, free to the individual at the point of use and will entail:

providing a comprehensive service using all available media including printed, audio-visual and electronic media. When possible those resources should be available for loan.

providing a service to all sections of the community regardless of ethnic, religious and cultural origin, regardless of age or physical or mental abilities and regardless of financial status.

understanding the needs of the community and responding to new demands and opportunities.

Libraries should be community and cultural centres relating directly to the needs of their locality. To achieve this there needs to be a flexibility of approach as the needs of one community will differ from those of others. If the library is regarded as a resource centre, active in promoting community needs, the presence of experienced qualified staff who identify with and are based in the community is essential. The buildings themselves need to be as flexible and adaptable as the demands likely to be made on them will change. Libraries are often the only public space freely available to all (apart from parks) and this aspect of their community role must not be neglected. They are excellent bases for new initiatives such as open learning.

National standards are necessary to give consistency and should be mandatory. Standards should fully cover the needs of special interest groups such as the disabled or ethnic groups.

The unique contribution of public libraries to their community is the ability to gather and organise information and then present it impartially to all. Information must be accessible and in all formats. It is important that libraries are not left behind in a developing multi-media society and technological means of access are used where appropriate. Networks of terminals will mean that delivery of information is not confined to library buildings but can be extended throughout the community. The library should become involved in organising and supporting the support mechanisms needed so that all can make the maximum use of the information available through new delivery systems. There will be many inequalities in the new "information society" and libraries can help close the new gap between the information rich and information poor.

Libraries will need to have regard to credibility with colleagues and the public. This will entail in some instances making value judgements about services and clients and this should be done openly and in support of agreed policy objectives. Credibility presumes a high quality of service but also needs professional presentation and publicity.

Public libraries are properly local institutions under democratic control but to fully serve users they also need to be a national system. Co-operation through the regional library systems, may be superseded by direct lending with the British Library and other libraries but co-operation in one form or other is as vital for the future as it has been in the past.

Free access to all published printed materials remains of vital importance. The many roles of public libraries which are not being carried out by anyone else must not be forgotten - for instance, local studies collections where the library is the collective memory of its community.

The overall view is that public libraries provide a wide range of community services in the field of information, culture and education. It is in their very nature to serve all the community and democratically this is the only viable option. This role needs to be recognised by adequate investment which will in our view produce ample return in individual and community development.

1. Hereford and Worcester County Council is committed to the concept of the public library service as a statutory function of local government, believing that it should be responsive to the needs of the local population and accountable to it through the democratic processes. It has welcomed recent Government pronouncements on the retention of the "free" public library service and is strongly of the belief that "core" services should continue to be financed through national and local taxation with any charge at the point of delivery limited to provision and services where there is some clearly identifiable "value added" element.

2. It is particularly concerned to emphasise that unlimited access to books and other printed materials of all kinds should remain free at the point of delivery, recognising the value to the individual and to society of this principle. It has considered the use made of public libraries for recreational reading, and acknowledges the anomaly created between that and other areas of the entertainment industry, but believes it would be wrong to attempt to establish some dividing line between "worthy" and "popular" material, given that the use of the public library is largely by individuals, the wide diversity of educational and social backgrounds, the essentially personal response to books of all kinds, and the denial of opportunity for self- improvement which any such arbitrary distinction would create.

3. It is particularly concerned to ensure that the widest available free access to the printed word should be provided for young people of all ages and believes that the public library has a key role to play in this area, not merely via the network of libraries within a local authority but through local schools, and it would recommend Government to examine the provision of library services within schools with view to establishing minimum standards of provision and determining whether public libraries should have some direct and possibly statutory responsibility for this.

4. This Council believes that information remains at the core of public library work, and that there should be no direct charges for its provision at the point of delivery; a charge would be appropriate for material (e.g. photocopy) which passes into the possession of the enquirer. It has considered the issue of charging "line time" for information obtained through electronic means, but believes that there is little logic in this; pragmatism would suggest that charges may facilitate the development of new and/or enhanced services, and this Council recognises the danger of inhibiting development or depressing the quality of service, but the distinction between printed and electronic source is an increasingly arbitrary one and is difficult to justify.

It should be recognised that the use of electronic media is frequently the most cost-effective way of providing information, and this Council recognises that there will be those commercial organisations who will charge for access to their information and that some local authorities may feel it necessary to pass those on to the enquirer; direct charges to the enquirer for access only are to be deprecated but materials supplied should certainly be charged at cost.

5. The Council has considered the position of audio visual material including cassettes, compact discs, CD Rom and videos. It acknowledges that these customarily are provided upon a rental or charged basis, and recognises that, for example, in the case of recorded music, this is probably irreversible. It is concerned, however, to establish that the introduction of new media should not become the mechanism through which the principle of the "free" core library service may be eroded and ultimately destroyed.

Areas which merit particular attention as elements within the core service are "talking books" and instructional or clearly educational videos.

6. In general it is not helpful to indicate those services which must be provided free, since this is likely to lead to future inflexibility. The alternative strategy is to indicate those elements and services for which a charge may be made; an indicative list might include:

fines and overdues

reservations

photocopies

print-outs

booklists

publications

room hire

admission to cultural events

7. It is vital that public libraries respond to all of the population, irrespective of age, colour or circumstance, providing quality service by whatever means are the most appropriate. This will vary from locality to locality, from authority to authority, and will reflect the interests of the individual community. In some areas the problems of rural provision will be of particular concerns, and local service plans (lodged with and monitored by the DNH) should make adequate provision for this; "tokenism" should be actively discouraged, and authorities encouraged to develop effective means of delivering services, networking information wherever possible, and providing appropriate access to professional advice. Attention is drawn to the current PLDIS supported Golden Valley Information Project based in South West Herefordshire, and the report "Library and Information Provision in Rural Areas" published by CPI following a LISC(E) initiative.

8. The key role of the public library is providing for individual needs should be recognised and enshrined in any document produced by Government, the policies of public library authorities should not be dictated by popular mass demand and so ignore minority interests.

9. It should be the responsibility of each library authority to make the necessary arrangements for the comprehensive gathering and retention of all printed material relating to the locality; local circumstances will dictate whether this should be extended to pictorial and manuscript materials.

10. This Council supports the recent initiative to establish a Relay providing information on European affairs to the general public through the public library network; it welcomes this recognition by the European Union of the value of public libraries, and is surprised that the U.K Government has not sought to harness that same network for recent initiatives such as "Business Link" and the "First Stop Shop" programme. Councils' own use of its public library network to provide a corporate information point or gateway to other local authority services is to be welcomed, although the neutrality and impartiality of the public library as a source of information must be preserved.

11. In this connection, the relationship between the separate autonomous public library systems and those between the public library network and other sectors is pertinent to the work of the review. If the public library is to continue to perform its traditional role of acting as a "gateway" (whether for the actual printed materials or for the information contained within them), it is important to clarify the respective roles of the different sectors. While this Council is concerned not to increase the extent of legislation bearing upon the public library service, it feels that all publicly funded institutions should have an absolute responsibility to co-operate in the provision of materials and information, and that this might be considered as a factor in any grant provision; the effectiveness of any agreed co-operative arrangements should certainly be a factor in considering the performance of any public library system.

12. The role of the British Library and the regional library systems cannot be ignored, although this Council recognises that the activities of the former may be considered as falling outside the terms of reference of the Review team. Nonetheless, the point should be made that collection and charging policies adopted by the British Library have a direct impact upon the public library service, and this Council believes that it should be a function of the proposed Library Commission to monitor the effect of such policies and of any proposed changes, and to advise Government accordingly.

13. The speed and extent of technological change necessarily calls into question the role of the regional library systems, and even the necessity for them in their present form. This Council recognises the strength of regional affiliation and the commitment that this may generate, but believes that the number of RLSs and their functions need to be reassessed with public libraries increasingly making use of national bibliographic data bases; this trend should be further encouraged with public libraries given the same opportunities and inducements as have been extended to the academic sector. This would not only improve the quality of service offered but would reinforce the role of the public library as a vital component in the overall national library network.

14. The quality of public service is dependent not only upon the ready availability of materials but upon the quality of the trained staff, their knowledge of resources and their ability to exploit them. For this reason Hereford and Worcester County Council, while recognising that it for each local authority to determine the staffing structure most appropriate to local circumstances, is concerned that the public should retain ready access to professional expertise at time convenient to the user. It suggests that budgetary pressures and even the claimed benefit of enhanced job satisfaction for professionally qualified librarians are of limited validity when set against the public good. It has already suggested (in its preliminary submission to the Department of National Heritage on the terms and extent of the Review) that the traditional list of duties of a professional librarian are too narrow and too mechanistic, and that the role or a local or branch librarian should be redefined, concentrating more heavily upon the social and community responsibilities of the individual, acting as a positive promoter of service and as an "animateur" within the local community.

15. It follows that the library building itself should be hospitable to local social and cultural groups. It is impossible to legislate for this (and undesirable that there should be any attempt to do so), given the diversity within society and variation between localities, but this Council is anxious to ensure that while the local library should reflect the realities and aspirations of the local community it should also be regarded as a cultural centre, relating books and reading to other art forms where appropriate. It takes as its starting point the concept that all art forms are an attempt to communicate and that there are fundamental relationships which need to be bome in mind and which can with advantage be expressed through a wide- ranging programme of activities, not subordinating other art forms to literature or using them merely to support book based services but giving them due weight and emphasis; this facet of library activity is best summarised in the Heeks Report (Public Libraries and the Arts: an evolving relationship. Library Association, 1989).

16. That said, it recognises that there are other agencies more appropriate or better equipped for technical reasons to promote some arts activities, and it wold stress the need for the public library to seek the most appropriate form of local provision, seeking always to co-operate in the interests of the people it is attempting to serve rather than to compete in the direct provision of activities which are beyond the strict scope of its statutory responsibility.

17. This Council does believe, however, that all library authorities do have a responsibility to undertake developmental work, providing the necessary opportunities for those who wish to improve their personal understanding and appreciation of literature; this Council's commitment is reflected in its recent Contemporary Poetry Promotion (supported by PLDIS with report published 1993) and the Arts Council supported Literature Resource Centres developed during 1993. This type of activity may also extend into the area of creative writing and should include concern for problems of illiteracy.

18. Hereford and Worcester Council has considered whether, given the pressures upon local authorities and the financial demands being made upon them, the functions of the public library service should in some way be curtailed, but has concluded that the public interest dictates they should not. It is difficult to see how limits can be imposed without adversely affecting the poorer sectors of the population or limiting the possibility for self-improvement or creating a new deprived category of the information poor. Any view of the future suggests a need for more rather than less investment in the public library movement, with libraries themselves continuing both to provide services and materials directly where appropriate and to act as a gateway or emissary for demands which cannot be satisfied within the resources immediately available. In short, being all things to all people may be uncomfortable at times, but there is no better agency presently in existence able to satisfy the legitimate demands (some would say the inalienable right) of the individual to obtain access to the widest possible range of published information and creative thought.