Guildhall Librarian and Director of
Libraries and Art Galleries
Melvyn Barnes, OBE, DMA,
ALA, FBIIM, FRSA
Guddhall Library, Aldermanbury
London EC2P 2EJ
Facsimile 071-600 3384
Telex 265608 LONDON G

John Myers
Public Library Review Secretariat
Aslib
Information House
20-24 Old Street
London EC1V 9AP

Dear John

Thank you for your letter of 12 May, requesting comments in respect of the Public Library Review. I hope that by this time you will have received many responses from chief librarians, and apologise that my own is so near to your deadline.

You ask for evidence on behalf of my authority, so perhaps I should point out that there has not been a meeting of my Committee since your invitation was received. My comments should therefore be regarded as a personal view, although of course I have framed them with a very close knowledge of the attitudes of the Corporation of London after more than ten years of working here. Indeed I am fortunate, in that my own views on public libraries are entirely in tune with those of the Corporation (or vice versa!) - which, sadly, cannot be claimed by some of my opposite numbers in other authorities, where political and monetary questions often now over-ride professional and service principles on the part of elected members.

It is perhaps worth mentioning at the outset that the Corporation of London has no desire whatsoever to move away from the principle of the "free" library service,, to charge for facilities currently provided without direct charge, or to explore possibilities for the contracting-out of library services. Indeed, on the question of competitive tendering of public services, our elected members long ago took the view that they would act only when the law compelled them to do so. In the case of libraries, they take pride in putting the service high on their list of priorities, allocate to us some 18% of their total rate-borne expenditure, and make the service freely available to anyone who wishes to use it (not just those who live, work or are educated in the City).

I make the above points for an important reason. While the City might be regarded as the country's foremost centre of capitalism and free enterprise, this need not be incompatible with the provision of community-funded services.

On the question of the "free core" of public library provision. I am strongly opposed to reducing this from what is currently generally accepted. We already have the somewhat ridiculous situation where loans of books must be free of direct charges, whereas authorities may (and most do) charge for the loan of records, cassettes and compact discs. This is an outmoded principle, based upon the concept that "libraries are for books" and completely overlooking the fact that "new" media have become complementary to the book. A student of music can therefore borrow a book on Beethoven and a score free of charge, but in order to compare various performances of one of the symphonies it is necessary to pay for the appropriate recordings.

With regret, I doubt if this situation will now change, The law is highly unlikely to be amended, and local authorities have come to rely upon the income, It appears to be irrelevant that this severely restricts the citizen's freedom of choice, in that ability to pay determines whether non-book media are borrowed at all, and to what extent. It is a great pity that, while public libraries are the only means by which the citizen can borrow the widest range of recordings (sampling, comparing, experimenting with previously untried composers and performers), the advantage this gives to a community is artificially restrained by charges.

It is some small consolation that the free (book) lending service has been supported by successive governments, I can only hope that any future standardisation will be on the principle of a free (multi-media) lending service, rather than introducing charges for borrowing books.

At this stage, my comments might appear to be those of an idealist out of step with current political and economic thinking. I would add, therefore, that there is plenty of scope for introducing new services into libraries of a "value-added" nature which clients should be prepared to pay for. These should clearly be above and beyond the standard lending and reference services. For example, public libraries are not staffed and funded to provide detailed research or to package information tailored to a client's specific requirements. I would therefore regard a future priority to be the introduction of specially staffed research facilities, using both standard stock and on-line services, with direct charges. We currently do this in our City Business Library, and another field for possible development in the future could be local history research and particularly genealogy.

You raise in your letter a series of questions, Each one could warrant a lengthy essay - which is not intended as a criticism, merely a recognition that your review has to be almost impossibly comprehensive in its coverage. I have therefore concentrated above on two aspects:

- funding (where my implication is that community funding from the public purse is the only means of providing to the community the widest choice for the lowest individual cost); and

- charging (where there is scope for new on-demand services, while protecting core services rather than rationing them to those able to pay)

I believe the current review is a healthy exercise, although I sincerely trust very few people will take the simplistic view that something that has been in existence for over a century must by definition be outmoded and ripe for destructive change. Public libraries have moved with the times, and are needed today even more than they were in the last century - and, indeed, for more positive reasons than those advanced in the 1850s. Finally, I greatly welcome your decision to seek the views of the public. We continually state that libraries are among the most valued local services, and I hope this will be borne out by your respondents (together, of course, with useful suggestions for changes and developments), There will, of course, be some who say that they never face libraries and therefore resent paying for them, whereas the more important question is why they do not realise what enormous returns they could get for their small financial outlay. Similar resentment (maybe with better reason) could be expressed by non-drivers paying for roads, childless people paying for education, the socially advantaged paying for social services, and the healthy paying for hospitals. I can only hope that, in spite of the attitude of some politicians, the nation still has a social conscience and a concept of the community working together for the benefit of all.

Yours sincerely

Director of Libraries and Art Galleries