Photo, above: Melbourne Library by cogdogblog, CC-licensed
Britain’s Conservative minister for culture, Ed Vaizey, thinks public library services could be improved.
“The George and Dragon pub in North Yorkshire is now delivering a library service and a pint to the community in Hudswell. That sounds like a good partnership to me.”
The Guardian reported recently that Vaizey supports some recommendations from the Labour Party’s Public Library Modernisation Review and wants libraries to help “half a million digitally excluded people” become confident Internet users in the next two years.
“He also called on library authorities to make voluntary alliances and join up backroom activities, saying that the current model of 151 separate library authorities and 151 library management teams “is too many”. “Think about how much we could save collectively if we only had 100 library authority management teams rather than 151. And those savings could help protect the service to the library user,” he said.”
Public libraries in the USA are also struggling for funds. A short article from Fox News in Chicago should strike terror into every civilized person’s heart: it poses an apparently simple question — what is your local library worth? — and offers a distressingly simplistic answer. Unimpressed, Chicago’s public library commissioner responds:
“The public library is supported by taxpayers for the common good of all the people of Chicago – just like public school. We don’t ask our schools to make profit. Neither should we ask it of the public library,” she said. “As journalist Walter Cronkite once remarked, ‘Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.’”
Still, all is not rosy in Illinois:
“Chicago’s schools offer the shortest school day in the nation. As schools slash their budgets for school libraries and shorten their classroom teaching time, thousands of children flock to Chicago’s public libraries every day afterschool, in the evening and on weekends for homework assistance from our librarians and certified teachers hired by the public library.” (full text of library commissioner Mary A Dempsey’s letter to Fox News)
In California the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanic Gardens recently concluded a six-year fundraising campaign that far exceeded its financial target.
Tags: fundraising, advancement, Huntington Library, library, Ed Vaizey, management“Huntington, once known as a bastion of old-school arts and letters, is repositioning itself as a collections-based research and education institution… Officials credit much of the campaign’s success to strategic-planning sessions and outreach that increased awareness of the Huntington’s need to broaden its mission and deal with longstanding practical problems.”
