Archived decisions
The Reading Agency's response to Blueprint consultation
1. Purpose of public libraries
Our impression in talking to the library sector is that there is some confusion about the relationship of Blueprint to Framework for the Future and whether Framework's statement of libraries' purpose is still the basis for national government policy on libraries. It would be helpful to clarify this.
Linked to this, there are a number of different iterations of libraries' purpose in various documents - this is confusing. In Blueprint's Proposition One the statement about universal entitlement to reading, information, knowledge and involvement in the community doesn't seem to read across to the three roles of community place, development agency and digital library. The latter seem to us to be delivery mechanisms rather than the core purpose.
We think the original Framework articulation of libraries' purpose as being to support reading and learning, digital citizenship and community/civic values works well and could happily stand. Some of the headings might need updating - for instance we'd recommend dropping the "books" bit from books reading and learning because there are many delivery mechanisms for reading.
In years of dealing with the sector and its champions we have never found any disagreement that libraries are about supporting the nation's reading culture and skills, and that this purpose is linked to critical outcomes for individuals and communities. This is something we can all unite around. Reading has a central place in creating inclusive communities with opportunities for all. Without effective reading skills people do not achieve their full potential - socially, creatively, and economically.
The challenge now is to build on this to create a bolder, more inspiring vision for a re-engineered, repositioned reading service linked to much clearer advocacy statements about why we need libraries. This needs connecting to national policy agendas - it's bizarre, for instance, that DfES's 5 year learning strategy hardly mentions libraries. This is something Blueprint must surely tackle.
2. A repositioning of a re-engineered reading service
In a rapidly changing reading landscape, libraries have a major opportunity to reposition themselves as community hubs for reading. The investment in reader development is starting to pay off, with children's issues having risen for two years' running. We agree with the many Chief Librarians we have talked to that there should be a strategic focus on how a similar turn around could be achieved for mainstream adult reading audiences. There should also be a focus on libraries' social justice and place shaping role, through their support for reading.
The Summer Reading Challenge offers an inspiring model of a re-engineered reading service with its modern mix of community activities, IT and books - an experiential offer that competes with credibility for the attention of the rising generation and can reach all children, including the disadvantaged. The explosion in take up of library led reading groups, author events and creative reading promotions all point the way ahead to the creation of a more interactive offer to readers - one more able to meet rising consumer expectations. Research shows the impact of this work, and its potential to attract and surprise non users.
The time is right
The Year of Reading is approaching and offers major advocacy opportunities for libraries and the chance to effect systemic change. The government's interest in reading now goes right to the top, with Gordon Brown talking about its importance for the nation's cultural and educational health. We can surely exploit this for libraries' benefit through a drive across government promoting libraries' reading role.
The time has never been better for a major reading based push on service improvement, advocacy and marketing. This can build on the significant ground made in recent years. SCL has agreed a shared vision and aims for libraries' work with readers; the first phase of Love Libraries showcased an exciting new vision of a modernised reading service and its policy links. There are powerful nationally and regionally co-ordinated reading programmes delivering outcomes for key groups of readers, with others waiting to be rolled out. The recent partnership work we've done means that broadcasters and publishers are lined up to support libraries' work with readers as never before.
The Reading Agency thinks that libraries need to tell a much simpler story, backed up by impact evidence, and that this is the key to cracking their political invisibility. We are not alone in thinking that this can be centred around their support for reading:
· " I can see no better way of garnering the necessary support for the case for public libraries than centring the arguments around reading. It's the start and end of the debate, and it's also the most effective way of getting politicians to listen, and hopefully act" Wilf Stevenson, Director of the Smith Institute
We very much welcomed MLA's speech at the Love Libraries' conference which showed how libraries' role in supporting reading is indivisibly linked to their role in providing information, supporting learning, and engaging with the community to improve people's lives and life chances.
· Reading is the core skill which opens up the world of knowledge, information and imagination whether the source is books or the internet. Reading therefore has to be at the heart of any modern public library service and finding ways to engage more people with reading, to make it an exciting and transformational activity, to make it something people want to do with their time, is a critical challenge for the library service Sue Wilkinson, Director of Policy, MLA
We'd like to join MLA in getting away from the sterile arguments about books versus computers, and in helping redefine what reading means in a digitised age. Libraries' role in developing all kinds of literacies needs clearly articulating, as does the links this role has to better outcomes and life chances.
3. Entitlement
We welcome the statements in Blueprint about the importance of being clear about what the public can expect from their library and using this as a basis to strengthen people's ability to lobby for an excellent service. Because libraries have diversified, it's not clear what their core activities still are. We'd like to reiterate SCL's point that in the Love Libraries consumer toolkit the sector has already gone a long way to agreeing and defining what everybody should be able to expect from their library. No point in wasting this work.
This basic offer can be enriched over time to include universal offers to key target groups. TRA has done a lot of work on this through our national reading programmes, and our improvement framework with a "minimum level" structure is being widely adopted by local authorities. We would love to be able to plug our nationally co-ordinated reading programmes into a strategy to build up a universal offer to key groups, which could then be marketed. The Youth Board model with its pilot NW regional counterpart offers an encouraging model of how we might go about this.
The original vision, agreed by the Advisory Council for Libraries, was that the product improvement work would be linked to the national marketing strategy. Once 80% of authorities were able to make an offer to the agreed baseline, MLA would include the offer in the national marketing strategy.
Reading entitlements can be part of a wider library offer for key audiences. There is an urgent need to agree delivery mechanisms for these and others around digital information, community space and learning.
4. Governance and role of responsible bodies
It would be fantastic if this next period of library development saw us grasping the governance nettle. There is widespread agreement that the current structures at national level are unsatisfactory. Let's have a full and vigorous debate, linked to action, about what changes would help, including changes in legislation.
Meanwhile there have been discussions within the Smith Institute Group about the need to clarify the roles of the responsible national bodies. There are some things DCMS and MLA just can't do, others they can. It would be helpful to clarify this in future policy documents and might help defuse some of the vociferous criticism libraries have been subjected to.
In relation to Framework for the Future/Blueprint, there is a need to build ownership for national library policy. Going forward there is an opportunity to share ownership, responsibility and issues of sustainability with other government departments (especially DfES, DCLG and DTI) as well as partners such as the book industry. We would like to see a capital Building Libraries of the Future programme established with DCLG and a strategy devised in response to the Local Government White Paper to address how to avoid fragmentation of the library system. This could include model standards around community governance.
In future planning, it will be important to recognise the contribution third sector agencies can make at regional and national level to key areas of work relevant to the Local Government White Paper. From our perspective, for instance, we have made significant progress in helping libraries develop models of participation. These are key to proposition 4, essential to measuring proposition 5, and the foundation for an evidence base of libraries' impact.
5. Social inclusion and community engagement
Blueprint makes surprisingly little mention of libraries' role in fostering social inclusion. Their role in supporting literacy and a reading culture has profound links to social inclusion - for instance there are powerful statistical links between low literacy levels and offending. Libraries' contribution to learners' progression towards Leitch's ambitious targets needs to be made more explicit - everything from initial engagement and signposting to skills development, sustaining learning and inspiring learners to do more. There is a major opportunity to show the outside world what libraries can do to help address the nation's skills deficit. Working with families will be a crucial way in to achieving some of this.
We would welcome the chance to work with MLA on harnessing the power of our national reading programmes to further social justice and improve outcomes for individuals and communities. We hope, for example, to build a special Summer Reading Challenge focus on looked after children. Other programmes, like the Vital Link for adult learners and the Big Book Share for family reading in prison, offer major development possibilities.
Our national programmes also offer important community engagement possibilities. FtP, for example, has developed a new understanding of how young people can be involved in shaping the library and reading experience with the Book Bars initiative taking this one step forward. There is now an emerging recognition from key stakeholders (e.g. DfES, NYA, LGA) that public libraries are developing some exemplary participative work. We will be developing this strand in all our national reading programmes, giving us the opportunity to re-balance the relationship between the consumer and the provider. We think this is very much in line with Blueprint's emphasis on libraries as a community place.
6. Key challenges for improvement
ICT developments
Could Blueprint be used to stimulate a debate about the future of public use ICT? Libraries' future role needs to be explored in the context of the government's expectations, the economic and social inclusion drivers and the future of the technical platform we should be aiming for. Partners like the BBC are keen to join this debate and explore partnership developments.
We welcome Blueprint's statements about digital library developments. It will be important to go further than this. MLA is well placed to develop and lead an IT strategy and set clear target dates for major developments. One pressing need is to get all library catalogues on-line. There are major opportunities to link such a development to our national media partnerships, so that, for instance, every time a book is mentioned on radio, people can go on-line and search their local catalogue.
The IT strategy could also ensure that libraries offer a basic 24/7 service of on-line joining, reservations and renewals, moving on to downloadable ebooks and audio books. The strategy could lead developments on modernising delivery of books, along the lines of LoveFilm.
An IT strategy could address the issue of how to create a big collective push on RFID, and link to the work on book industry RFID standards.
We would be happy to support MLA in developing a workstrand which would link libraries into major booktrade developments around the digitisation of content. There is, for example, a new, BA led, initiative offering opportunities for co-operation.
National reading programmes
We welcome the action line in proposition 6 - a programme of targeted national offers around reading and literacy. The first phases of F4F work on national reading programmes put some important building blocks in place and we'd like to think that MLA was proud to have made much of TRA's work in this area possible, through F4F funding. This joint work has demonstrated the impact of partnership working. The challenge now is to embed the work, roll out the offers and make the policy and advocacy links.
We had already developed a successful working model - the Summer Reading Challenge. This shows how local delivery can be united into something bigger, and national economies of scale harnessed to give readers a much more dynamic experience. This approach helps libraries modernise their core work of supporting readers, and does it through a modernised fusion of books, IT and live community events. This year we are integrating an important partnership with the BBC.
Our national reading programmes have been developed in close consultation with local authority partners. They are at different stages, depending on their origins, partnership base and funding. They use the following levers for change:
· Consensus on a quality framework for progression outlining the basis of a minimum offer in a specified area of core service provision
· Library authority networks working together on a strategic and delivery level
· Sign up process formalising baseline offer and aspects of enhanced provision
· Capacity building through generic tool and resource development, training, community champions programmes
· Partnership development
· Review and evaluation frameworks to support progression
· Frameworks for involving users in shaping the library service on offer.
The programmes help improve libraries' product so that a clear, deliverable offer can be made to targeted customers, e.g. "help from the library if you're trying to get better at reading" to adult basic skills learners or "we'll help turn your child into a reader for life" for parents of primary aged children
· Adult basic skills learners: The Vital Link
· Children 5-11: Summer Reading Challenge and Chatterbooks
· Young people 11-19: Fulfilling Their Potential
· Mainstream adult readers: media and booktrade partnerships which help libraries offer people the chance to connect to a national conversation about books/reading
· National reading group development programme: for anyone wanting to join a reading group
These are just TRA's programmes; other agencies are doing important product development work for the same groups. We would like to see Blueprint creating a coherent strategy to drive these forward and embed them. The Year of Reading is coming up, and the Youth Board model and its regional NW echo shows how existing initiatives can be consolidated into an impressive offer and linked to policy, improved advocacy and better communication with the public. This model is helping us avoid problems with overlap, fragmentation and mixed messages.
7. Stock
We welcome Blueprint's emphasis on the importance of improving libraries' bookstock. We were encouraged by Tony Durcan's leadership at the recent Love Libraries conference where he made a clarion call for investment in stock, in line with all the research which shows how important this is to the public. He called for 15% of library budgets to be spent on book stock.
The position on this has changed little since the Audit Commission's 2002 survey. The voice of the public is very clear; when SCL recently collected evidence from local resident surveys, book stock and opening hours were consistently the top two improvements the public wanted to see.
8. Essential elements for success
A sound evidence base
There is a large gap in the existing evidence base for the impact of libraries' reading work. There is no research on the impact of the core reading service, which now includes some key reader development strands as well as the basic book lending service. It would be a big gain to fill this gap before the Year of Reading starts.
We have evidence of impact on some specific audiences, but there is a need for more, and for longitudinal research. On young people, for instance, we have lots of evidence on what they want from libraries, but much less on demonstrating the outcomes. With adult learners there is a need to demonstrate conclusively libraries' contribution to progression. We have recently invested in strengthening our research function, and would love to work with MLA on this.
Having said there is a large gap, there is an opportunity to use more vigorously the evidence we do have, from research into the impact of national reading programmes. There is important evidence, especially in the areas of educational attainment, skills/employability, health and cohesive communities.
Marketing
Research we have done with Book Marketing Ltd. highlights marketing opportunities for libraries around very contemporary themes - the green agenda (book lending is the ultimate in recycling!), connecting to your local community, and trust. It also highlights the importance of reiterating a key selling point in an era where reading has become much sexier - free books. The strategy part of the Love Libraries toolkit provides a useful guide to the existing research.
As we have said above, there are major opportunities to build on the product improvement work done in the first phases of F4F through national reading programmes. Real benefits can be sold to segmented audiences. We would love to work with MLA on building stronger links between the product improvement work and the MLA marketing plan.
9. The contribution TRA can make to developments 2008 onwards
With this paper we are submitting a separate one on how TRA can best make the best possible contribution, as a supportive third sector partner, to libraries' development in the period covered by Blueprint. We will be talking to MLA, SCL and DCMS about this.
Briefly, we see our contribution residing in
· Year of Reading and library relationship with DfES
· National reading programmes for key target audiences
· Community engagement/ co-production
· Outreach/ social justice/ new audiences
· Workforce development
· Partnerships
· Advocacy
· Research
· Marketing
June 2007
Miranda McKearney, Director
01962 865102