Public Library Materials Fund and Budget Survey 2000‐2002

Citation

Line, M.B. (2002), "Public Library Materials Fund and Budget Survey 2000‐2002", Library Management, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 174-175. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.2002.23.3.174.2

We have now come to expect annual collections of library statistics from LISU. This is the latest volume relating to public libraries, commendably issued only four months after data collection. Moreover, the response rate to the questionnaires sent to all libraries was an excellent 85 per cent (high marks to English counties with 97 per cent, a rap on the knuckles for unitary authorities and Welsh counties with 78 per cent and 77 per cent respectively). Many of the questionnaires that were returned were incomplete, leading to annoying gaps in the tables, but the great majority of the most important figures were provided.

After an Introduction and 12 pages of Commentary, the work consists of tables: 30 pages of summary tables first, then 208 pages of detailed tables for individual authorities. Figures given are for 1999/2000 actuals, 2000/2001 estimates and provisional actuals, and 2001/2002 estimates. There are three appendices.

As with previous volumes, the work is a mine of information. Overall, there was a very slight (0.5 per cent) reduction in staff numbers, mostly professional staff, and a similar small increase in opening hours. Total library expenditure increased by 4.5 per cent, compared with the 2.5 per cent decrease in the previous year.

The increase in expenditure on materials – 1.3 per cent – is a good deal less impressive. For books it was only 1.1 per cent. If this is related to the increase in book prices, it must represent a substantial decline; unfortunately these were not included in this volume because a change in the Whitaker database made valid comparison with previous years impossible. The decline has been steady over several years; one can only wonder what lies in the future. In any case, from the 2001/2002 estimates it appears that the overall increase is short‐lived: a decrease of 0.3 per cent is forecast.

Audiovisual materials do better than books: an overall increase of 3.3 per cent, followed by an estimated increase of 2.6 per cent. These increases must be at the expense of books. Is this due to efforts to attract customers, and is it leading to “dumbing down”?

There are vast differences between authorities. (Usefully, those that have had substantial increases and decreases in materials expenditure from low, average and high bases are listed.) It would be much easier to compare them with one another if we had been given figures for population served and expenditure per head. What can be compared is the relative amount spent on different types of material: books, newspapers and periodicals, sound recordings, video recordings, and CD‐ROMs and online services (are online services a material?) – though we have to calculate for ourselves the percentage of total materials expenditure each type represents. When the ratio of book to audiovisual expenditure is calculated (which can be done easily from the summary tables), enormous variations emerge: for example, in Buckinghamshire the ratio is 1:0.8, in Norfolk 1:0.09. It is not the job of LISU (in this publication at least) to attempt to explain such differences, but, like most collections of statistics, it makes one ask questions. One ratio must be “better” than the other (or both may be equally “bad” compared with somewhere in between). Is there any way of finding out? For example, are Buckinghamshire library users more or less satisfied with their service than Norfolk users?

What underlies these figures as a whole? Are public libraries gradually being reinvented as purveyors of electronic information? If so – and there is increasing evidence for this in recent LISU reports – is it due to drift or deliberate policy? Should libraries be moving into the electronic world at the sacrifice of traditional materials? Have they any choice? What impact will the recent government standards have on all this?

Minor quibbles: navigation would be easier if card dividers had been provided between major sections, and perhaps minor ones as well; the summary tables actually start on a verso. Doubtless every Scot knows what and where Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar is, but for others a translation would have been useful.

A final note. A paragraph in the Commentary (p. 3) says that “authorities who would like information on some of the features … tailored more closely to their own operation … may care to enquire about LISU’s ‘tailor‐made statistics service”’. If I were a public librarian I would be tempted to take up this offer.