Berkshire Blog:
Fri, 15 Aug 2008

• ~Xobni sounds Chinese?
  • Not really, but I suppose it might look a little bit Chinese to anyone watching the Olympics and seeing all those names beginning with X. Like the city of Xian, where the terracotta army was discovered. I visited there in 2001 on my first trip to China and remember the explanation then, that X is [...]

Fri, 15 Aug 2008

• ~Becoming bilingual
  • If only. I’ve had to speak some Spanish this week and that was a challenge, and my little bit of Chinese would hardly suggest to anyone just how much I think about bilingual publishing, something that seems to me increasingly important in Berkshire’s future. But on a more immediate issue: we’re trying to make our [...]

Fri, 08 Aug 2008

• ~Bad e-manners
  • Today’s pick for worst e-manners is dnoisacc1980@halonmarketing.com and CNN.com. I’ve been deluged by e-newsletters from these people, unsubscribed repeatedly, and now got a mail that requires me to choose a password in order to get to the page to unsubscribe, it would seem. Saturday P.S. It seems that the recent flood of CNN e-mails take me [...]

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Love US Hate US
Thu Aug 28 13:10

• ~Most recent posting from USA
  • One of the things that is wrong about this country is this kind of dualistic thinking. Love or hate. Another is trying to influence people through hatred and fear. These are the main tools of government - and of this blog. It is true that short-term behavior can be changed through fear and hatred. But, when have you brought peace and harmony into your personal life using them? Respect and love always work better. And compassion. The impulse behind hatred seems to be is fear if you dig deep enough. And trying to make others afraid is based in our own fear. I have learned to cultivate compassion for my own hatred and fear and for those of others. When I come from this place, I am more able to listen to what others are saying. No matter how much I disagree with them, I can respect them. I try not to make decisions from my hatred and fear. I look to people who seem truly happy as my heroes. People who were content and kind and thought they had pretty great lives - regardless of their circumstances. My elementary school janitor, my grandmother, and a subsistance farmer are all people I have learned from, and my life is much happier. I love life more and more the older I get. America is feared because we manipulate and threaten ruthlessly. We are hated because we lack the integrity to act on the ideals that we hold. We are loved for the ideals that we hold and the opportunity that we offer. And for our kindness to strangers in a country where we are all strange to some people. Living in New York City for many years taught me to look beyond our differences and see people. It is hard to hate or fear people whose humanity I am able to see. Even George Bush and John McCain. I am an obese, left-wing, lesbian. (just to name a few labels) My llfe is happier when I am able to cultivate compassion for those who would think harshly of me and others I care for. It gets harder when they act on those judgements. When I lost my federal job because I am a lesbian. When my spouse is too afraid to hold my hand as we walk down the street. When strangers tell me that I should diet. (I am fat, not stupid! If diets worked, we would be a thin nation.) But sometimes I can see their fear and offer a prayer. It makes my life easier when I am able to do this.

Good Library Blog:
Sat, 23 Aug 2008

• ~Losses of Stock in public libraries

  • The Bookseller has a headline about Kent County Council losing 200 thousand pounds of books. (Despite their rather surprising spelling)

    This is an important subject. Realistically public libraries lose at least as many and actually a great deal more books than an equivalent book retailer. Not only is there the level of theft by staff and customers that, sadly, has to be anticipated, but there is also a significant loss of stock when library readers fail to return books they have borrowed. The only mitigating factor is that because libraries generally, regrettably, have less desirable stock less will be pinched for resale.

    The difference between retailers and public libraries in how they handle this is also important. Retailers are forced to take the matter extremely seriously, simply because it is a prominent feature in whatever accounting procedure they use; lost stock has to be replaced and that process is expensive; no one insures stock losses. Public libraries, however, in my experience, tend to avoid the subject because revelations, like the one about Kent featured by the Bookseller are bad publicity and bad politics.

    However if you believe, as I do, that the heart of the problem of the UK public library service is the quality of the stock on offer in each public library, and that the purchase of it and funding of those acquisitions is the central financial question to be addressed, then 'stock loss' has to be a crucial figure.

    In fact, by my calculation, many councils do not even spend enough money to replace the valuable stock they lose, let alone add to it in the way that good collection management and a constant flow of high quality and relevant publishing demands.

    In 1999-2000 I had the opportunity to calculate in detail how much needed to be spent on stock in Westminster in order to maintain a high standard of front list and back list stock in their 13 libraries. The calculation showed that out of a total budget, then, of 9m about 2.5- 3m should be spent on books. By doing that i said at the time that the libraries would increase in popularity probably by about 50%. The expenditure on books at that time, in Westminster was about 800k, but at that time about 2m was spent on the various processes under the heading 'bibliogaphic service' - so I argued that over 2-3 years it would be better to reduce the bib service cost and spend the money on books. I have no idea how well the plan progressed, although it was certainly successful for a while.

    I know now, from the results of the work in Hillingdon, about which some announcements will soon be made, that the increase in use and popularity, if Westminster had come near to doing what I said, would have been far far greater than 50%.

    If only Library authorities had conducted Best Value Reviews as they were intended at that time in a proper and rigorous manner, now we would have a thriving and healthy public library service. But they were scornful, generally, and avoided the questions rather than answering them, and there has barely been any improvement at all. In many places the library service is worse than it was then.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008

• ~More astonishing revelations from the public library chat room

  • A chief librarian writes

    "A colleague of mine 'left' a library to work in HQ...In his absence the library he left started to 'perform' really well ..to the delight of the management who lauded his replacement (naive or what)....because Charlie still lived in the area and had a key to the library ..he checked the Browne issue stats. at random for a month, when the library was shut!.

    His 'replacement' was, on average, topping up the issues by 200 a day..this in a part time library issuing, in reality, about 600 items a day!!!

    When confronted, she justified her action by claiming she was only doing what everybody else did.

    I suspect the biggest problem isn't the action, but the stupidity of professional library management who fail to question statistics which are too good to be true. The same Authority, when switching from a 2 week loan to a 3 week loan period , generated a level of sustained usage, which suggested that some locations would not allow their 'issues' to fall, as by and large, that change in parameters should have done. ....

    We do need to get away from a philosophy whereby issue statistics are used to create a mythical 'usage' and find a situation which creates meaningful corroboration of what we really achieve, if need be including 'real' evidence of what we lend, visitor counts, stock on loan, user satisfaction....surveying non-users ..lapsed users...lets spend more time finding out what people don't like about us and our services instead of surveying users who all say we are wonderful ...smashing ..great .. Scrap fines and charges and place real value on the underlying value of what we do and achieve..am I naive in thinking that in the last century we had a higher standing in most people's minds?"

Mon, 18 Aug 2008

• ~Whatever happened to the Audit Commission?

  • Those who are dusting down their copies of the last report of The Culture Select Committee into the public library service in anticipation of further inquiries this Autumn, will recollect how The DCMS, MLA, CILIP, SCL ACL etc etc pinned so much faith in the ability of the Audit Commission to solve all the problems of the service.

    It didn't happen, did it, and now with the very public revelations of librarians fiddling their performance figures one wonders how the Audit Commission will answer the questions about what they have been doing all this time.

    Here on this blog we remember being told very firmly how wrong we were in all we said- by same Audit Commission. Not so, I'm afraid. We were right