Radical thinking is needed for libraries

August 11, 2011

Libraries are a bellwether for thriving communities, so we welcome the LGA’s call for change this week. The proposals centre on partnership working – with different public bodies sharing space and integrating services. The report steps out the obvious next step for reform, drawing on existing pilots – but it could have gone further.

Simply piling more services into the same building as a library might help to maintain vital community space, but it does not change what a library is or how it works. Experiments like Sutton’s bookswap scheme, or the move to virtual Kindle libraries suggest that we need a wider suite of solutions if fundamentally Victorian institutions are to meet the needs of modern communities.

Libraries are only the most visible example of services in need of some radical thinking. In ongoing research to be published in the Autumn, we’re looking in detail at three universal service areas – transport, the environment and libraries. All of these areas are vitally important to communities, but none of them has undergone disruptive change for some time.

Rather than looking at how to make the existing institutions and models function slightly better, we got together groups of local government officers to rip up the rule book and redesign how to deliver these three services. The aim is to start with a blank piece of paper and ask how we would design the service if we were starting today – recognizing contemporary demography, public finances and technological developments.

Facilitated car pooling and personalized budgets could transform community transport, using nudges to encourage the public to help clean their own streets, books can be delivered at the touch of a button into someone’s home.

The LGA is to be applauded for pushing the cause of constructive reform – but we hope it is only the start of a much more ambitious conversation about how to reshape public services for a new age of austerity.

Simon Parker, Director, NLGN


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