Special Post – Big Societese

The original post on “Performance Data – Community Libraries” is a very interesting message but may not be fully understood on first reading. It is part of a new phenomenon that is evident in many councils, in the media and (especially) in government papers. I like to call it Big Societese. While initially confusing, after sustained exposure to it at least some sense can be made. Having made intensive study of similar wordings while reporting articles for Public Libraries News, I humbly submit the following attempt at a translation in order to ease others into a better understanding of any future communications from such speakers:

“The biggest transformation in the history of Warwickshire’s Library Service is underway.” = “The biggest cuts in the history of Warwickshire Library Service are under way”

“Warwickshire County Council is offering local people/community groups who are interested in helping shape their local library service the opportunity to run their own community library service to suit local demand” = “Warwickshire County Council is forcing local people/community groups who use their local library to both continue to pay for libraries in larger towns that are far away from them and to pay for/work for free in their own now-unfunded local library, or we will close it”

“Communities have been given time to work up local solutions for their libraries, a report will go to Warwickshire’s decision-making Cabinet in October” = “Local people have been given barely one more month to work out how they are going to keep their library open, probably by replacing paid and skilled staff with anyone who has a spare hour, before Warwickshire’s decision-making Cabinet tries to evade its legal responsibilties in October”.

“If your library authority has already established ‘Community Run Libraries’…” = “If your library authority has already blackmailed local people to do your work for you for free…”

“… what data do you capture for these libraries, either through your library management system or directly from the staff/volunteers at the Community Library and are they set targets?” = “… please help us as we do not know how to implement these unprecedentedly swift and deep cuts forced on to libraries and, being unable to work out how to even supervise such a system in the unrealistic timescale provided, want to copy from someone else”.

Let me be clear. I mean this in no way as an insult to the originator of the post, or other people involved who have to use such language as a part of their jobs. I really feel for the difficult situation in Warwickshire, and up and down the country. It is hard not to empathise for those people whose love for libraries will soon be twisted into a demand that they do unpaid work in them. It cannot be easy for those people whose hard task it is to justify such cuts to the communities involved while knowing what the real situation is, that everyone else knows what the real situation is, but that they still have to put as positive a spin on it as possible, or they will lose their own post in the next round of cuts. Most of all, I feel for those people who currently work in the libraries in such places that will doubtless soon be jobless .

In such an authority, to survive, one has to write this way, to survive and to fit in with the new order.

However, those of us who are not currently in such a situation should not let such language pass for fear of succumbing to it. There is an almost Orwellian doublespeak, sometimes one fears even a doublethink, involved. Since when did “community” mean “run by the unpaid”? In such a circumstance, it is the task of us all to challenge, lest by not doing so it becomes easier for those politicians in other parts of the country, or in our own neighbourhoods, to do the same.