Library Campaign Conference

Two points on comprehensive and efficient:

1) We appear to have only anicdotal (and contradictory I am finding) evidence that the circular[1] and Bourdillon report (referd to by the circular) were actually, as a member of MLA staff phrased this to me recently, “dropped” (not sure I recognise this as a legal procedure!). If the paper trail for this process and the what I would guess were legal documents actually exist then the DCMS will have to provide at this point an explanation as to why they haven’t been made available (they are making themselves look guilty of ‘hiding something’ by not providing them despite the obvious need).
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Where_It_Is_Mine/The_Modern_History_of_Public_Libraries_in_England

2) The definition of “efficient” is quite clear, stemming from the report on which the Bourdillon report was founded (namely the Robarts report: Ministry of Education, The Structure of the Public Library Service in England and Wales, Cmdd. 660, February, 1959 – “the basic requirements for an efficient library service”) – the term essentially I think can be argued means ‘efficient to use’, physical buildings, material therein, etc. (a cetain minimum level of literature relatively easy for the public to access, along with similarly reasonable accesss to librarian expertise and the wider literature when required, etc. – this would though I would think include the work librarians do on cataloguing and classification). Comprehensive is not quite so easy in terms of detective work, but by grammatical and etymological analysis of the word it can be understood I think (while if I remember correctly predating comprehensive schools, the term comprehensive it can be shown was being used in an education context for numbers of years prior to 1964 referring to a system in which a full range of education was to be found under one roof and where pupils could move freely between streams). Comprehensive I think it could be argued refers to the full breadth of the literature of our culture (thereby including “specific needs”), a ‘comprehensive library’ essentially, and this definition is consistent with all usages I have seen of the term from prior to and after the 1964 Act. I’d be very surprised if a judge were not to accept these definitions.

To myself, the term efficient was defined in the Bourdillon report, no ifs, no buts, full stop. The libraries can try and provide a more efficient service (e.g., with ebooks), but presumably otherwise it would have taken another Parliamentary vote to change the Act, and this has not happened. Legal procedure aside, if the DCMS cannot even say what has happened, what society changes have taken place, that an efficient service can now be provided with disregard to the original standards for this, defined by the Act, what exactly has changed that these standards can now be disregarded, then I think the public will have very sort thrift with the Government.

Indeed I would add to the latter para. that I am surprised given all the the additional literature viz 1964 now available on the Internet, librarians are not arguing that the DCMS could well be in breach of its statutory duty by not providing funding for librarians to meet their statutory duty to make this material available in an efficient manner while providing the public with sufficient guidance and expertise to enable the public to access the material efficiently.

I seem to remember reading (curiously enough 😉 somewhere recently that not only does the law have to be applied, but it has to be applied in the spirit of the law. I would suggest the axiom outlined in the post above is the spirit of the 1964 Act.

In a nutshell the terms ‘comprehensive and efficient’ can be understood by looking at the documents from the proceedings prior to and leading up to the passing of the the 1964 Act.

The summary of this post is any library related court proceedings must ask the defendants to prove the Standards are not applicable.

Roy Clare (past MLA head) has in writing penned the following:

<<<...the Act refers to a statutory duty to maintain a “comprehensive and efficient” library service./ The Act does not define that happy state...>>>
The final Act
http://alangibbons.net/2010/11/the-final-act/

Yet in the Bill’s second reading we read:

“Local authorities are naturally anxious to know the standard against which they should measure the efficiency of the service they are providing. These are set out in some detail in the Report of the Working Party on Standards; and its would be the intention of the Secretary of State to refer to the relevant passages of this Report by a circular to local authorities when the Bill becomes law.” (Section 517.)
HANSARD 1803–2005. “PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS BILL, (Hansard, 30 June 1964)”
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1964/jun/30/public-libraries-and-museums-bill

The only way that Roy Clare could argue that it is not known exactly what “efficient” means is if 1) the circular mentioned above was never sent, or 2) the contents of the circular were revoked. Neither of which can be shown to be applicable.

In the current edition (Autumn 2011 No. 82) of The Library Campaigner John Dolan, a former Head of Library Policy at MLA, asserts: “there are no more national standards” – which means that the circular _must_ have been sent (John Dolan clearly implies there were at one time some “national standards”), so point 1) above is not applicable.

Yet Roy Clare implies the the Act does not define “efficient”, but yet it _very_ _clearly_ is defined (though all be it not in the Statute itself, it is however very clearly defined in Hansard, and although as yet to be traced, in a local government circular). What exactly is going on here?

My guess is Roy Clare was not aware of the definition of “efficient” that was referenced to in the second reading – I’m not sure what he thought the standards were, but he evidently felt they had no more value than flotsam, and hence could be discarded without any implication — otherwise he would have realised he was discarding a definition of a term in an Act. Which of course syntactically can be done, but semantically is a nonsense unless the term itself was removed from the Act also (i.e., rendering a definition superfluous). “efficient” obviously was not removed from the Act though.

To rephrase this, Roy Clare would be saying the word “efficient” in the Act had a meaning when the Act was voted into law, but we are now telling you that the word no longer has a meaning as we have removed it; he would effectively be saying the word “efficient” in the Act at this point in time has no definition (the MLA removed it) and does not essentially mean anything (which is what he says in his communication quoted above – all be it I believe very possibly mistakenly). This of course would be gibberish, and very quickly thrown out of a court of law I would suggest. Where definitions are reduced to saying ‘this word has no meaning’ is I am afraid for the realm of fantasy and other thought experiments — Alice in Wonderland perhaps, but for legal purposes the term “efficient” was defined with a minumum baseline standard of service – from which the public have every right to expect for the standard to be only improved upon, not degraded.

My guess is the whole thing was a mistake, the MLA were ill advised as to the law, and accordingly went on to ill advise the rest of the country.

(cont. below)

(cont. from prev. post)

I am myself trying to hunt down the paper trail, to find out exactly what happened — but for heaven’s sake any library court proceedings must ask the defenedants to prove that the Standards are not applicable. We would all like our library books to materialise on the coffee table in front of us at the meerest whim of a wish to glance at a copy of a book, which obviously is not possible, but in 1964 the standard was set that we would not at least have to walk more than a mile to the nearest public library to get our books, and this very much is still a value of and of many people (the law would have been changed long ago if it were not). The standards also go on to define many other aspects of an “efficient” to use library service, and so were very important – without them we are taking ourselves back to pre 1964 days when authorities provided a widely varing level of quality of library service across the country, the purpose of the Act being to provide a minumum standard of quality that could be expected – the Standards were at the core of the Act, the Act is rendered meaningless without them.

At this point I think it can only be concluded one of two things, either:

1) The whole thing was a terrible mistake, or

2) If by some loophole in the law it has been possible to circumvent the Standards, then the matter is a major scandal (the task then being to close the loophole and put things back on the rails).

I would hedge my bets on the former, I can’t see that Roy Clare would have written the letter he did to Shirley Burnham (as linked to following the quote given above) had he known of the reference linking “efficiency” to the Standards in the second reading. If he had still believed that there was no definition of “efficiency” assuming he had known of this then he surely would have then explained his position in respect of this.