https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com What's happening to your library? Mon, 04 Nov 2019 19:08:30 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/users/carillion-and-libraries#comment-27714 Mon, 05 Mar 2018 16:53:32 +0000 http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/?page_id=6372#comment-27714 The pain caused by Carillion will I hope lead to better and more cost-effective services for Harrow, Ealing and Croydon. The reported financial status of Carillion has given the Councils the impetus to review seriously how library services can be made more efficient and how more income generating services can be accommodated. Outsourcing library services typically means that libraries are limited to those specific services for which they have been contracted. There is little incentive to provide better services and legal barriers to doing so.
By taking library services back inhouse, Councils have access to the wide range of income streams now open to libraries. But are libraries up to managing these income streams? Library staff have been used to focus on maintaining costs within budgets with success measured by usage and library visits; the libraries represented cost centres which were managed as cost centres. Library staff need retraining in how to manage themselves as profit centres. Taking income from the public is not a crime if you are offering a service which the public want to pay for, and online services do not require more effort from library staff. Having written quite a number of business plans to convert public libraries into profit centres, I welcome the opportunity now available to Croydon, Harrow and Ealing libraries – I hope they grab this opportunity with both hands.

]]> https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/users/carillion-and-libraries#comment-24296 Mon, 15 Jan 2018 18:25:01 +0000 http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/?page_id=6372#comment-24296 I am disgusted with how local councils are off loading their services and responsibilities. Libraries should all be council run along with many other services. Private companies are corrupt and useless- now with the collapse of Carillion this has been exposed- something I’d been saying ever since this stupidity was undertaken. Local authorities took over local government services as in house during the 1920s onwards was done to avoid all the filth we’ve been seeing.

]]>