Article in the Daily Telegraph 4 June 2005 by Catriona Davies
Libraries will be closed in 15 years, says ex-boss
of Waterstone's
PUBLIC libraries spend less than 10 per cent of their
budget on books and are losing borrowers at such a rate that they will all have closed in
15 years, according to a former managing director of Waterstone's bookshops.
Tim Coates, a consultant who produced a report 14 months ago on the "cumbersome"
management of libraries, said he was exasperated by the lack of progress since.
Figures released last month showed that while libraries had managed to reverse a long-term
decline in the number of visitors, with a 3.7 per cent increase in the past year, the
number of borrowers had fallen by 6.5 per cent in the same period.
A Commons Select Committee earlier this year described the "significant
deterioration" of public libraries as a "scandal" of crumbling buildings,
shabby interiors and patchy service. David Lammy. the new libraries minister, has promised
to look into the problem, and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said it would
publish its response to the committee's report by the end of this month.
The department has also commissioned the independent consultants PKF to investigate the
way in which libraries buy books.
In his report, Who's In Charge, commissioned last year by the libraries charity Libri, Mr
Coates said councils spent £24 every time they bought a £10 book because of the
bureaucracy involved.
A department spokesman said: "While you or I might take advantage of discounted
offers in book shops, libraries almost invariably pay full price.
"We have asked the consultants to investigate how the system works and how they might
do things better. They may, for instance, be able to make economies of scale."
Libraries have increased their visitor numbers through offering a wide range of services,
particularly free internet access. But critics say they have done so at the expense of
their core service of lending books.
Mr Coates said: "The service is being lost because it is run by technophiles who
don't understand the basics of libraries. We are seeing a complete collapse in the
collection of books. Only half as many people are borrowing books as 10 years ago.
"Libraries say that doesn't matter because they are no longer only about books, but
the other services should be as well as, not instead of, books. We really have to worry
about the decline in book borrowing, because it's almost in freefall."
He said that libraries were lending 20million fewer books each year, down from 44Omillion
five years ago to 32Omillion last year, and that at that rate of decline, all borrowing
would cease in 15 years.
Mr Coates's report last year claimed that 70 per cent of library users reported only a one
in two chance of finding a book they were looking for. In bookshops, customers would find
it unacceptable if they did not find what they wanted 90 per cent of the time.
In the 1980s, libraries spent 18 per cent of their budgets on books, a figure that has now
fallen to nine per cent.
By contrast, libraries spend 54 per cent of their budgets on staff, according to the
Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy's public library statistics.
Mr Coates says that what the £1 billion-a-year library service needs is not more money,
but for resources to be targeted more efficiently on improving buildings, longer opening
hours and more books.