Just some random thoughts I had while listening to the Talking with Talis podcast with Tim Coates.
- I know very little about library management systems and the book processing side of things. I need to change this and am hoping to spend some time in our resources department.
- Library statistics. The Public Library standards were mentioned, but the Public Library User Survey wasn’t, I’m sure all libraries have to do this and I know it asks about the library environment and what people came to the library for. I need to find out what happens to the results.
- One library catalogue for the whole country – actually I’d quite like this. What I’d really like is a mash up of Amazon, LibraryThing, Revish and a library catalogue, so I don’t have to tab between them all when I find a book I want to read.
- One national library website (that’s me out of a job then) I think this may have been what the Peoples Network website was trying to do. It’s supposed be like visiting your local library, only online and consists of three sections – Enquire, a 24 hour chat enquiry service (that’s for another post) Discover, not updated since the launch a few years ago and Read, a books and reading website that’s better done elsewhere. Apart from Enquire I find the whole website an embarrassment to the library profession.
- Too many libraries doing the same thing – I like to think we’re doing something here. Many libraries maintain a list or directory of useful links on their website. In the South West we’ve put together the cyberLibrary which is a partnership of thirteen authorities, who all contribute.
Of course, one big stumbling block to all of these national ideas (aside from the fact that there’s no funding for them, which is a universal given) is that public libraries are just another local council service.
So it is that we have interesting “dynamic tensions” between the real, actual one-front-end-for-everything-done-by-the-council world of the Local Government Navigation List, call centres, etc. and the Never Never Land of the MLA which parachutes in lots of top-down ideas with nothing much to back them up. Sigh…