Recent Developments in the Provision of Public Library Services in the United Kingdom

Abstract

To set the scene, I should like to begin with a few general comments. The older I get, the more clearly I realize that the provision of any public service (and no doubt the provision of most other things in our society too) has to fit in with the ethos of the times. There are such things as general trends in our way of living, although they can seldom be precisely defined and it is often very difficult to say how or why they get started. Thus, much of what is happening in British public libraries today naturally reflects the general trends and the attitudes of mind in most other walks of life. To give just one example of this to begin with, libraries are working much less in isolation than they used to. They are called upon more and more to work closely with all organizations providing cultural services-with education, with health and social services, and with the various services, public and voluntary, that provide information for people. Contact between libraries and the book trade is now much closer, and certainly the concept of all types of librarypublic, academic, and special-being aspects of one single total service is far more generally accepted than it used to be. This is not a new trend, but there is no doubt that recently it has gathered momentum. One reason for this is economic. When money is scarce, there must be a closing of the ranks and the greatest possible use must be made of all the resources available. But I do not think that this is by any means the only reason. There is, in addition, a welcome tendency to think of the needs of individuals and communities and the provision of all services as a whole instead of in separate watertight compartments. Considering that almost total responsibility for public library services is in the hands of the local authorities, with hardly any central guidance (and what there is cannot in practice be enforced), it is interesting to observe that public libraries in Britain are tending to develop along roughly similar lines throughout the country. True, we have a Minister for the Arts who is responsible to the Secretary of State for Education