The Bookseller.com

7th October 2008

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MLA chief scraps flagship plans

25.10.07

The two flagship parts of the government's strategy on libraries are facing the scrap-heap after the new c.e.o. of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council said they overstep the MLA's remit.
A Blueprint for Excellence, devised in February as a "strategy" for libraries in England, has been abandoned, and the MLA is likely to ditch its plans for centralised stock selection in the library supply sector, which is key to its "Better Stock Better Libraries" programme.

New c.e.o. Roy Clare told The Bookseller that the blueprint "would have been more words getting nowhere" because it did not consult enough with local authorities, and the MLA had no business or power to issue a top-down edict. Clare, a former rear admiral, arrived in the £125,000-a-year post in September.

"You can't have a blueprint, because every locality democratically has a right to choose," Clare said. "The second flaw was that we only really consulted the profession, [and] that's not good enough. We haven't adequately consulted local authorities, chief executives and directors of culture. They are the funders. We have no right democratically to have tablets of stone handed down from some obscure organisation called the MLA in London to a local authority structure that is autonomous, independent and democratic."

The blueprint will be replaced by an MLA "action plan" being drawn up by head of library policy John Dolan, and structured around research and developing librarian skills. Clare also called for input from Bookseller readers.

Meanwhile, the MLA is likely to drop centralised stock selection from its BSBL strategy following an external audit ordered by Clare. "I want to be very careful about [implementing] one national purchasing method. I don't think government—and we're an agency of government—should be skewing the market in that way."

The auditor has not yet made his final report, but the "emerging conclusions" suggest that the MLA hugely overstated the savings to be made, Clare said.The final decision on BSBL will be made by the MLA board in mid-November.

Kathryn Pattinson, m.d. of Askews, welcomed Clare's bold move. "We said all along that £22m was an overstatement and there was no -guarantee that any savings would be channelled back into libraries," she said.

Library libraries MLA Roy Clare