Looking back, moving forward

My experience – 30 years in public libraries
So who says that nothing has got better over the past half century?
When I got my first library job 37 years ago, the bookstock of the service for which I worked was still segregated. Books for Whites had white datesheets and stationery; books for Blacks had blue. Whites (usually wanting to jump the queue for bestsellers) were allowed to use Black copies if they wanted, but Under No Circumstances were Blacks allowed to use White copies. As young librarians we had great fun getting confused about who was what, why, when….
Aside from this though, the current public library environment feels more threatened than ever before, which is not good for society or for the book trade. There are many structural reasons for this, with which you will already be familiar, but for me a couple stand out –
Incredibly, after 20 years, legislative responsibilities for the funding of public libraries remain unresolved. This provides the perfect environment for insecurity around funding for library collections, and the consequential business horrors with which those of you who work with the public library sector are all too familiar. Librarians are also to be blamed for failing to sufficiently impress on their political and public service colleagues how destructive this is given the nature of publishing and the need for continuous and ongoing selection and buying, if the best stock is to be made available to the very differing and un-homogenous communities served by public libraries. Librarians themselves are not adequately informed about publishing and acquisition issues, with many passively accepting what they are given by their parent organisations, which are themselves increasingly under-resourced with appropriately skilled professional staff.
This is particularly problematic in that the heavily legislated procurement processes with which public libraries have to comply are highly unsuited to the publishing environment. The volume of ‘product’ and the need for fast processes are enormous threats to libraries being able to provide the publications that make their public see them as a viable choice for relevant and up-to-date information and material in all formats.
Which brings us to the latest little torment to beset the sector – e-resources. Given that the term encompasses not only books but the audio, video and periodical publications that public libraries provide, essentially we are looking at the full gamut of publication formats that the public is now expecting to access – without a single extra cent of budget – or the expectation of it.
Failure to provide e-resources will have disastrous consequences for the relevance of libraries – and for a society already reeling from the effects of poor education and literacy that is steadily losing ground as a knowledge economy.
While e-publishing intended for the academic market already has some viable content and licensing models that can be adopted by the public library sector, the same cannot be said for children’s material or the incredibly important trade publications that are the backbone of public library collections. This is an area where both library professionals and the booktrade need to fiercely fight for a far more nuanced and realistic approach from publishing. In the trade literature, it is sad to see attitudes and arguments that were last seen a hundred years ago; libraries are not a competitor to the retail trade. Many library users in South Africa are never going to buy books, but of those who do, use of libraries promotes personal buying. Wise publishers need to recognise that libraries promote reading and individual book buying, and instead of making licensing conditions and pricing impossible to work with they should be actively seeking viable solutions to push their publications into libraries.
No one expects publishers to be charities, but the myopia over the potential for advancing use of published content to promote sales in a very insecure market makes just no sense, especially if there is awareness of the funding situation for publically funded institutions.
The challenges facing my public library colleagues are formidable, and as I fade out of the formal public library environment I wish them loads of tenacity, unbounded energy, and lots of fight. I have always believed us ‘bookies’, whether in the trade or in libraries, are an endangered and wonderful group of people and that we must work together constantly to create understanding of a very complex, poorly valued, and incredibly important sphere of enterprise.
And boy, am I enjoying the extra time I have in retirement. What am I doing? I’m reading – all the stuff I’ve been too busy for during my working life, on paper, on screens – who cares – wherever I see it.
Brenda Kyle