Computer Use in Libraries

I argued before that computer provision is part of the statutory duty for public library provision.  If so, that implies that local authorities need to adopt some sort of standard to show what sort of provision that they are making.  Such a standard would be complicated by the wireless revolution.

The alternative view, apparently held by the Secretary of State, is that computer provision is not part of the statutory requirement.  In other words, a local authority that wanted to reduce its library service to the bare statutory minimum, as Herefordshire appears to, could save money by stripping out all the IT from its libraries.  This is not an abstract idea.  Many councils are talking about being forced down the road of providing only those services they are legally obliged to.

Were the bare minimum model to be followed, it would have serious effects on the roll out of universal credit, and no doubt other services since a certain proportion of the population only have Internet access through public libraries.  Whereas the long term outlook is for this proportion to diminish, that is the situation at the moment.

The DCMS stance on libraries can therefore be seen as fundamentally undermining the government's welfare "reform" programme.  I suspect that this is not the only case where the government simply does not understand what it is doing.