Purpose of Libraries

Public Libraries News has a thoughtful piece on the core purpose of public libraries.  It is somewhat critical of the "Jack of All Trades" approach, which I think is one that Councils in themselves may particularly value.

Whilst I understand what is meant, having a service that can be flexible and accommodate all sorts of different needs is actually inherently valuable to a local authority that constantly needs to change with local circumstances.  A flexible service that can change from saying a toddler group in the morning to pensioners in the afternoon and school students in the evening is actually inherently valuable and potentially grows quite naturally out of the libraries aspirations to universalism.

I also think it is not always the case that "theatre does theatre better" and so on.  It is true that there are some theatres that do outstanding productions and some that do outstanding outreach work (our own Kiln Theatre for example), but there may well be whole groups of people who would literally never go near a conventional theatre as it may have all kinds of stereotypes associated with it.  Many people, for instance, might see the theatre as being for people of a certain class and age, whereas drama can be made accessible to all sorts of people who get a lot from it.  Some of the story telling and semi dramaticised readings that occur in Brent libraries may well fall into this category.  The same might be said of other artistic presentations such as dancing, various kinds of exercise and so on.   

Similarly, one doesn't have to approach the central aim of education/information provision in a Victorian sense of topdown "improvement.  One can easily see libraries as a form of self help and a means to give people tools to pursue their own ends. 

Where I do think the current approach is running into trouble is libraries are seen as kind of dumping grounds for activities that really need specialist.  The amount that libraries can do to help "disadvantaged groups" is easily overestimated.  People in such groups often need quite specialised support that a generalised library service simply cannot provide.  Still worse is the way that politicians have thoughtlessly just dumped public libraries with the task of providing help with universal credit.  This sort of thing really needs specialist knowledge of the benefit system, confidential IT access that libraries are seldom set up to provide and quite lengthy preparation time to go through forms whereas most libraries time-ration access to IT.

Provided that you bear in mind that you are mixing valid purposes that may have quite different rationales there is genuine value in this kind of public space.