To the fray

I'm glad to see that CILIP's taking a more active part in the fight against the destruction of the public library service. It's churlish of us to ask: "Where was you?" They're here now and they're getting their hands dirty and let's be glad of it.

This is part of an ongoing change in the way that CILIP's conducting itself. It's notable that this Summer is the first one in years that hasn't been overwhelmed by a multi-channel caterwaul about some navel-gazing inconsequence. It can only be a good thing if the annual Summer CILIP shitstorm has had its day: it never did The Profession any favours and diverted energies from more urgent and productive matters.

Customers

For some reason the word "Customer" has become a bête noir in some parts of The Profession, the torch-bearer of Neoliberalism. And every time the hue and cry against the word sets off I rise to the bate and get Very Cross Indeed because I don't equate customer service and all that goes with it with Neoliberalism. Quite the opposite: as I see it "the customer" in a Neoliberal context is an asset to be sold or a sheep to be fleeced but rarely, if ever an actual customer.

I've been struggling to work out why I get in such a bate about this. To my rescue comes a useful and very well-measured post by Peter Williams in his Put The Book Back On The Shelf blog in which he makes a defence of the word "Customer" in libraries. It's worth reading the post and the comments, both to get both sides of the argument reasonably put.

I'll be coming back to this, after a bit of a mull to marshal my thoughts, as there's another reason why "customer" is important to a key factor in the crisis facing English public libraries.


[No, honestly: "bate" was intentional.]

Whole team working

I usually try to let the "we are The Professionals" stuff glide by me these days. I find it a pity that The Profession still feels the need to define its strengths by imagining deficiencies in others. All front-line staff in our libraries should be able to deliver the services ascribed to "paid professionals" and quite a lot of people who aren't working in libraries are delivering much of this, though public libraries are ideal for joining all the dots.

Some of those in The Profession could do with taking this cautionary tale to heart...