No more secrets

"one of the underyling causes of the collapse of the public library service ugg classic short sand is that it has lost contact with the people it is there to serve". those aren't my words but they are taken from a focus kids pink boots sale group discussion among ugg classic short younger people in oxfordshire about 4 years ago.

i agree. secrecy pervades the service from the presentation of performance data in most councils to the discussions which go on in the highest levels of the profession and in government. it is impossible to find out what is being planned and plotted and for the people who pay for the service to contribute. at the moment there is a really important review of efficiency and i and others were astonished to find that it is effectively going on behind closed doors and only involves a small number of people who have both vested interests and limited experience. that has to stop.

the efficiency review came about chesters ugg on sale because, having ugg classic cardy looked at some councils in detail i identified possible savings of 300m pa from the way the service operates. that was a long list of inefficient or wasteful practices that i showed in a presentation in the summer of 2002 to tessa blackstone who was then a minister of state. the bookseller also published that list. since that day no one has been able to refute or deny any of the points that i made. therefore "doing nothing" has already cost us all a further twelve hundred million pounds. (wow) of course no one would take my word and so the ugg5919 best way to avoid taking action was to employ a succession of consultants and then throw their reports, secretly, into the bin. that is what is happening now. bailey button uggs

if "the powers that be" won't be open about their discussions then one has to rely on the press. in the past few years discount ugg boots both the trade and the national press have played a key role in uncovering the secret behaviour of those who operate the library service.

this week we can see a very fine example of that. the times discovered that publishers charge a higher price for a book if it is supplied to a library than if it is supplied to a book shop. there cardy ugg boots uk 's no reason, other than that they can get away with it. women's ugg the technical language makes it all very complicated, but that's what it boils down to. here is katherine rushton in the bookseller and here is ralph baxter in publishing news

the original article was by dalya alberge in the times and i calculated that simply by publishing this, the times added 30m to the purchasing power of the national public library book fund. that is good journalism. here is dalya's piece in the times