Dear Sir
A big thank you to everyone who turned up on a chilly damp morning to express their concern over the continued delay in the re-opening of Pevensey Bay Library – and thanks to all the people that gave us a toot as well!
Having previously met county council staff who were generous in the time they gave us to discuss spending plans, access issues and their recent consultation document over restricting the opening hours of our library we raised concerns with them that the benefits of a library to its community are often unquantifiable, and the style of survey that the county was undertaking ignored this. I believe we may have referred to ‘bean counting’.
Yesterday, I raised my concerns with one of the people attending the demonstration who very quickly understood my point and thinking about it further wrote the following to me:
Further to our conversation this morning I dug out of the recesses of my memory a little titbit about bean counting—
Years ago following the whole black human rights movement there was a programme set up to mitigate the poor effects of impoverished environment on the school performance of black African children. You may have heard about it. It was called Project Headstart. I
nitially the bean counters counted improved performance in those children who were on the project, but by the age of 11, the early intervention faded and the school performance did not show continuing improvement. Therefore the bean counters decided that the money spent was not worth the beans gleaned and the project was scrapped.
However later follow up research showed that children who had the intervention were less likely to be in the prison population, less likely to be on benefits and their children were less disadvantaged on entering school.
This story underlines the idea that bean counters often don’t count the right beans or are even aware of which beans to count.
In library terms the beans are not solely the number of books borrowed or exchanged but are, as we discussed, the ‘absence of beans’ ie the lack of mental health problems as a result of the social interaction opportunities that libraries allow.
This is why mobile libraries will not work as they can only be product based ie you visit to exchange your book then leave, as opposed to the process function of a real library.
Undoubtedly the bean counters are not counting the right beans if they cannot measure the impact on people’s lives and the wider social and cultural impact of library cutbacks.
Perhaps it is beyond the patchwork of benighted library departments throughout the country to do this.
If so, where will the information come from that provides a true picture of the impact that local libraries have on our lives?Who will provide it?
In the absence of such information, the bean counters will carry on counting beans and use this partial information to justify library closures and cutbacks. The rate at which libraries are closing up and down the country is truly alarming, 549 since 2010, and many, many more in the pipeline.
In the strategic review for future commissioning of library services in East Sussex that will be occurring in the next few months, perhaps our county council will take on board the limitations of the bean counting approach. Hope so.
Kind regards
Margaret Martin
Friend of Pevensey Bay LIbrary
