Review could change rural library service

Press, 28 July 1976, Page 13

Review could change rural library service

From OLIVER RIDDELL.

Wellington. Since it was established in 1938, the Country Library Service has become an integral part of the New Zealand library system, not only through the familiar book vans serving remote settlements, but also through the provision of books to borough and city libraries catering for populations too small to warrant a fully-stocked, full-time, library. Now the service is under review, but no great urgency for radical change is evident and it is not thought likely that the future of the service will be placed in jeopardy. However, the Country Library Service, along with all other aspects of Government expenditure, is under scrutiny. Because the Country Library Service shares book-ordering, book-supply and administrative services to some degree with the rest of its parent body — the National Library’ — it is not possible to estimate how much it costs annually or how much could be saved by disbanding it. Along with the School Library Service, it forms the extension division of the National Library. Local authority libraries linked with the Country Library Service are given assistance on the basis of a continuing agreement. This agreement will normally apply to communities of up to 15,000 population, but it may be negotiated with libraries serving up to 75,000 people. In 1966 the Library

Association issued “standards for public library service” in which the population for a minimum standard of library service was shown to be 150,000. Since most public libraries are in towns with populations smaller than this, the help of the Country Library Service has. been needed. Under the agreement, the iocal authority is responsible for the library, must allow free membership to local residents, and must maintain the library to an approved and reasonable standard. In return, the Country Library Service lends books in quality and by scale according to population, with regular exchanges (from book vans except in the case of larger libraries). The service must also give a request and information service to meet special and individual needs, plus help and advice in matters of library management. By far the greater part of the Country Library Service’s work is not in the “country” at all. It is in cities and towns whose populations are not big enough to warrant a fullystocked library of their own. But, since its establishment, it has also accepted some responsibility for library service in areas and communities were the local authority is unable or unwilling to give service. This is the popular image of the service, and nearly 1000 small libraries and groups in country areas are given a service on an annual basis and at a nominal rate of hire. They get van exchanges unless they cannot be reached by road, which is very unusual. The request service, childrens books and advisory service and loan collections are available as with normal libraries. Most of the service’s work, however, is concerned with libraries administered by local government, and it is here rather than with the remote van services that the review will be particularly concerned. Both librarians and general public often find the library structures frustrating because not everyone who visits a public library is entitled to make full use of its services. In most public libraries the people who live outside the boundaries of the particular local authority running it must make special arrangements to become members. Usually a subscription is charged because those who live outside the boundaries do not contribute through rates or rents towards librarycosts.

Charging a subscription can create a barrier between the reader and the library, particularly in the case of children. In some areas the local authorities have sorted out

this problem by combining with one library — as with the borough and county councils in Ashburton — and by the end of 1975 there were 10 counties making substantial financial contributions to city or borough libraries to make free library membership available. However, the failure of many local authorities to co-operate in this way has not only reduced the library facilities available to their citizens but has also made the Country Library Service more expensive and less efficient than it need be.

It is here, if anywhere, that the review could recommend significant changes to the present system. The Country Library Service has qualified staff at its regional centres at Hamilton. Palmerston North and Christchurch to advise local authorities and assist them. Their work could be more effective if the different local bodies could combine into regional groupings to administer a combined library service. Under the previous Labour Government’s plans for regionalised local government, the Country Library Service had been reviewing how it could fit into this .broader regional structure. An investigation of a Northland region by the Local Government Commission eventually incorporated the Library Service within the regional plan. The present National Government is reviewing prospects for greater regional local government, but the fdinister of Internal Affairs (Mr Highet) has already indicated that progress is likely to be slow unless regionalisation has strong public support. This, in turn, will reduce the impetus among local bodies for cooperation and will leave the Country Library Service in the status quo. The review of the service will presumably consider whether a reversion to the status quo is desireable or, indeed, acceptable. If it is neither desirable nor acceptable, then local bodies who do not cooperate over a library service run some risk of losing what library services they have. According to the Country Library Service Regulations, 1967, “in any case where a local authority is the controlling authority of a public library, the local authority may request ..he National Librarian to apply the provisions of the National Library Act, 1965, to that library.” Whether the provisions of the act are applied lies with the National Librarian, and ultimately with the Minister of Education, who administers the act. It does not lie with the local authority.