AUSTRALIA’S GREAT GOOD PLACES: WHY LOCALAND OTHER GOVERNMENTSSHOULD INVEST more IN YOUR PUBLIC LIBRARY

Address to a public meeting convened by the Friends of Mt Barker Community Library, South Australia21 November 2007

Dr Alan Bundy AM President Friends of Libraries Australia

Public libraries, at only 8c per Australian per day,remaingreatly underfunded. This is despite the substantial evidence of their use and valuation by the community of all ages, and their cost effectiveness in meeting a unique range of community needs and government agendas. Local government has the primary responsibility for public library provision and their quality in most parts of Australia.It needs to be able to convincingly demonstrate that from its own resources it is funding and supporting public libraries to the very best of its ability. Beyond that it needs to invest in a much stronger political effort to hold state and the national governments accountable for their general failure to recognize and fundadequately what public libraries do for the nation. It no longer suffices for local government to claim that it cannot afford to increase the investment in public libraries, or that rates would need to increase to improve its libraries.The library ball is largely in its court.It needs to kick it much harder at the state and national levels, and foster the support in that endeavour of the increasing number of Friends of Libraries groups from within the 60 per cent of people in Australia who use public libraries.

T

he modern public library is truly unique in what it does, and in the return on investment in it, which research shows is between $4-8 for every dollar invested. Yet at only 8c per person per day Australian public libraries remain greatly underfunded.

If countries such as Denmark can support their libraries at three times the level of Australia, Australiasurely should be doing much better than it does now.

The reasons for the underfunding of public libraries in Australia include

  • there is no national strategic framework, standards or accountability for their development.
  • thereis a lack of knowledge and recognition by decision makers at all three levels of government about what public libraries do, can do, and should be funded to do.
  • as uniquely multidimensional agencies, their outcomes relate to the agendas of many state and federal ministerial portfolios and departments — at the federal level at least seven ministerial portfolios, for example. Public libraries do not fit readily into any single portfolio, but tend to be questionably placed in politically and fiscally challenged Arts and Culture portfolios. They consequentlylack broad bureaucratic and political recognition.
  • the main responsibility for public libraries rests largely with Australia’s weakest level of government, local government. This has proven to be too often unwilling or unable to fund them well.Local government, and its associations, has also generally not yet been able to persuade the other two wealthier levels of Australian government of their partnership and funding responsibilities for the development of the Australian public library system.

The uniqueness of the modern public library is confirmed by the160 descriptors applied to it, many more than any other public agency or service.1 Those descriptors are useful prompts to discussion about the roles and potential of the modern public library. This discussion is needed as part of the educative process for the community and its decision makers about how libraries have changed and are changing, and in particular their importance in building literate, reading, educated, connected and stronger communities. I therefore congratulate the long established Friends of Mt Barker Community Library on providing this forum for such a discussion. It is anexemplar for the increasing number of Friends of Libraries throughout Australia.

This address focuses on just two of those 160 descriptors. The first is the public library as the community’s third place, after home and work; the other is the public library as a council’s shop window. They have been chosen for this address because your council, like other councils, aspires to ‘create successful communities’ and because they are primary reasons why a library is the best investment a community through its council can make – for community connection from cradle to grave, and for the community’s awareness and appreciation of progressive local government.

Social capital

The loss of social capital and community connection in western society has received considerable attention since the research of Robert Putnam and others.In response, councils are being encouraged to become more involved in community capacity building, as evidenced by the federal Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs’Strong and resilient communitiesawards for local government. Friends of Libraries who consider that their libraries are already building stronger communities should consider encouraging their councils to nominate for these awards.2

Community capacity building does beg the question of how, and in what places it can occur, and in particular where the whole of a community – from cradle to grave – can connect. Is it the local pub or club? The local football club? Churches ? Schools? Shops? The answer is that all of these places help people to connect, but within fairly narrow ranges.

The third place

The term the third place is being used increasingly to describe the building of social capital in an environment distinct from home and work. Ray Oldenburg’s book The great,good place explains why third places are crucial for civil society

The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele…through a radically different kind of setting from a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support it extends…They are the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grass roots of democracy.3

Grass roots democracy is, of course, the special claimof local government. That claim is strengthened if it

  • recognises that its public libraries belong to everyone and should be readily accessible to all
  • acknowledges that its public libraries are by far the most heavily used, appreciated and cost beneficial community provision councils make
  • ensures that the voice of the community about them through Friends of Libraries groups or formal council advisory committees is sought, and listened and responded to
  • reviews regularly, in an open and transparent way with community input, the performance of its public libraries.

Public libraries do indeed belong to everyone, from cradle to grave. Their 12 million users in Australia – 60% of the population –are thus much more than public library users or customers – they are their owners. This is something of which councils andlibrary managers and their staff need to be ever mindful.

Libraries as destinations

However several things are needed if more public libraries are to truly be community destinations and ‘hangouts at the heart of the community’ as they have also been described. The Mt Barker Community Library, assessed against the following checklist, would be found wanting in at least some of them –as would most public libraries throughout Australia.

Their buildings and services need to

  • be well marketed and signposted throughout their communities – almost certainly there are people in Mt Barker who do not know there is a library, who provides it, where it is, that it is free to use, and the breadth of resources and services it provides or has access to.
  • be well signed.
  • be destination places.
  • be very visible – with the inside transparent from the outside, and the outside transparent from the inside.
  • provide generous parking, particularly as people stay longer in better libraries.
  • be centrally located, preferably where people meet or shop. This is a disadvantage which all councils with joint use libraries on more remote educational campuses – such as Mt Barker – need to work hard at minimizing.
  • an easily visible and accessible entrance for all ages – Mt Barker’s entrance is not visible, or easily accessible by older people and those with disabilities in particular.
  • be spacious and attractive – Mt Barker Library as a 10 year old facility is already outmoded in some respects and isresponding to a population growth of 2% a year. The population of over 32,000 by 2011 will test its space, design and ambience and may need consideration of more than a single library location in Mt Barker.
  • be welcoming to all ages– are teenagers, for example, really attracted to the Mt Barker Library?
  • be able to provide space and time zones for different user cohorts.
  • have generous display/gallery areas.
  • provide toy libraries – Mt Barker’s is one of the best in Australia
  • provide local studies areas – Mt Barker has good provision.
  • provide lounge areas, meeting rooms, learning centres, homework centres, JP rooms, Friends of the Library room, and parenting rooms – Mt Barker lacks most of these.
  • provide coffee shops/ self help refreshment facilities.
  • provide Xboxes, playstations and arcade and other gamesto attract teenagers to their other resources, and provide a safe third place for them.
  • provide well supported and well advertised services to the homebound, an increasingly important quality of life provision as Australia’s population ages. Mt Barker like, unfortunately, other libraries around Australia, is not yet staffed and resourced adequately for such an important service, and therefore does not actively promote the service. It does not meet the Australian Library and Information Association’s national guidelines for such provision.
  • recognise that early childhood and adult literacy development and fostering a reading, informed and knowledgeablenation of lifelong learners remains, and will remain, the core business of public libraries. The lifeblood of public libraries is their print collections, on which most Australian states are spending far too little, despite the fact that recent years have seen ‘a dramatic expansion in reading and the market for books’.4 In the last 25 years there has been an understandable preoccupation with information technology and electronic resources in libraries. There arestrong international and Australian indications that the pendulum is swinging back to what libraries have always been about – helping readers. The UK, for example, is investing very heavily in bookstart programs, reader development and bibliotherapy – including books on prescription. Many libraries are now developing reader development strategies to ensure that their staff have the education, knowledge and resources to advise users on their reading choices and options –something which ironically is greatly assisted by the wealth of information now available through internet and other resources.
  • provide specialist library and other professional staff such as children’s and young adult librarians to work with schools, local studies librarians, reader development librarians and outreach librarians.
  • open seven days a week(especially Sunday), most evenings and on most public holidays – Mt Barker is rapidly becoming an exception in not opening on Sunday, the only time in the week in which many young families will have the opportunity to use and enjoy the library together.

All of the above already exist in public libraries somewhere. Toy libraries, for example, make eminent complementary educational sense in public libraries as those libraries increasingly provide bookstart programs to encourage parents to read to babies as a critical aspect of early childhood literacy development and parent-child bonding. Yet it also makes eminent equity sense that the funding of those toy libraries should permit them to be as free to use and borrow as other library resources, and independent of any capacity of parents to pay.

Australia still underinvests in the critical early formative years of its children. Denial of free access to quality toy libraries is but one example of that underinvestment. Some councils, such as West Torrens in South Australia, recognise this.

Newlibraries are now incorporating proper coffee shops, sometimesrun by local café operators happy to capitalise on the heavy traffic a public library experiences. There is no reason to be coy about asserting that a decent coffee shop should, in 2007, be an integral part of any reasonably large public library.5

As another example of community connection, libraries are increasingly recognising that they can offer young people a special, if unconventional, library experience and are focusing on them in their services and marketing strategies. The Mt Barker Community Library for instance does not only have a good toy library for children but was providing arcade games as a marketing attractor to young people to explore the library’s other resources. This interesting low cost initiative appears to have been stopped.

In New Zealand the City of Christchurch’s outstanding youth focused New Brighton Library has resulted in less graffiti and vandalism in its low socioeconomic area; and the youth focused Munno Para Shopping Centre Library in South Australia has seen a reduction of local problems with youth – they are all good investments by their communities and councils. Communities, local government and public libraries neglect the full range of their young people at considerable current and longer term cost to the community, and to those young people as individuals. Public libraries need to employ youth workers and other community services professionals to ensure this occurs in cooperation with other agencies supporting young people. Mt Barker once did so, but apparently now does not.

Not all library users are happy about, or understanding of, this evolution of the public library from essentially a quietbook lending and reference information agency to community anchor, community hangout and the community’s third place after home and work. But it is a worldwide evolution which commenced 50 years ago and will continue. Sometimes,older library users at community consultations preceding the planning of a new library will just want in their new library a peaceful and comfortable place with easy to reach shelves and a good up to date book collection. That is understandable but the reality is that the public library must continue to evolve to meet the challenges of a clientele broader and more diverse than that of any other public institution. It is here that Friends of Libraries, and Young Friends of Libraries, can help councils and library managers to inform and educate the whole of the community – and especially its decision makers – about the public library’s potential as the community’s hub, or as Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay has described it, ‘the new village green’.

What the research is showing

They should be confident in doing so. An increasing number of research reports and surveys, international and Australian, are confirming that unique public library capacity to connect and build communities. A major Australian example was the 2005 Victorian report Libraries/building/communities.6 This interviewed 10,000 people, and identified that many of them wanted more money to be spent on their libraries. From South Australia came the August 2005 report Investing in the community: South Australia public libraries adding value. This noted that

Libraries are often sited separately and not considered an integrated part of the council’s services. Taking on a community building function challenges the roles that libraries play and provides a key opportunity for libraries to justify the strategic role they play in communities. Libraries can be the place to achieve these strategies for councils.7

Your library is one of the few individual libraries worldwide to have benefited from university research, in 2004, to audit and assess its contribution to the social capital of the community it serves. That research has attracted international attention and citation. The researcher demonstrated that

…the Mount Barker Community Library is not only contributing to the social capital of the local community but moreover actively contributing to the achievement of the strategic goals and policy objectives of both the state government and the District Council of Mount Barker.8

Interestingly, the researcher recorded observations from a former council manager of policy and governance who

…spoke of the negative feelings and high expectations that members of the community have towards council and the positive feelings they have towards the library. She believes that many do not realize the library is a council service and suspects that the library is valued because it is not associated with the council, but, she adds, ‘people might value council more if they were aware that it does provide the library service’.9

From New Zealand – still ahead of Australia in library development – in March 2006 came its excellent strategic framework for public libraries, a national framework which Australia needs to inform and guide local and state governments on the importance of improving their investment in public libraries. The NZ framework states that

Public libraries engage, inspire and inform citizens and help build strong communities.10

Those twelve words are the essence of what modern public libraries are about. They are words to be incorporated in public library mission statements, and conveyed to decision makers at every possible opportunity.