Agenda item 4
A Company limited by guarantee – Registered in England No. 3184753
ANNUAL REPORT
2006/2007
11th ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD
Headquarters
Share The Vision (Libraries) Ltd
c/o RNIB National Library Service
Far Cromwell Road
Bredbury
Stockport SK6 2SG
Telephone: 0161 355 2003/2004
Fax: 0161 355 2098
E-mail:
THE COMPANY
STATUS
Share The Vision (Libraries) Limited is incorporated under the Companies Act 1985 (number 3184753). It is a UK company limited by guarantee and not having a share capital.
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD
Marion Beaton [resigned 06.03.07]
Helen Brazier
Dr Gill Burrington OBE
Graham Cornish [resigned 19.04.07]
Kevin Ellard
Mark Freeman (Chair)
Peter Osborne
John Palmer
Marion Ripley
Julie Russell
OBSERVERS
Marcus Weisen on behalf of MLA
Katherine Thomas on behalf of CyMAL
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
David Owen OBE
SECRETARY
David Owen OBE
ASSISTANT
Maureen Bates
REGISTERED OFFICE
c/o RNIB National Library Service
Far Cromwell Road
Bredbury
Stockport, SK6 2SG
BANKERS
Halifax plc
PO Box 271, Manchester M60 1HS
SHARE THE VISION (LIBRARIES) LIMITED
Report of the Board for the year ended 30th April 2007
The Board presents its report for the year ended 30th April 2007.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To improve the quality and availability of library and information services and products which provide for the reading and information needs of visually impaired and other print disabled people.
PRINCIPAL ACTIVITY
Promoting or participating in the promotion of co-operation
between libraries and other relevant agencies in the public, voluntary and private sectors.
CHAIR’S INTRODUCTION
My second year as Chair of STV has certainly proved eventful. On numerous occasions during the year there were legal or policy developments emanating from a variety of sources which called for a response from the Board; or at any rate we felt that we had a unique combination of knowledge and expertise amongst Board members which meant that we were able to make a valuable contribution. This included various copyright developments and several initiatives emanating from MLA, where we can clearly be seen to have had a positive influence on outcomes.
For many years, STV has had a unique role in bringing together organizations with a common interest to share information and collaborate on joint innovations. Two such groundbreaking projects were Revealweb and Gateway. We were pleased to see this year that both projects took on a life of their own by becoming embedded into the infrastructure of our sector. This will, we hope, secure the future of these two important initiatives for many years to come.
At the same time, STV has faced challenging questions about its own future. Board members considered very seriously whether the organization was still needed, and if so, whether and how it could be sustained. The debate resulted in new administrative arrangements described elsewhere in this report, which should mean that we can continue to have a positive influence while operating at a lower cost.
The following pages demonstrate in detail how we have continued to make progress in 2006/7 but there remains much to be done if we are to achieve our vision of providing equality of library opportunity for visually impaired people.
Thankfully STV benefits from the support of a very active Board composed of people from a diverse range of organizations with a collective wealth of expertise. In the natural course of things, there have been some departures during 2006/7 and I would like to thank various people who have contributed greatly to our work over the years.
Graham Cornish who has been involved with STV since 1989 and a Board member since our incorporation in 1996 decided that the planned changes made it an appropriate time to retire at the end of this year. Graham was the British Library's representative until his retirement from the Library and then became CILIP's representative. Graham has been a stalwart supporter and advocate of STV's work whose specialist knowledge of copyright has been particularly helpful to our cause.
Marion Beaton, who has been our Scottish Library and Information Council representative for many years, also resigned this year because of her promotion to a different role within Glasgow Libraries. We congratulate her on her promotion and wish her well.
Dr. Clive Field, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library retired at the end of 2006.Clive attended our Board meetings regularly following the earlier retirement of Carol Meads in 2005 and over the years had been extremely supportive of our work. He opened doors for us and enabled us to participate in major activities relevant to our objectives. We welcomed John Tuck as his replacement at our April 2007 meeting.
John Palmer, Director of Calibre, notified us at that meeting that he would be retiring in August 2007. John has also been involved with STV since the outset and as Chairman of the Right To Read Alliance he has successfully managed to keep 18 different organisations working towards a common cause. He brought the same charm and skills to his involvement in STV. We will miss John's contribution and wish him a long and happy retirement.
Finally, as a result of the changes in the future organisation of STV we said goodbye to David Owen in his capacity as Executive Director and to our part time Assistant, Maureen Bates. David has been a dedicated and inspirational leader to STV and will be much missed. Thankfully we will be able to retain his services part time in a free lance capacity. Maureen has served us excellently since 2001 and we will miss her calm efficiency and commitment. Needless to say, we were delighted that Maureen was able to revert to full time employment with RNIB. We wish David and Maureen well.
Mark Freeman
Revealweb
Revealweb: the National Database of Accessible Materials was the single most important development initiated by STV. Launched at in 2003 it lists over 200,000 holdings of over 120,000 books available in Braille, Moon, Large Print, audio and digital formats. It is the essential source for visually impaired people and those serving them to check whether the book they want is available in a format appropriate for their needs. The website receives over 5,000 visits each month on average.
Revealweb was developed with funding from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council [MLA] and generous grants from Lloyds TSB Foundation, Jonathan Ellerman Foundation and the British Library. However, the three year operational funding from MLA came to an end in March 2006 but by carefully managing the resources and combining the management of Revealweb with the Gateway Project [see below], RNIB National Library Service was able to ensure that operations could be sustained until at least May 2007. Thankfully, MLA agreed to fund a feasibility study into developing a new self sustaining model for Revealweb as part of their Framework for the Future Action Plan, 2006-2008.Triad Group consultancy were appointed to conduct the feasibility study and reported back in January 2007. They recommended that Revealweb should no longer be a stand alone database operated by a charity but that it should be integrated into the mainstream public libraries' national resource database, UnityUK. The Combined Regions Council [TCR], which owns UnityUK, agreed to this recommendation; MLA, RNIB and TCR agreed to fund the transition at a total cost of £110,000 and Revealweb will be assimilated into UnityUK over the next year or so.
It is excellent news that this crucially important multi-functional information service for print disabled people will become part of a mainstream library database and that the holdings of large print and audiobooks held in public and other libraries will be combined with the data on accessible formats held on Revealweb thereby making it easier for everybody to check even more of what is available.
Gateway Project
The Gateway Project is a joint STV/SCL initiative to provide a single point of contact for visually impaired people and those who assist them to enquire about the whole range of library services available to them from both the public and voluntary sectors. With renewed funding from the Ulverscroft Foundation we were able to maintain operations for the crucial second year up to July 2007.
As anticipated, the second year being a full year of operation saw a brisk rise in activities once the website went live to the public in May 2006 at It is packed with useful information and links to relevant sources including initiatives developed by individual public library authorities, such as crib sheets and checklists, which they are happy to share with colleagues. Why reinvent the wheel?
A major plank in the Gateway Project Plan was to hold a series of one day national and regional seminars where delegates from local authorities and local societies for visually impaired people could meet, participate in discussions, exchange ideas and information as well as listen to presentations. Seminars were held in Wales x2 [in partnership with CyMAL]; Northern Ireland x2 [in partnership with The Library and Information Services Council: Northern Ireland]; Yorkshire and Humberside x2 [1 in partnership with Henshaws Society]; North West; East of England; East Midlands; South East and South West Regions. The seminars in England were chaired by SCL Executive Officers from the region and a total of over 230 delegates attended the 11seminars.The overwhelming response from their feedback forms was that they found the day useful/very useful and many of them signed up to be the Gateway Champion for their public library authority. There are now 98 Gateway Champions who take the lead in disseminating information about all of these print disability issues within their own authority and contributing their own feedback and information. As a result of these seminars follow up regional meetings of Champions have been organised locally in the North East, North West and Yorkshire.
There is no doubt that this project has greatly helped staff at the local level to better serve print disabled people. STV was in attendance at all the seminars and witnessed the high interest level. The enthusiasm of the Gateway Champions has been impressive and provides a strong base on which to build for the future. Although the Ulverscroft Funding has come to an end the new RNIB National Library Service realised that Gateway was an asset it wished to preserve. Accordingly, it offered to maintain Gateway as part of its new operational structure and the STV/SCL Joint Working Group was very happy to accept this offer at its last ever meeting.
Public Library Service Standards
On 31st August 2006 the MLA and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS] announced that they had commissioned PricewaterhouseCooper [PWC] to conduct the first full scale review of the Public Library Service Standards. The standards were first introduced in 2001, were revised in 2004 and MLA/DCMS wished to test their continuing validity and relevance. As a first step PWC conducted an online consultation requesting opinions on the utility of the existing 10 standards.
The problem from STV's point of view was that whereas the 2001 standards referred to the needs of disabled people, the 2004 revised standards removed all such references and the promise that the new Local Impact Measurements would address these issues when they were introduced later in 2004 had not materialised. In essence the needs and interests of disabled people had gone backwards since 2004 and STV did not wish merely to comment on the existing standards but to make more fundamental points. Accordingly, we made this known to MLA and were encouraged to do so by their officer managing the review.
In September 2006 we submitted detailed comments to PWC but in November 2006 the Department for Communities and Local Government published a major White Paper, "Strong and Prosperous Communities" which set out a vision for modern local government which proposed the replacement of all service specific frameworks with an overall authority wide framework which concentrated on service outcomes for the public rather than service inputs. Accordingly, the PWC review had to be drastically revised and STV met the MLA officer in December 2006 to be briefed on how the new libraries performance framework was to be developed.
In March 2007 MLA and DCMS published a consultation document, "A new libraries performance management framework" which they wish to introduce from April 2008.It will not be compulsory but a voluntary framework which builds upon existing data to allow authorities to benchmark their performance via a set of key performance indicators. As these indicators are non-compulsory there was no need to restrict them to 10 and 26 are proposed. MLA has encouraged STV to make suggestions on how to assist public library authorities to measure their services for print disabled and other disabled people by proposing additional performance indicators and/or management information which should be collected. STV accepted the challenge and promised to submit a detailed response by their deadline of 4th July 2007. Hopefully, when the new framework is finalised and introduced in April 2008 it will again include the needs and interests of disabled people.
Better Stock: Better Libraries
As part of its Framework for the Future Action Plan 2006/08 published on 19th June 2006 the MLA also commissioned PWC to develop a national approach to public library stock procurement to enable savings to be reinvested in front line services. PWC posted a Project Update on the MLA website and requested comments from stakeholders. Rather than comment on the questions posed by PWC, STV posed its own questions:
- As we have a mixed economy of library materials production and supply for visually impaired people involving the voluntary and commercial sectors, does your study take this into account in terms of public libraries procuring appropriate stock for these potential customers?
- The production and supply model for Large Print Books is different from that for ordinary print books. Have you taken this into account?
We were pleased to receive a very prompt response from PWC which welcomed our involvement and interest. Not unexpectedly, they informed us that "The scope of our current project does not directly include alternative format materials for visually impaired people although we feel that the proposed procurement model is easily extensible to cover these... You raise some interesting suggestions in your email... [which]... I am copying to MLA."
When "Better Stock: Better Libraries" was published in August 2006 it noted several stakeholder concerns which will be "key considerations in further developing these proposals." These concerns included:
"the e-Marketplace- the concern about the diversity of stock on offer and approach for large print, talking books, periodicals and minority language stock, which can require intensive work to source, select, evaluate, acquire, catalogue, and may be supplied by public or voluntary sector suppliers, which can only be addressed by further engagement with potential suppliers to gauge their willingness to enter in the market place given the details of these proposals".
MLA has set up a Programme Board and an Advisory Group to progress the proposed new procurement model and STV will monitor whether they address these concerns during 2007/8.
Blueprint for Excellence
In February 2007 MLA published a consultation document, "A blueprint for excellence; public libraries 2008/2011". This 9 page document sets out a concise but comprehensive "shared universal understanding of the role of the modern public library and of the core services that the public can expect."
STV's Board approved a response which was submitted to MLA in April 2007. Broadly, we welcomed the content of the document but had one major basic concern:
"We believe it fundamentally understates the crucial importance of recognising and responding to the diversity of communities served by different public libraries... We believe this fundamental principle should have been more clearly and explicitly stated. Yes, there are references to disabled people, different needs, vulnerable groups etc... in different sections of the document but there is a risk that the document will give an overall impression that there is a core offer to a universal entitlement which is the same for everybody; a homogenised national service requiring identical local libraries"
We then made specific proposals on how this could be rectified from the outset and at different points in the document in order "to set out a clear statement on the need to recognise and address diversity or otherwise it will be seriously flawed." We hope that when the final document is published in September 2007 these comments will have been taken into account.
Copyright and Related Intellectual Property Issues
Despite the Copyright [Visually Impaired Persons] Act 2002, copyright and related intellectual property issues remain a constant problem in permitting or preventing access to content for visually impaired and other print disabled people in the digital age. There were three major developments during the year: