Standards for British Libraries

Abstract

LIBRARIANSEVERYWHERE TRY to establish standards of service and per-formance as a means of securing recognition of the value of libraries and of library work from society in general. But they may go about this task in rather different ways. In countries like the United States, where libraries are dependent upon a multiplicity of bodies, public and pri-vate, and where there is no central agency tocoordinate library develop-ment or to standardize salary scales, then i t is the librarians ’ professional association which takes the lead in devising and publicizing appro-priate standards. In other countries, like some of those in Western Europe, most librarians may be employed by national public bodies at uniform or comparable conditions of service. Here standards are of ten promulgated by the central government in the form of statutes, decrees or regulations, and so the efforts of librarians are directed toward putting pressure on central government agencies to formulate standards acceptable to the profession. In the United Kingdom the nature of library standards falls some-where in between these two contrasting models. As Britain is not a federal country, the influence of the central government on publicly funded libraries may be direct or indirect but is always present. So professional bodies like the Library Association, 80 percent of whose members work in the public sector, spend much effort in lobbying government bodies on behalf of libraries in an attempt to influence

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