Thursday, April 29, 2004
Following on from what I wrote yesterday, are Libri a fraud? Or are they just very bad at designing a website? They say they are a new charity... formed a couple of years ago by a group of enthusiasts for public libraries dismayed at the present decline. They don't appear in the Charities Digest 2004, or the current Directory of British Associations. A search for them as a business on British Telecom's website doesn't find anything. As they don't display a charity number I'm not sure if they are breaking any laws here by calling themselves a charity. Anyone out there know more about the legal situation?
We believe that the public library service has important lessons to learn from all sectors of the book trade and the information provision sector. Learning the lessons will help create a public library service that is efficient, serves the needs of local communities and maintains public libraries as the heart of community life.
No explanation of why they believe libraries to be declining or why they have to follow 'the book trade' to be successful. You might as well say that libraries should follow 'the greengrocery trade' or 'the petrol station trade' for the sense it makes.
Demand for books has never been greater. The public library service is excluding itself from this trend and the time is ripe for change.
You have to wonder how many libraries they've been in recently.
I sent them an email, complaining about the lack of the promised discussion forum on their website to challenge their ideas. It bounced back, with a Delivery Status Notification (Failure).
However, by a piece of staggeringly clever detective work (ok, I admit, I just looked at the Libri address, http://www.rwevans.co.uk/libri/, and tried www.rwevans.co.uk) I found this collection of folders, which connect to things such as LeftRights, Bulletin of the Socialist Civil Liberties Association, and a link, eventually, to LivePolitics. I'm going to email the owner of these various sites, Roger Warren Ellis, and see whether he knows anything about Libri. I'll let you know.
We believe that the public library service has important lessons to learn from all sectors of the book trade and the information provision sector. Learning the lessons will help create a public library service that is efficient, serves the needs of local communities and maintains public libraries as the heart of community life.
No explanation of why they believe libraries to be declining or why they have to follow 'the book trade' to be successful. You might as well say that libraries should follow 'the greengrocery trade' or 'the petrol station trade' for the sense it makes.
Demand for books has never been greater. The public library service is excluding itself from this trend and the time is ripe for change.
You have to wonder how many libraries they've been in recently.
I sent them an email, complaining about the lack of the promised discussion forum on their website to challenge their ideas. It bounced back, with a Delivery Status Notification (Failure).
However, by a piece of staggeringly clever detective work (ok, I admit, I just looked at the Libri address, http://www.rwevans.co.uk/libri/, and tried www.rwevans.co.uk) I found this collection of folders, which connect to things such as LeftRights, Bulletin of the Socialist Civil Liberties Association, and a link, eventually, to LivePolitics. I'm going to email the owner of these various sites, Roger Warren Ellis, and see whether he knows anything about Libri. I'll let you know.
