P/M/42. Collection (library) management.

Abstract: The research for the Audit Commission has uncovered some disheartening statistics. Libraries have been adjusting their role in the local community and diversifying their services in response to changing demands, but still the numbers using libraries are falling. The Audit Commission makes some very sensible recommendations for the future and public libraries will need to build upon this. As a publicly funded service, libraries have survived for over a century and a half and have also continued through two world wars, economic depressions, the mass privatisation programme of the nineteen-eighties, and radical changes in technology and lifestyles, and yet they are still regarded as one of the most valued institutions we have today. Their very lack of commercialism embodies traditional public service ideals, and as one user says, ´It is nice to have somewhere to go which even now is not highly commercialised.Ž In a climate where decisions on spending are based increasingly on value for money, there can be few institutions that provide so much for the enhancement of society at the cost of 10 pence per household per day.