Managing Cultural Change in Public Libraries

Marx, Maslow and Management

John Pateman, Joe Pateman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351784320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Managing Cultural Change in Public Libraries argues that changes to library Strategies and Systems can lead to transformations in library Structures that can, in turn, shape and determine Organisational Culture. Drawing on Management theories, as well as the ideas of Marx and Maslow, the authors present an ambitious Analytical Framework that can be used to better understand, support and enable cultural change in public libraries.

The volume argues for radical – but sustainable – transformations in public libraries that require significant changes to Strategies, Structures, Systems and, most importantly, Organisational Culture. These changes will enable Traditional Libraries to reach out beyond their current active patrons to engage with new customer groups and will also enable Traditional Libraries to evolve into Community-Led Libraries, and Community-Led Libraries to become Needs-Based Libraries. Public libraries must be meaningful and relevant to the communities they serve. For this to happen, the authors argue, all sections of the local community must be actively involved in the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of library services. This book demonstrates how to make these changes happen, acting as a blueprint and road map for organisational change and putting ideas into action through a series of case studies.

Managing Cultural Change in Public Libraries will be of particular interest to academics and advanced students engaged in the study of library and information science. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers and all those who believe that communities should be involved and engaged in the planning, design, delivery, and evaluation of library services.

1Introduction

In this book we argue that changes to library Strategies and Systems can lead to changes in library Structures which, in turn, can shape and determine Organisational Culture (Pateman and Pateman 2017). This approach is derived from a specific interpretation of historical materialism known as ‘technological / economic determinism.’ We describe the key features of an Analytical Framework which can be used to better understand, support and enable cultural change in public libraries. This Framework has been informed by an extensive literature search and analysis of over 150 years of public library history. The Framework has been developed on three levels and is based on the work of Karl Marx, Abraham Maslow and Management theories.

History of the public library since 1850

The Analytical Framework has been developed by taking an overview and analysis of the history of the public library from its inception in the mid 19th century to the present day. This development can be broken down into several distinctive stages. In each stage, we can see how the public library was a product of the economic Base and the political, social, cultural and ideological Superstructure which that Base shaped and determined. There were three main stages of development: the Traditional Library 1850–1970; the Community-Led Library 1970–2000; and the Needs-Based Library 2000–present.

The Traditional Library 1850–1970

The Traditional Library emerged from the Mechanics Institutes in the mid 19th century, reached its peak in the post war welfare state and went into decline in the 1970s. While this model remains the dominant paradigm, there have been steep and ongoing decreases in public library membership, personal visits and physical circulation since 1970.

1850–1930: While the overt argument for public libraries was framed in terms of social reform and the need to educate the ‘deserving poor,’ the covert reason was to create state institutions of social control to manage the idle time and reading habits of the working classes (Corrigan and Gillespie 1978). This was a response to the economic, political and social changes sweeping across Europe in the mid 19th century and manifested by revolutions in central Europe and the Chartist movement in the UK (Black 2000a). The state apparatus of capitalism was used to manage the emerging demands from organised labour and to take some of the pressure out of the system to prevent this from boiling over into revolution (Black 2000b). At the same time the public library became a bulwark of middle-class values (Black 2003). These forces shaped and determined the defining characteristics of the Traditional Library.

1930–1950: Following another period of capitalist upheaval and crisis, as evidenced by the Great Depression, which swept around the world in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the public library reinvented its role as an ameliorator of social conditions (Kenyon 1927). The public library acted, again, as a safety valve to mitigate some of the social and political pressure which was building up in the capitalist system as a consequence of the underlying economic conditions (McColvin 1942). The role of the public library was to ensure that the surplus army of unemployed did not pose a threat to the state institutions of power (Black 2000a). This further entrenched the defining characteristics of the Traditional Library.

1950–1970: According to Harold MacMillan, during the post–Second World War period, the people ‘never had it so good,’ and living standards among the working classes steadily increased (Roberts 1959). There was more or less full employment and reasonable standards of living, which gave workers the ability to enjoy leisure pursuits (Gerard 1962). During this period the public library became an almost exclusive middle-class institution with a focus on reading for pleasure (Luckham 1971). Circulation was dominated by hardback adult fiction, and the leisure function came to dominate over the educational role of the public library (Black 2003). The Traditional Library became focused on the higher needs of the middle class rather than the basic needs of the working class.

The Community-Led Library 1970–2000

Community librarianship emerged from the Traditional Library in the mid 1970s, became more mainstream with the setting up of the Community Services Group of the Library Association in 1982 and started to decline with the onset of cuts to local government expenditure in 1987–1988.

1970–1980: The social role of the public library in supporting the aspirations and needs of the working class emerged from the Traditional Library in the 1970s through the community librarianship movement (Usherwood 1981). Public libraries in inner London neighbourhoods, such as Lambeth and Hackney, understood the role which public libraries could play in reaching out to poor and immigrant communities and supporting the struggles of working-class, black and gay communities of interest (Black and Muddiman 1997). The public library became both an ally and a resource in these struggles for civil rights and equality of outcomes (Black 2003). The seeds of the later Community-Led Library were sewn at this time.

1980–2000: This trend ended abruptly when Margaret Thatcher drastically curtailed the power and resources of local government in her monetarist crusade to reduce the size and influence of the public sector (Black 2000b). The ensuing decade saw attempts to privatise and commercialise public library services (Black 2003). In the face of this financial and ideological onslaught, the public library retreated back to its Traditional roots (Pateman and Vincent 2006).

But the community librarianship movement had established the groundwork for the later development of the Community-Led Library, when the conditions were right.

The Needs-Based Library 2000–present

The Community-Led Library emerged from the Open to all? (Muddiman et al 2000) research carried out in the UK, reached its peak during the Working Together Project in Canada (Working Together 2008) and started to develop into the Needs-Based Library (Pateman 2003c).

2000–2010: When New Labour under the leadership of Tony Blair entered government, the Old Labour language of class and poverty was replaced by a new lexicon of social exclusion and community cohesion (Pateman and Vincent 2007). This created the ideological space to reassert the social role of public libraries; after the publication of the seminal Open to all? research in the UK, and its implementation via the Working Together Project in Canada, a new Community-Led Library movement emerged (Pateman and Vincent 2010). This gained traction in Canada, where large systems, such as Edmonton Public Library, fully embraced the model. In the UK, the Traditional Library continued to predominate.

2010–present: When the Tories returned to power in the UK in 2010, they began to decimate public libraries in the name of austerity. In reality this was a convenient cover for a neo-liberal ideological agenda which continued, accelerated and deepened the work of Margaret Thatcher. The aim was to reduce the size of the public sector (Pateman and Vincent 2012). Public libraries (particularly those which had failed to transform from Traditional to Community-Led) were ‘low hanging fruit.’ Over 1,000 libraries have been closed, and 10,000 library workers have been laid off (Pateman and Vincent 2017). In Canada, by contrast, the Community-Led Library movement has grown during the economic expansionist period of the Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau (Pateman and Williment 2013). There is also some evidence of the Needs-Based Library starting to emerge.

It is clear from our literature review of these historical developments that the public library has gone through a series of evolutionary stages. This has enabled us to construct three consecutive, but overlapping, models of library provision, which we have defined as Traditional, Community-Led and Needs-Based. Each of these models contains the seeds required for the next stage of development.

Social class

‘However often today’s literary scholars repeat the mantra of race, class and gender, they clearly have a problem with class’ (Rose 2002). A search by subject of the online MLA International Bibliography for 1991–2000 produces 13,820 hits for ‘women’; 4,539 for ‘gender’; 1,826 for ‘race’; 710 for ‘post-colonial’; and only 136 for ‘working class.’ The MLA Directory of Periodicals lists no academic or critical journals anywhere in the world devoted to proletarian literature, and the subject is very rarely taught in universities. In social history, for example, class was a dominant issue between 1963 (when E.P. Thompson’s seminal The making of the English working class was published) and 1983 (when Gareth Stedman Jones authored his post structuralist Languages of class). Post structuralist historians such as Joyce (1991) have argued that class has had less of a purchase on workers’ identities than earlier Marxist historians suggested. Other commentators, including Edgell (1993), have asserted that the arrival of post modern society has meant the ‘end of class.’

The post 2008 crisis of capitalism led a renewed interest in Marxism and its core categories of analysis, such as class and exploitation. There have been a number of UK studies into aspects of working-class culture, including Baars, Mulcahy and Bernardes (2016), Beider (2015), Crawford (2014), Evans and Tilley (2015), Griffith and Glennie (2014), Hanley (2008, 2016), Jones (2011, 2014), McKenzie (2015), Reay (2017) and Rogaly and Taylor (2009). There have also been some North American studies, including Isenberg (2016), Vance (2016) and Williams (2017). Many of these studies have demonstrated how social class continues to be the single most significant determinant of life chances.

The impact of class on public libraries has received very little professional or academic attention.

There is one ‘skeleton of control and conservatism’ in the public library cupboard which has consistently been kept hidden: the issue of social class…Class is something which, for 150 years, the public library in Britain has largely failed to come to terms with. Some have valiantly attempted to discuss and problematize class in the library context. However, the tendency has generally been to sweep the issue under the carpet.

(Black 2000b: 5)

Class was not on the professional agenda.

It is not talked about at conferences. It ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Ken Williment
• Foreword by John Vincent
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Analytical Framework
• 3 The Traditional Library
• 4 The Community-Led Library
• 5 The Needs-Based Library
• 6 Conclusions and ways forward
• Appendix 1
• Index