Government figures are a nonsense, anyway.

A copy of the cipfa dataset that shows all the library authorities visits and issues paints a really grim picture for the library sector. Even during the good times of New Labour when the public sector was awash with money the service was declining alarmingly. It doesn't matter which of the trends you look at, for most of the library services it has been all downhill:

Wales and Northern Ireland are doing significantly better on issues than England and Scotland. I don't think our friends in those countries have different reading levels and habits than us in England and Scotland. There really is a lot of fail to go round. I can't blame it all on Vaizey this time.

Even more interestingly some of the library authorities have completely bucked the trend on the issues/loans. Below are the ten worst and ten best on percentage change on loans from 03/04 to 13/14:

The Southwark figure looks iffy, but I'm not sure why. I know there are potential disparities in how visits data could be collected but the numbers for issues/loans should be consistently collected and we're looking at like for like.

What I don't understand is, councils up and down the land have gone to great trouble to submit this data and what have the DCMS being doing with it? Nothing it looks like. I presume they know how to used spreadsheets in that department. I know the department of transport has trouble making calculations for rail franchises, perhaps the DCMS are scared in case they get a formula wrong or something?

There is clearly lessons to be learned and bollockings to be given based on this data but because there's zero leadership in the sector as Vaizey is always non-minded, I suspect nothing will be done by the DCMS. Perhaps the Libraries taskforce can look into what the formula for success is and try and spread this best practice around publically so we all know what works and what doesn't.

The full data is here, if you have any idea why some authorites are doing well and some seem to be completely useless please let someone know.