THE
CULTURE AND RECREATION BILL
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/
pa/ld200001/ldbills/007/2001007.htm
A Briefing from The
Library Association
Introduction
1. There are no overarching
themes to the Culture and Recreation Bill: rather it is a miscellany of provisions
that have emerged as being useful over the lifetime of the present Government.
However most of the proposals do stem from the DCMS Comprehensive Spending Review
exercise in 1998 – covered in their “A New Approach to Investment in Culture”
report. But from a library perspective, there are no major policy points to
discuss, and much of the debate rests more on how some of the provisions will
be implemented rather than the principles that lay behind them. Perhaps the
most marked and disappointing feature of the Bill is an omission – the absence
of any provision to extend legal deposit rights from books to other media, including
networked electronic information services.
Culture Online (Part
IV, Clauses 25-28)
2. The Library Association
is supportive of the idea of creating Culture Online to develop an English
portal for broadly cultural content; encourage the creation of digital content
and services; and the production of educational packages. One model already
exists with the Scottish SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network)
funded by a Millennium Commission grant.
“SCRAN's mission is to
create a fully searchable resource base of Scottish material culture and human
history. Funded by the Millennium Commission, we work with project partners
such as museums, galleries, archives and universities to digitise selected
parts of their collections. There are over 200 projects underway and material
is being added to the resource base daily.”
(From SCRAN website at
www.scran.ac.uk )
3. However the publicly
available information surrounding the development of Culture Online is rather
scant and amounts to little more than one DCMS press release. The real debate
is likely to begin when the terms of remit are drafted, its powers decided,
and its relationship to other organisations, such as the People’s Network (the
public library electronic network that is receiving £50 million of NOF
money for the development of content) and the National Grid for Learning, decided.
The Commitment that
Culture Online will offer most of its services free to the public comes in
the Explanatory Notes to the Bill published by the Stationery Office – “The
intention is that Culture Online will offer the bulk of its materials and services
free to the end user …[but] … Culture Online may use this power [Clause
26, subsection 4] to charge end users for specialist services such as on-line
courses or master-classes, or for particular products it may produce”. The
statutory provision contains the power to charge rather than the principle
of free access The Library Association would like to see embedded in the provisions
of the Bill.
Resource: The Council
for Museums, Archives and Libraries (Part V, Clauses 32-34)
4. Resource replaces
the former Museums and Galleries Commission and the Libraries and Information
Commission – it also adds archives to its brief. It formally came into being
on 1 April 2000 and is still finding its feet. The provisions in the Bill:
allow the present Resource to be converted into a statutory corporation (Clause
33); the Minister to make grants to Resource (Clause 32 – the grant-making
clause is drawn more widely than just Resource, but is primarily about Resource);
and brings Resource under the aegis of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
5. The Association
appreciates the need for these changes, but given that Resource already exists
as a grant-aided company limited by guarantee, the changes are technical rather
than substantial. We do, however, welcome the widely drawn nature of clause
32 – it could give further statutory underpinning for something like a standards
fund for public libraries. The Association has recently cooperated with DCMS
in the development of standards for public libraries and a number of people
have queried the absence of a standards fund to help public library authorities
meet the new requirements – DfEE provides local education authorities, for
instance, with access to a standards fund to help improve the performance of
schools.
Abolition of Library
Advisory Council for England (Part V, Clause 37)
6. The Library Association
is not opposed to the abolition of the Advisory Council for Libraries (the
current name of the Library Advisory Council referred to in the 1964 Public
Libraries & Museums Act). Although it still meets, it has been allowed
to “run down” since DCMS announced its intention to abolish it in the Comprehensive
Spending Review Report in 1998. Nevertheless there is still a need for the
relevant Minister to have access to expert advice on his or her responsibilities
under the 1964 Public Libraries & Museums Act. Under the Act the Secretary
of State has a duty to “superintend and promote” the public library service
in England and has a number of interventionary powers that can be used when
an authority is not fulfilling its statutory obligation to provide a “comprehensive
and efficient” public library service. The current proposal is that Resource
should provide that advisory function for the relevant Minister. However we
believe that such a function needs to be a discrete part of Resource and should
not be exercised by the current Resource Board alongside their
other broader responsibilities across the cultural sector. Very few members
of the Resource Board have a relevant background and expertise to be able to
advise the Minister effectively on his or her responsibilities and there needs
to be wider representation from public library authorities, user groups and
allied sectors such as bookselling, publishing and writing. The devil will
be in the detail of this proposal and, naturally, this is not included in the
Bill.
Legal Deposit
7. This is the Major
omission in the Bill and, it can only be hoped, that a future Government will
be committed to covering this topic in a separate Bill that will be put before
parliament after the General Election. Although Ministers have given assurances
before about their willingness to legislate on extending legal deposit from
books and other print-based publications (which has existed since the Copyright
Act of 1911) to other forms of recorded knowledge, including online services,
it is important for them to be regularly reminded of the need. Presently the
British Library is experimenting with a voluntary deposit scheme drawn up by
themselves and publishers. However in their response to British Library ‘s
Working Party on Legal Deposit report in 1998, Ministers accepted that a voluntary
code would not be viable in the long term and that a convincing case had been
put forward for legal deposit of non-print materials “on the basis of minimum
burden on publishers and minimum loss of sales”.
8. It becomes ever
more important to collect publications in non-print media comprehensively if
future generations are to enjoy similar access to the full range and diversity
of the national heritage of recorded knowledge that we now enjoy because of
the foresight of our grandparents. The following principles should be the
guiding aims of any legislation extending legal deposit to all forms of recorded
knowledge:
- to secure the comprehensiveness
of the archive of the nation’s published output, irrespective of present and
future developments in publication formats and technologies;
- to secure the preservation
of the archive of the nation’s published output;
- to secure access
to the archive of the nation’s published output;
- to secure a comprehensive
framework of rights and obligations for publishers as providers of material
for the national archive; for librarians as managers of the national archive;
and for current and future users of the archive.
Conclusion
9. It is difficult
to become impassioned about the provisions of this “bits and pieces” Bill.
On the whole we believe the provisions to be welcome, but there is much work
to be done in developing the operational details behind these provisions and
making them effective and acceptable to the main parties involved.
For further information,
please contact:
Guy Daines
Principal Policy
Adviser
Tel: 020 7255 0632
E-mail: guy.daines@la-hq.org.uk
The Library Association
2001
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