Libraries For All: Social Inclusion in Public Libraries

Online Consultation

CSG Ran Online Consultation for DCMS

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) invited the Community Services Group of The Library Association to run an online consultation exercise on its document on public libraries and social inclusion. This was a pioneering opportunity to contribute to policy. CSG moderated the discussion using the existing LIB-CNET list, between 6 December 1999 and 31 January 2000.

Archives for the list.

Message from Annie Mauger, Chair of CSG

The Community Services Group is delighted to have been invited to organise and moderate this consultation exercise.

The DCMS guidelines on social inclusion and public libraries are a significant development because they give government recognition to the role that public libraries can play in delivering social inclusion in local communities.

In a time when libraries are being removed from the heart of some communities, this document may prove to be a valuable strategic tool for demonstrating the role that libraries can fulfil when they are available in the right place at the right times.

The Guidelines are very accessible in terms of language and give good examples of the simple and more sophisticated ways that public libraries can deliver inclusive services. Whilst not all of the proposals in the Guidelines are radical or new to us, the approach, to deliver services in a planned and strategic way, consulting and working with our communities, challenges us to go a step further, building inclusiveness measures into strategic planning, or re-defining our services in those terms.

You may feel that the challenges of resourcing services and delivering a range of alternatives are not completely addressed here. Or you may feel that there is little that is new to you in terms of service delivery. You may want to put a point about how well libraries are fulfilling this role already to the DCMS.

Here is your opportunity to join in a debate and contribute to policy development. Please participate in the discussion and use the list to share ideas, air concerns, and raise questions. It's an important learning experience for us all.

Annie Mauger
Chair
Community Services Group

The Community Services Group acknowledges the assistance of the DCMS in making this document available on its Web site.

(28 pages, 91KB)

This document is also available on the DCMS Web site in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). To view the DCMS version of the document you need to use a PDF file viewer such as Acrobat Reader from Adobe Systems Incorporated. You should be aware that documents held in this format are typically larger than text files.

Acrobat Reader is available at no charge from Adobe Systems' World-Wide Web Site.

Foreword by Chris Smith

Executive Summary of Key Policy Objectives

1 Why a Social Inclusion Policy for Public Libraries?

2 The Social Inclusion Context

3 Identifying the Barriers that Keep People Away

4The Social Inclusion Policy

5 Means of Achieving those Objectives

6 The Challenges that Libraries Face

7 The Consultation Process

Appendix A - Bibliography

Appendix B - Terms of Reference and List of Policy Group Members