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Putting new books on shelves
• IT is interesting that articles on the Camden Labour Party’s defence of its tenure in office should appear in the same copy of the New Journal as that of an article reporting Camden Public Libraries Users Group’s (CPLUG) discovery of a massive central services levy on the Camden library budget (Readers tell libraries to fill shelf gaps, December 7).
That there should be some central service costs attributable to libraries is not in any way surprising. However, Camden’s (21 per cent of total) was over twice the national figure.
As a direct consequence, the amount of money left in the budget for the purchase of books was only five per cent of the total compared with the national figure of nine per cent.
Lazy, arrogant and cavalier was how Camden’s new financial supremo, Lib Dem Cllr Janet Grauberg, described the attitude of previous Camden administrations to the use of public funds. The evidence provided by the library budgets of those administrations tends to support her conclusions.
Hopefully, she will have the determination and the drive to do better.
Certainly, cutting an expensive, bloated central bureaucracy will be a great help in actually putting new books onto library shelves.
ALAN TEMPLETON
Chairman
Camden Public Libraries Users Group
Honeybourne Road,
NW6
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