Public library digital and data strategy
It has been announced that there will be a new English public libraries strategy this year, delivered by the DCMS. Library organisations such as Libraries Connected have welcomed this:
“The last national strategy expired in 2021, and an ambitious, government wide plan is urgently needed”
Libraries Connected
I don’t think there has been a significant public consultation as part of the strategy, although I may have missed one. But regardless, the following was sent to the DCMS as a submission from Libraries Hacked, setting out thoughts on the current data and digital situation, and steps for addressing it. In the spirit of working in the open (and self-importance) the following is what was sent.
In 2016 the DCMS delivered a new library strategy called ‘Libraries Deliver: Ambition for Public Libraries in England 2016 to 2021’. In a section titled ‘Helping libraries use better evidence to support decision-making’, it described how data would be used:
“We want to actively gather, analyse and share data across the public library network and train the library workforce to make best use of this. We believe libraries need a core set of data that can be consistently and regularly collected (automated where possible), and openly published. Libraries can then use this to:
- identify, understand and meet user needs better
- support strategic planning
- develop information they can use to help secure future investment and encourage increased usage
- identify areas for improvement
- manage day to day operations in a more effective and timely way”
Libraries Deliver: Ambition for Public Libraries in England 2016 to 2021
This was clear on the urgent need for automated and regularly published open data for libraries, and skills to utilise that data.
Many people in and around the library sector know that the lack of library open data has hampered and constrained the sector at a national and local level.
It is difficult to identify areas to improve, manage day-to-day operations, strategically plan, or even understand user needs. This affects all aspects of running libraries - even basic financial policies that affect library usage, such as charging users for reservations, or the level of fines applied if books are returned late.
This was described by Soumaya Keynes, writing in 2023 for the Financial Times in ‘Forgotten to return your library book? Don’t worry about it’. She writes:
“In Britain, the evidence base is disappointingly thin, constrained by a lack of statistical capacity and muddled by the pandemic. Libraries Connected found that of 15 libraries they surveyed that had removed fines, only one said that overdue stock had increased, and by just 1 per cent. A few were unsure.”
Soumaya Keynes, Financial Times
It’s not that those services are unsure because the underlying data doesn’t exist - the library systems hold plenty of data to assess various impacts of fines. There aren’t the skills to extract or use that data, no funding for external analysis, and no shared data from other services to make proper comparisons. The need for cross-service data that is made as widely available as possible remains a sticking point for the sector.
For library digital applications, the lack of openly available data and public APIs (application programming interfaces) means that the technology choices for the sector and the public are limited, with little opportunity for innovation. Libraries switch between a small pool of library system suppliers, who often control a whole suite of tools used in the service - from the cataloguing interface used by office staff, to the website used by the public to browse books.
These should be separated in a modular fashion and made openly interoperable, where there is more opportunity for a multitude of suppliers or even community applications to be developed.
The current situation
This data and digital dysfunction does the public a disservice, who need library digital services to be the best they can be, and library policies to be made from the best available data to address a decline in usage, and encourage new users.
Widescale underfunding is a pressing struggle for library services, but the lack of data maturity and ability to share data widely is a problem that can be addressed without significant expenditure, and is currently a self-inflicted missed opportunity.
In 2016 this need was clear. Anyone coming in to the sector today would be met by a different situation - one that is worse rather than better.
If that has been a missed opportunity then we need to ask why it failed. Despite the guidance in the previous strategy, library services and leaders have focussed primarily on using data for the wrong reasons. That has been as a means to communicate value (and success) to library funders. This is understandable, but due to the fact that traditional ‘performance’ indicators for libraries such as numbers of visits and loans have declined, this core data has been discarded rather than being mined for the essential insight it could provide.
Core service data is an essential tool for service improvement and needs to be fully utilised. Making that data openly available widens the audience for that data, and increases the potential re-use and insight.
The public library sector is one that operates behind closed doors. In the Covid crisis, for example, Libraries Connected began collecting data on book loans and footfall to monitor the recovery of services. None of this data was made widely available. Libraries Connected would argue that they didn’t have permission from services to do such a thing - and expressed willing to work towards open data in the future. But as anyone in the open knowledge community knows, a policy of ‘open’ has to be clear from the start. There is nothing more permanent than a temporary fix, and there is nothing more permanently closed than data that people would like to open in the future.
Suggested steps
Firstly, a culture of open working, including open data, needs to be promoted and adopted by the whole public library sector. This should be done through education, training, and learning. Central government has long advocated through teams like the Government Digital Service for open working, and this has been transformative for central digital services. That transformation in thinking needs to be extended to public libraries.
However, for a risk-averse and cautious sector this will be difficult. Leaving it purely down to persuading the library sector, even where it’s for the sector benefit, is not likely to work on its own.
The DCMS has the option to mandate data publishing from library services, but this would be difficult. There are many examples of local government being required to provide standardised data but it tends to be in areas of high economic benefit, or where there is a need for significant transparency. While open data is strongly encouraged in the Local Government transparency code, only certain datasets are explicitly mandatory. It seems unlikely that library data could become part of that mechanism.
As a secondary action then, if existing or new legislation is not feasible, we need more creative ways of ensuring participation in combined open data.
The membership of Libraries Connected, for example, is primarily Heads of Service. Libraries Connected is a charity and a recipient of public funds from the Arts Council. It would be reasonable to ensure the organisation adopt an open data policy, applicable to all members, in order to continue to receive public money.
Similarly the Arts Council are currently the organisation who distribute grants to libraries such as the Libraries Improvement Fund. It would also be reasonable to assume that eligibility should be dependent on working to agreed principles, one of these being that core service data is made publicly available at regular intervals.
These things seem to come under the ‘stick’ of a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to encouraging library open data. However, better availability of standardised data, from across services will benefit everyone - and most of all the library services themselves.
The problem has always been that achieving a good stage of data maturity needs a critical mass of participation - services adopting data standards with their suppliers, writing that into procurement processes, opening up data, and beginning to use the data of their neighbours, while seeing others use theirs.
It would be another failure if we look back in ten years at the 2026 strategy and see it as a missed opportunity to be ambitious about data and digital, or see that it was ambitious but ignored. Despite past failings we need to believe that libraries can deliver key digital transformation and open data for innovation, and we need to insist and ensure that it happens.