Exploring the complexity of making a difference in public and prison libraries.
Libraries Change Lives Week 2024, spearheaded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), starts today, providing an opportunity for CILIP to showcase how libraries across the UK are making a difference to their users and communities, advocating their value to society as the sector’s representative professional body. This coincides, for me personally, with the publication of an article in the Library Management journal on research with prison libraries, where I got to see first-hand the extraordinary work undertaken by prison librarians and their extended networks in the criminal justice system. This complements a body of research on the strategic development of library services according to government agendas and associated environmental factors.
On a Wing and a Prayer: Professional ethics and the prison library shares findings from a two-year study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 2017-19. Instrumental Values: Professional ethics in collaborative cultural work examined ethical dimensions of collaborative practice within and across museums working in health and social care settings (in the full study) and prison library services, to fully consider the nuanced and deeply situated realities of practising cultural work that seeks to have a discernible impact in public policy contexts.
Findings are discussed in the article under key headings, including the extent of collaborative complexity in the field and its impact on participants’ emotional resilience; navigation of the prison regime by cultural workers; consequences for emotional labour and care in the field; and the re-negotiation of ethical boundaries and practices. In conclusion, the article calls for greater recognition and acknowledgement of the investment made by cultural practitioners themselves when working on the frontline of public service, particularly when advocating for the social value of arts and culture on political terms.
This recent focus on prison libraries marks a slight departure from my longer-term research interests in public libraries, which began with an early career researcher post with the Libraries and Information Society research group at the University of Sheffield’s Information School (2003-08). One signature project connects with the Instrumental Values project, through its consideration of empathy as a core skill and professional practice for library staff.
Also funded by the AHRC and set in the context of New Labour social policy from 1997 onwards, The Right Man for the Job? The role of empathy in community librarianship (2006-08) explored library staff attitudes towards social inclusion policy and disadvantaged groups in society, exploring the relationship between their own social and cultural identities, and their capacity to make an effective, empathic contribution to social inclusion objectives. Key findings include the impact of local government ‘tick box’ culture on policy effectiveness and staff engagement, and issues relating to staff awareness, development, and subsequent role strain amongst a predominantly white, female, middle-aged homogenised workforce.
Regarding workforce development, other earlier examples of my research on public libraries include substantive evaluation studies of two national leadership development programmes in England, both previously published in the Library Management journal. The first was undertaken at the Information School in Sheffield and involved evaluation of Leading Modern Public Libraries (LMPL) 2006-07, delivered via the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and designed to support cohorts working at three levels including Future Leaders, Senior Managers and Heads of Service as part of the DCMS Framework for the Future development strategy for public libraries.
The programme followed a transformational leadership model and represented a strategic development intervention on an unprecedented scale for public libraries, in direct response to a perceived crisis of leadership in the sector. The evaluation showed that “participants were encouraged to develop a greater cognitive understanding of their leadership abilities, and given practical, creative tools to help apply such abilities in the workplace. Some of these tools however were considered to be too managerial by the more experienced and senior course participants, who would have preferred a greater focus on the political acumen required to lead public libraries.”
The second study, undertaken at the Institute of Cultural Capital, related to evaluation of the Libraries Development Initiative (LDI) 2012-13, which marked a new phase of strategic development for the sector under the stewardship of Arts Council England (ACE), following the closure of MLA in 2011 as part of the then coalition government’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’. The LDI programme was subsequently launched by ACE in February 2012 as a proactive initiative designed to encourage greater synergy between libraries and the arts, and to test innovative partnership approaches to library service delivery.
The programme was structured using four key themes including new delivery models for arts and culture working together; coordinating partnerships to achieve national policy outcomes; books and reading; and commercial partnerships, each illustrating a desire to assimilate public libraries with other ACE agendas and thus ensure their strategic sustainability. As such, the LDI evaluation provided a useful reference point for the study of professional boundary-spanning collaborative leadership in public sectors, with a particular focus on the value of strategic intermediation, agency, and experimentation in collaborative learning. The Library Management article on the evaluation concludes that the “sector [had] the necessary networks, assets and capacity to respond to dominant public policy narratives of integrated resilience, as public libraries continue to face a true test of their collaborative leadership in increasingly risk-averse local authority environments”.
I am now excited to be working with public libraries again, bringing together the three themes of professional ethics, empathy and collaborative leadership by considering the role of public libraries as statutory public services in integrated women’s health and social care systems. Most recently for example this has included participant observation of a creative writing programme delivered in Liverpool central library and commissioned by the NHS Improving Me women’s health and maternity programme, which supported participating women to reflect on and share personal stories relating to different stages of reproductive health, with emotional resilience featuring as a key outcome. Given the gradual impact on the sector of draconian austerity measures and ideological policies since 2010, it is important to continue to reconsider their own resilience, role, and value in ever-changing public service and civic landscapes.