Why don't we have proper official statistics for public libraries in England?

Libraries are one of those public services that has been significantly affected by the austerity agenda and cuts to local government funding, and about which (for some mysterious reason) we don't have reliable official statistics. See also food banks, post office closures, free ATMs, etc. etc.

In this post I look at DCMS funding of CIPFA's comparative profiles of library authorities in England, and question whether this approach delivers good value for public money.

CIPFA's public library statistics and the Libraries Taskforce report

At the moment, if we want to understand the state of library services in England, the best source we have is an annual release of statistics compiled by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). The most recent results found that 127 library "service points" were closed in 2017-18.

Once a year CIPFA sends a questionnaire to every local authority in Britain that runs a library service. CIPFA collates the returns, analyses the data, and produces statistics sheets for each authority as well as an annual report. These outputs are sold by CIPFA on commercial terms, including to the 'subscribing' library services themselves. The main annual report is available as a hardcopy or PDF for £205 or an Excel workbook for £425.

In principle anyone could collect the underlying data themselves by sending Freedom of Information requests for the returns to each library authority. However there is some evidence that CIPFA has been encouraging authorities to withhold the data.

Last year the Libraries Taskforce, a body set up by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to implement the 2014 Independent Library Report for England, published a research report on the CIPFA data by Joan O'Bryan, an MPhil candidate in Public Policy at the University of Cambridge.

In her report O'Bryan "interrogated CIPFA statistics sheets from 2006-07 to 2016-17 to analyse trends regarding public libraries in England, as well as assess the reliability and limitations of the CIPFA dataset."

The report questions whether the CIPFA statistics are fit for purpose: "The CIPFA statistics sheets were not designed to be a dataset, and have only been used as such due to the lack of any alternative national figures. The statistics sheets have significant flaws that undermine their ability to be used as a definitive and authoritative source of data on trends in public library usage over time."

The report also notes that "the nature of CIPFA's statistics sheets goes against the very ethos of the library sector: proprietary data, expensive and inaccessible, is the exact opposite of the free and open information libraries are proud to provide."

Campaigners welcomed publication of the report but criticised DCMS's Libraries Taskforce as slow to act. "The public library service is being eroded and the Taskforce is dragging its heels producing any measure with which we can monitor this," said Elizabeth Ash of Speak Up For Libraries in a Bookseller article.

CIPFA's comparative profiles, funded by DCMS – value for money?

There is one publicly available output from CIPFA's public library statistics: an annual set of "comparative profiles" published on the CIFPA website. These profiles contain a report for each library authority in England, with lots of charts and tables, but as the reports are in PDF format the figures are not readily accessible. CIPFA's site terms permit only personal use and use for internal business purposes.

DCMS has funded production of these reports for the past seven years. The 2018 reports were published last month. This is a table of the DCMS funding:

(Sources: DCMS annual reports, DCMS collated spend data, DCMS contract.)

The CIPFA questionnaire isn't mandatory, and as you can see the number of library authorities not providing data has increased over time.

DCMS has sent me the latest contract under which the comparative profiles are funded, in response to a FOI request. The contract doesn't actually require CIPFA to publish the PDFs on its website. In the specification the deliverables are as follows:

CIPFA to provide to each of the local authorities in England that submitted their annual library statistics, the following:

• PDF report comparing their data to all English authorities
• PDF report comparing their data to all authorities in their region
• PDF report comparing their data to their CIPFA nearest neighbour grouping
• Interactive Excel version of the report providing opportunity to re-create any of the PDF report charts and carry out additional comparisons

In addition, CIPFA will also allow local authorities in England the option of requesting up to one further PDF report each at no additional cost.

In addition, CIPFA will provide DCMS with a complete set of the reports listed above for all responding authorities.

So in addition to the PDF reports, DCMS has also paid for a more accessible Excel version of the comparative profiles that CIPFA does not make available to the public on its website.

The most interesting part of the contract is Section 9, on Intellectual Property Rights. Under clauses 9.1 and 9.2 CIPFA retains all intellectual property rights in materials created or developed pursuant to the agreement. However under 9.3, CIPFA grants DCMS a "perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive licence (with a right to sub-license)" to use all IPR in those materials.

In other words, by my reading, DCMS could if it wished publish the CIPFA comparative profiles reports (including the Excel version) on GOV.UK and sub-license them at no cost to everybody on terms equivalent to the Open Government Licence.

I would argue that by failing to do so DCMS is not realising full value for public money under the current contract.

This is separate from the question of whether the arrangements with CIPFA make sense in the first place. Given the analysis in the Libraries Taskforce report, I think it's likely DCMS could produce official statistics of higher quality themselves by adding a libraries return to the single data list and paying local authorities directly to offset the costs of submitting a mandatory annual return.

Image credit: Inside Lincoln central library by Julia Chandler/Libraries Taskforce (CC BY 2.0)