You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
The director of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council has accused library campaigner Tim Coates of "bullying" after Coates expressed fears the MLA would do "permanent damage" to the library sector before its 2012 closure.
The row broke between Roy Clare and Coates, who heads campaign group Libraries for Life for Londoners and blogs as Perkins the library cat on www.goodlibraryguide.com/blog, when he yesterday posted a critical piece listing fears the MLA could hurt the library sector in the two years before its closure, "in its constant and continuing attempt to find a role - presumably for its executives as opposed to itself".
Coates focused his ire on a recent statement from the MLA's director of policy that the library service "has to be seen as part of the whole – integral to delivering the wider ambitions of the (local) authority."
The campaigner blogged the statement was "in contradiction to the law which says that 'public libraries are for the benefit of those people who wish to use them' - not for the benefit of the agenda or ambitions of local councils." He went on: "The constant, but silly and illogical, attempts to shoe-horn public libraries into the social service agendas of both local and national government have been what has reduced its qualities to a low level," and added "the sooner the MLA was closed, the better."
Clare yesterday posted a furious response, calling Coates' accusations "a form of bullying" to "decent individuals [who] know their jobs are at risk".
"Objective readers may compare Perkins' graceless criticisms of the staff of the MLA with the hurling of offal at folk locked in stocks. The hapless victims in those times were about as likely to have had a fair hearing before being subjected to heartless humiliation by cowardly villagers," he wrote, calling on Coates to engage "constructively with local government" like the MLA.
But Coates responded: "You and senior librarians have been seduced into a trap by your need to attract government funds. It isn't the fault of the people working for you, whom you have put in the stocks - it is you." He concluded "someone should ask for a full account of the money that had
been spent by the MLA over its years and the effect that expenditure has had". He added: "It is not a happy story."