Last week England’s Museums Libraries and Archives Council launched  an Action Plan designed to set the course for Libraries over the next five years. 

The Action Plan (PDF 70KB) from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is the result of extensive consultation and engagement with stakeholders and sets out an agenda for change for public libraries in England with the aspiration of making every public library a great public library.

From the slim report, subtitled ‘towards 2013‘:

This Action Plan reflects the outcome of extensive consultation and engagement with stakeholders. MLA will work in partnership to deliver this ambitious agenda over the next five years.

The report doesn’t go in to detail about the extensive consultation, or the stakeholders, but after some reflection on  ‘WHAT DOES ‘GOOD’ LOOK LIKE?’, it lays out how: In 2008/9, MLA, in consultation with DCMS, ACL, SCL, LGA and others, will make a start on four key challenges.

• Challenge one: research and evidence
• Challenge two: best practice
• Challenge three: innovation
• Challenge four: digital change

Each of these four challenges have listed a set of actions under the ‘MLA will‘ heading.  It is clear from the initial wording of these actions (Invest in impact research – Analyse – Identify and promote – Promote – Actively promote – Consult – Highlight – Identify – Encourage – Examine – Maintain support – Make an effective case – Manage – Promote – Advance)  that MLA are planning to be central to the encouragement of libraries to improve the service they deliver.

I read the report with interest, but it left me with a feeling that the MLA  are going to have a difficult job on their hands.  Not so much in doing that encouraging, promoting, consulting, examining and advancing, but in how they are going to measure the effect of it all.  In five years time, how will they know that they have succeeded?  Perhaps more importantly how, in one or two years time, will they know that they are on target to succeed?