Delivering Digital Services: A Handbook for Public Libraries and Learning Centres

Citation

Yeates, R. (2006), "Delivering Digital Services: A Handbook for Public Libraries and Learning Centres", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 103-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330610646889

This smallish volume of essays on reducing the digital divide covers a vital area of concern for public library practitioners, but does not deliver the kind of advice and guidance which would be sought by most of them.

The stated goals of the work are admirable: to provide an overview of the policy issues involved in managing access to ICTs, to enhance ICT skills with a more holistic knowledge of ICT, and to give the opportunity for the reader to expand their ICT knowledge into content creation.

The book is divided into sections addressing these goals, each with a very brief introduction, discussion, conclusion and references. Some chapters also include case studies, mostly of Scottish institutions, although unfortunately they do not clarify or help resolve the issues discussed, being simply descriptions of actions taken rather than justifications for them or evaluation of outcomes.

The policy section is mostly about current UK Government and Scottish policy with some history of the response of the public library sector to government initiatives on social inclusion, lifelong learning and the People's Network. The discussion often seems to have been written with the expectation that the reader may be somewhat hostile to new technology and innovation, or ignorant of these major themes of the last decade or so. As a result the text lurches wildly in depth and tone, for example from stating the obvious (“[lifelong learning] is more informal in nature” than school‐based learning) to the rather parochial half‐page on the Scottish Executive's 2003 lifelong learning strategy, which does not appear to apply specifically to digital services.

The section on managing access covers some important topics, such as acceptable use policies, filtering and copyright, but the mere half‐page on data privacy boils down to a recommendation that there should be posters for customers, surely something that is already in place in public libraries. Yet in the next section, five and a half pages are devoted to describing how to use Microsoft Excel to collect survey data – a skill surely useful only to a small number of library staff who may anyway require more advanced knowledge to succeed at the overall task of understanding user needs.

The next section on the importance of building ICT skills moves into student textbook mode, with activities appearing to be very basic, and certainly not of much use to library operational managers. Any library service running large numbers of networked PCs should already have far more expertise than that imparted here.

My main objection to this book is the lack of evidence that the topics and level of detail it covers is actually likely to be relevant to most public library staff. A range of assertions are made which seem to contradict other parts of the book. For example, “It is very likely that you may not have permission to install or uninstall programs on your computer”. In this case are you likely to “list the MAC addresses of machines permitted to connect to your router”, as suggested a couple of pages later? Some of the detail is potentially confusing – Activity 16 doesn't mention the possibility that library staff may not have permission to view the Control Panel on Windows PCs, for example. Assumptions are sometimes questionable: page 153 asserts “… the customer will be unable to alter the data or reorganize it”. Although published data sources need to be protected from abuse, why should customers not manipulate a web links resource spreadsheet for themselves if they wish to, perhaps to determine patterns or form new resources lists?

Far too much space is devoted to HTML and XML mark‐up, since most staff who do not create web templates are unlikely to use such skills professionally and this whole area is not critical to delivering services, provided the proper skills are bought in or acquired in proper depth via far more wide‐ranging training. It is certainly useful for staff to understand basic principles of tagging and standards, but HTML is anyway obsolescent as XHTML takes over and frames, covered here, are often deprecated because they can cause many problems for web users.

There is an overall academic bias here, without the corresponding expected rigour of argument and analysis. For example, discussion of searching the web excludes the possibility that the searcher may be wanting to shop for something, and ignores the corresponding price comparison tools. The examples given of web content management often seem to relate to toyshops, however, although the index recognises their irrelevance by leaving the term out; surely more relevant examples could have been used.

The advice on creating websites is very simplistic. For example, accessibility issues are dealt with in half a page (pp. 108‐9), which makes it sound as if a few minutes' thought is all that is required to achieve an acceptable professional standard for a public website. No mention is made of the need to plan a programme of continuing consultation with corporate web policymakers and the public, or of the fundamental need to use both technical and human methods when assessing usability and developing criteria. A few moments consulting a good free web page (such as those mentioned in the book) would provide better guidance.

This gives the impression of a hastily produced work that has not been adequately refereed by operational staff. As a result, it will only be of limited value to public libraries, and much of it will date rapidly. Where are the strategies for dealing with frequent supplier software updates, network hacking, users who want to personalise their network usage, libraries which wish to collaborate on purchasing, partner with commercial publishers and so on? This is not an adequate book for managers, but more junior staff will probably be left confused.