Executive Summary
Public libraries have faced an existential threat due to the technological shift from paper-based to digital systems of literature and information exchange, and a serious decline in literacy amongst both adults and young people, both of which phenomena have led to a decline in library footfall;
As a consequence, actions in the last decade and particularly in the last five years by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have converted libraries into ‘community hubs’, with a diversified set of functions beyond their core purpose of promoting literacy and access to literature;
Funding for libraries by the DCMS goes through a complex and opaque system, mixing straightforward money to Local Councils and grants awarded by The Arts Council England (ACE), which was made national development agency for libraries and given responsibility for administering much of DCMS library funding;
Freedom of Information requests reveal that 80% of ACE funding goes to private companies, the vast majority of which (including 8 of the 10 awarded >£300,000 a year) are charities;
Projects funded by the ACE lack detail about services delivered or a metric of positive outcomes by which success might be evaluated, beyond numbers of involved participants (including the mere fact of ‘footfall’). This leads to library mission-creep beyond their core purpose and is part of an overall lack of proper strategic direction;
In this context, libraries have become vulnerable to contested and even harmful ideologies and social trends, including gender identity ideology (GII) which lacks a factual or scientific basis, despite expectations of ideological neutrality on the part of libraries;
GII and wider ‘social justice’ ideology has become demonstrably prevalent in the librarians’ professional body, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the guidance from which on Managing safe and inclusive public library services explicitly calls into question library neutrality, a violation of their ethical commitments to impartiality and the avoidance of ‘inappropriate bias’;
Such ideological infiltration, especially as regards LGBTQ+ concerns, can also be seen throughout the system of institutions governing libraries, including the ACE and even the current Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport;
This state of affairs is contrary to and undermines the high level of trust which the public puts in libraries to concentrate on promoting literacy according to objective measurements and standard principles of good governance and ideological neutrality;
A case study for how such trust can be exploited is that of The Reading Agency and its ACE-supported Reading Well scheme, of which there is evidence that it lacks appropriate controls to prevent conflicts of interest and the promotion of contested ideologies, and lacks objective measurement of outcomes. Reading Well variously:
Promotes self-help texts for mental health and wellbeing despite not being based on probative evidence of medical benefit, including books on ‘mindfulness’ an arguably pseudoscientific set of practices of which there is some evidence of significant and lasting adverse effects;
Undermines child safeguarding by promoting texts to children in its Reading Well for Teens list that both advocate GII and signpost to LGBTQ+ activist organisations for which there are serious safeguarding concerns;
Is a lucrative scheme on the book lists of which a high proportion of the titles come from publishing houses at which The Reading Agency Trustees hold directorships, and through which publishers are able to promote their books to librarians and reading groups without consideration of the pure merit of these texts.
This paper recommends a redress of the above by a renewed focus for libraries on improving literacy as their proper mission and a renewed commitment to ideological neutrality, as well as greater scrutiny of both ACE grants according to proper process and objective success metrics and also the wider charitable sector as to whether organisations given charitable status are really fulfilling their formal objectives.
