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Monday 08 February 2016 | UK News feed

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Why libraries spend £24 for book that costs £10 in shops

Libraries spend £24 every time they buy a £10 book because they have so much "cumbersome" administration, according to a report published yesterday.

The administrative process for buying books costs nearly 30 times as much as the equivalent cost to bookshops, it said.

The report, for the library charity Libri, added that in the past 10 years the number of people using libraries declined by 21 per cent and the number of books borrowed fell by 35 per cent, but the national cost of libraries increased by 39 per cent.

The combination of these factors meant that the cost of each visit to a library has nearly doubled, to £2.92 in 2001-02, and that libraries spend just nine per cent of their total expenditure on reading material.

Tim Coates, author of the report Who's in Charge, warned that the crisis is such that in 10 or 15 years there may be no libraries at all. The report concentrated on Hampshire but claimed that the picture was similar throughout the country.

In the past year, Hampshire spent £1.4 million on reading material and £2 million on related overheads: selecting and approving orders, entering data on systems, processing and preparing books for loan, re-distribution of stock, re-cataloguing, and approving and paying invoices. The equivalent process in the commercial sector, which is the same except that books are prepared for sale rather than loan, would have cost £70,000.

Mr Coates, a former managing director of the Waterstone's book chain, said: "The costs to commercial operators cannot be more otherwise they would not be able to afford to sell the goods. The process in this library service alone costs £2 million more than it need. The position in Hampshire can be found in most councils."

He recommended that libraries should treble expenditure on books and other reading material, increase opening hours by 50 per cent and redecorate and redesign to make them more attractive, all without increasing overall spending.

Mr Coates, who spent four years researching and writing the report, said: "I was astonished by what I found. It would be so easy to change what they do; it's so out of date and inefficient, and the controls over what is spent are so lax." He cited an example of an entire library's staff reading the latest Harry Potter before deciding whether to buy it.

The report estimated that of the £1 billion a year spent on libraries in Britain, £200 million is wasted. Mr Coates said that although barcodes give all the information about a book, libraries still spend an enormous amount of time cataloguing and labelling books to their own specifications.

Furthermore, 70 per cent of library users reported having only a one in two chance of finding the book they were looking for, while in bookshops, customers would find it unacceptable if they did not find want they wanted in 90 per cent of visits.

"The reason the public is stopping visiting libraries is because they have poor selections of books and reading material, short opening hours and are often inconveniently situated, dilapidated and even unsafe to work in."

The appetite for reading, however, is rising, as shown by a 19 per cent increase in book sales since 1997, which Mr Coates put down to greater innovation in high street bookshops, such as long opening hours, coffee shops and comfortable furniture. A Hampshire County Council spokesman said: "We realise things need to change and we are ready to take action."

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