I’ve been in Manchester again (I’m now on the 18.35 to London Euston and we passed Stoke-on-Trent a while back) and I’ve been running a mini scenarios workshop on the subject of public libraries once again.

We came up against the usual issue of trying to do something worthwhile in a very short space of time, but because the participants had actually found the time to do some background reading, including reading the scenarios report from Public Libraries New South Wales, we did eventually end up somewhere quite interesting.

One of the key drivers we discussed was the extent to which library services might be provided by government vs. the free market and the other was around user need, although how need is defined and what’s driving this need does, I feel, need to be fleshed out. Overall, early days.

More to come…