DN Opinion. Put an end to the private experiment with libraries

the Swedish approved by the standing search warrant in a response to a letter to the editor on the DN View of a more mature debate regarding biblioteksprivatiseringar obliges them to respond to the arguments that are against to put out the public library on a contract basis.

the Swedish library association is neutral or cautiously positive to the public libraries in the private operation. The problem with such an approach is that the association completely ignores the arguments and the experience speaks against such a phenomenon.

In the discussion about privatisation of public libraries highlights the bourgeois politicians often up Nacka municipality as a good example. But as we in the society Library in society (BiS) pointed out, the light of the positive results with their absence in the municipality's own evaluation of its first privatiseringsomgång.

on an extremely time-consuming procurement process, and to those public libraries that have been procured either could show on the innovations they had hoped for, or delivered a business that could be considered to be of higher quality than before.

the BiS has also presented a number of problems that biblioteksprivatiseringar:

• Local, regional, and national collaboration between the library broken up when they are replaced by libraries in the competition.

• the Qualitative librarianship is not possible to discern in the Celtabet quantitative measure and is therefore difficult to set the correct/evaluate during procurement.

• the visibility and Transparency decreases when the library goes into private operation, because the private sector is not covered by the protection of whistleblowers.

custom report ”On library construction” includes, in fact, good arguments to stand against public libraries in the private operation:

”the Libraries [is], in spite of their importance to the values such as knowledge, democracy and freedom of expression, in principle, [ ... ] unregulated and based on what you would almost be able to describe that practice. The difference against, for example, health care or school is significant. These activities rests on the far-reaching speciallagstiftningar, regulated the rights of patients and students, and duties for principals and staff. [...] For the libraries, there are many questions which, if they are not regulated in the contract agreement, not at all being regulated. In addition to the disadvantage that it can pose for users of a single library, are vulnerable to poor agreement in the long term, to undermine the values that we today might casually connects with the general public libraries. To lay out and operate public libraries on the contract is in other words a big thing.”

why the Swedish library association is continuing its driftsneutrala approach, which in practice is to take a positive approach to public libraries in the private operation. Why do you choose to go the business and bourgeois politicians errands, when so many of the association's members do not want to see this development?

the BiS is of a different opinion. Library associations need to stand up in order to preserve the interaction between the library and strengthen the existing activities, which are targeted to priority groups.

It is through our focus on strong, a public library, we can work for the purposes specified in the bibliotekslagen, not by curla privatiseringsexperiment that is already proven to not deliver.