Big wooden spoon

Jim and I have been looking at some of the issue statistics, which throw up some interesting trends. For instance, Catty's issue figures have been bleeding over to Carbootsale for most of the year and Crime Fiction issues at Gypsy Lane have increased four-fold over the past twelve months.

"I don't know why Doreen and Julia don't look at these statistics," says Jim.

"What?" I reply, "library managers looking at management information? Isn't that an infringement on their professional know-how or something? Next thing we know they'll be using the figures to demonstrate an increase in throughput and the need for more staffing for the more customer-focussed activities that we need to do to meet our learning and visitor targets."

"I don't understand them at all. I circulated some information about a funding stream that could be used to pay for the staff needed to do more learning activities over the next couple of years. None of them wanted to know."

"Why don't you get it onto the agenda for a Management Group meeting?"

"I take it you've heard about the last one then. My God..."

Quite so. It's better to have your whole management team sitting on the enquiry desk rather than fill existing vacancies and take the opportunity to get external funding for extra staff.

Sigh...