Introduction

At least since the 1960s – and probably longer – there has been a debate about how library developments should be funded: should additional money be sought (and where should it come from?), should existing budgets be redefined or, without these, can new work not be taken on?

This section looks briefly at some of the sources of funding and surrounding issues.

Home Office funding

As noted earlier, in the 1960s the ‘problem’ of provision of materials in community languages had been referred to the then Department of Education and Science – this was as part of an argument that public library provision could not be developed without additional central government funding.

In 1966, Section 11 of the Local Government Act made funds available to meet the needs of people ‘… belonging to ethnic minorities whose language or customs differ from those of the rest of the community.’ (Great Britain, 1966). This included 75% of the salary costs of staff required to make special provision in the public library for these groups – but this was intended to be a temporary measure. However, as noted by Nicola Matthews and Vincent Roper (Matthews and Roper, 1994), there was no guidance as to the types of posts that could be funded, and local authorities were expected to find the remaining 25% of salary from their mainstream budget; it was also widely thought at the time – and echoed by Matthews and Roper – that such provision was viewed as ‘added on’ to the mainstream service and therefore seen only as an ‘extra’. As Jaswinder Gundara and Ronald Warwick commented, whilst giving the impression that public libraries were embracing multicultural provision, in fact: ‘… one or two individuals have responsibility for running such a service (to ethnic minority groups), thus liberating the others to provide a traditional, middle class-oriented, Eurocentric service.’