Personal Development Report

I had my annual PDRS today. This is to say what you have done well in the last year, what helped you, what hindered you and what your goals are for the next year. It includes training goals and targets as well.

It is done as a very consultative and productive process - in libraries at any rate - and the goals are taken from the annual team plan. This is all well and good. Most of my targets for last year were met, and the ones I didn't meet were outside my ability to control.

We set out the plans for next year, all of which look realistic and achievable.

The problem is that we have no idea how severe the cuts we face are going to be. Until the Welsh Assembly tell the local councils in Wales how much money they are going to have the council don't know what cuts we face, and we won't know till after November at the earliest. So plans are all well and good, but they could all be pie in the sky. And the sad thing is that all over the country people are doing the same thing. They are all laying sensible service plans to try to give the service they are paid to provide to the public they serve. How many of these plans will come to fruition no one has any idea at the moment.

On one of the library list serves I subscribe to there were arguments today about whether closing libraries in order to preserve the overall service was better than the opposite. Some argued that closing a library is too final and they need to be kept to preserve some sort of service in that locality even if it is a more limited service. I suppose what will happen is that some services will do one and some the other, some will do both.

There are going to be some very,very hard decisions being made over the next year or two. I'm glad I don't have to make them.