Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Chair, if I may, I'd just like to declare the fact that I've been a former member of the books council and the executive council in the past. 

David Melding.

I just wonder—I know it's early days for the well-being of future generations Act, but in terms of your strategic development and, perhaps, looking further into the future, but in areas where you've at least got to do some planning in terms of what you might be thinking, has anything changed because of your use of the Act?

I think it's been very helpful in, perhaps, concentrating minds. In some ways for the library, we are long-term in our strategic thinking and we are always very sensitive to ensure that these collections are owned by the people of Wales, and, therefore, it is our duty to look after them, but also to provide access to this generation but also to future generations. So, from that perspective, we very much welcomed the ambition of the Act. I think we are in a similar position to other bodies in working with, particularly, the Wales Audit Office, and the office of the commissioner, of course, to identify what difference and what impact our work will make to the success of the implementation of the Act. So, I would say that it actually reinforces our values and our ambition, but we are now trying to find practical ways to demonstrate that the Act is having a greater impact than perhaps otherwise would be the case.

And what about key staff? Do they get trained about the provisions of the Act and the way it may, you know, affect intergeneration decision making, which, on collections, is a huge factor about what might be valued more within the present generation than in the future? These are difficult judgments, so I just wonder—

Well, I think it's something—library staff, in fairness, and certainly my colleagues in the library, I've always been very impressed with, because they have this long-term mentality in their work. They are always thinking about—not just for this generation—what they'll be preserving, why are we preserving it and how we preserve it. Because, of course, in the digital arena, we have to make sure that that material is available, and that's a major challenge for all national libraries. The physical, printed material—well, we know how long a printed page lasts. We know how long a manuscript lasts—virtually indestructible, I'm pleased to say. But when it comes to digital files, you're talking about, what, 18 months in terms of ensuring access. So, we are leading on digital preservation in Wales and we see this as a major part of our work for future generations, in that we are helping not only ourselves but also other bodies to tackle this enormous challenge of ensuring future access to digital material. And that, I think, is probably a practical example of where the library is leading, and I hope will continue to lead, and help us all reach a position, I think, where the Act is meaningful beyond the values and the statements that, clearly, we are making. So, I think that's probably a practical example of where we're trying to do it.

In terms of training—yes, all the library staff have received sessions about our statutory responsibilities under the Act, and I hope that in terms of the timetable, we are certainly very keen to get on with it because it reinforces what we do anyway. But I think it is important that we do this in a way where the evidence is clear that we are having an impact beyond, 'Yes, well, we're doing it anyway.' We really need to demonstrate, I think, that the Act has encouraged us and has stimulated us to work in partnership on the digital material, for example, but also that everybody is aware. Clearly, there are environmental considerations that my colleagues are looking at very carefully. It's always difficult in a historic building to try and meet all the environmental requirements, and, of course, our collections require environmental control. But we are going to implement a carbon management plan next year to lessen our carbon usage, our carbon footprint, and we are, of course, implementing photovoltaic cells, for example, to try and lower our energy costs—energy is one of our largest costs in the library. All of this, I hope, is leading us towards being far more efficient and effective, and I'm sure the Act has been a stimulus for us to do that.

Rhianon Passmore.

On that particular point around the digital interface, and you mentioned that Wales is leading the way on that particular pathway, and, obviously, perishability around that digital material is a key issue, so how are you working in partnership across the UK and Europe? Also, in that regard, the strategic partnership with Cadw was, I believe, not welcomed in any shape, way or form, so if you could just very briefly—if I may, Chair—just dig into that slightly.

Are you talking about Historic Wales?

Yes.

Well, the digital to start with—the library was a very early adopter of digital technology. We've been digitising material for at least 20 years, and, of course, therefore have challenges because the material we digitised 20 years ago may have to be redigitised. We are leading a consortium in Wales of other archive services and other bodies who feel that this challenge needs to be addressed. We are part of the Digital Preservation Coalition, which is a UK—we are prominent in that coalition. And, in fact, it's an international issue for us as a national library. I think our role—because, for us, it is an important part of our work, we have to make sure that this material remains accessible. We are very keen to share that experience and expertise with other bodies because, between all of us, we will find ways forward. But it is something that needs investment, and I'm very grateful to the Welsh Government for providing us with funding to lead that coalition of bodies, but I do think that, going forward, we will need to recognise that digitisation and digital management has a cost, and, therefore, are we looking closely at what that cost will be for individual bodies? I'm sure, individually and collectively, you're aware of how many millions of e-mails and papers that you are managing on a daily basis. That is a far, far higher volume of material than you would've previously done if you were using printed material or manuscript material. And therefore, I do think it's important that the Government and all bodies—public and private—acknowledge the challenge that is facing us and really start to get serious about digital preservation.

But with regard to—I don't know if it's going to be dealt with later—the issue around the partnership with Cadw—. Because the same issues are being faced across the whole of the public and private sectors, so it would seem to be opportunistic to be working very closely with them.

Absolutely.

Okay. But it is about finance.

Okay. Thank you.

David Melding.

Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd. This perhaps takes us forward and reflects some of the issues that have already been raised. Obviously, this has been a very challenging time, I think, for any public agency, and this is reflected in the amount of work you've continued to do, but with fewer resources. It's very apparent in the staffing structure; you've lost something like 22 per cent of your staff over the last four years or so.

Now, the auditor general raised issues about this, not that you'd had to reorganise staff—or rather that you didn't reorganise staff in that work of seeing a reduction and that your strategy wasn't really changed. So, you're trying broadly to deliver the same range of activities. I infer, from what the auditor general was saying, that you perhaps should have had a more strategic approach in where you cut staff, basically, and where you didn't, and where you shaped the activities around the best use of those staff. And then, I presume, also, that you were retaining staff with the key skills you needed as opposed to a more general approach of inviting staff to apply for early retirement, or voluntary redundancy, or whatever. So, I think in response to that, you did say that you were going to bring forward a workforce plan, and I think that's imminent. So, has it been produced? Did your board discuss it at your recent meeting? Could you just give us an update on that?

We were really grateful to the Wales Audit Office for their support and for their reports. It was clear that we did need to look at a more strategic approach, and, over the last year, we've been working with staff and the trade unions to develop, I think, three elements. Developing our staff is absolutely key. At the moment, we can't afford to go out and have external recruitment and add to our staff, so we need to develop the skills and expertise that we currently have, and I am very, very keen that we provide opportunities for our young staff in particular to feel that they have a career at the library, and that they can develop professional skills and other skills as well—marketing skills, raising-income skills, these are all vital skills for us as an organisation.

Therefore, we have developed a people strategy, which is about developing our individual members of staff. We've developed a workforce plan, which is about where are we going to put the staffing resources in light of the priorities established by the Welsh Government and also, as Rhodri says, by our charter. And then, we have developed—and this is now being discussed by the trade union colleagues—a succession policy, because, as we lose experienced members of staff, how do we ensure that, as far as possible, we can transfer that understanding of our collections and of our work to younger members of staff? And, that will be the final element.

I hope that the board, in the February meeting, will sign off the entire plan, but we have sent a draft plan to your colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee to demonstrate the work that's been done, and I would hope that, after the February board, if the committee would like to see the final set of plans—I'd be very happy to forward those plans to you for scrutiny. But, it's an essential element of our effectiveness. The library is dependent on its staff to be an effective organisation, and respecting the needs and the opportunities that those staff have is a considerable priority, I think, for us in managing those very scarce resources.

And does the plan envisage any further reductions in staff, or do you think 230 is about the establishment now, in terms of—

Well, I think we are far too light. I do think we've gone down below—bearing in mind these additional responsibilities and opportunities that the library is seeking to seize where it can. However, we do have to be responsible in terms of our due diligence, and, in the new year, the board has asked me to establish a task group of managers in the library and trade union representatives to look at scenarios in terms of likely future funding, and how those will affect our staffing levels. I think it's important that the board does have a view, if the funding stays the same, or if the funding reduces—what will be the impact on services and on opportunities for staff? So, that forward financial planning, which will be led by the treasurer of the library, who himself is an experienced accountant, I think, hopefully, will help the board to understand, in terms of strategic direction, what the library needs to put in place. And I also hope it will demonstrate the evidence to yourselves and to the Minister of the likely impact of not being able to provide levels of funding—where that will then impact on our ability to deliver the core services—

So, does that translate into potentially having to cut more staff?

The stark reality is unless there is an increase in the money we get from the Government, then we will be facing a situation the year after next when we will, again, have to look at reducing the staff unless there is external funding coming in from other directions. That is the reality facing the board.

So, when you see project funding and key partnerships, there is a move to build into that a staffing element, is there? And so, you're more rigorous, then, in application, I think, for funding from others that can bring in that extra resource, because, often, they're overlooked, core costs, aren't they, when you do activities with a project base or with other organisations. Have you developed financial skills in terms of the key players?

Well, the important thing, of course, with external funding is that you don't accept money that takes you, or deviates you, away from your core purposes. But when you get the opportunity to do something that is within your strategic plan, and the strategic plan is developed on the basis of the digital pathway—therefore, if there are digital projects we can do, then that creates greater flexibility within the workforce and protects jobs in the short term. Therefore, the kind of situation that would be facing us in a year, in a year and a half, if, for example, we were successful in drawing down the heritage lottery funding, that would allow us, in the short term, to meet those challenges.

Thank you, Chair. In regard to strategic direction, cultural change across library services, across Europe, even, that strategic direction is very key to your online work. And with your mandate and your charter across Wales, surely—I mean, I don't want to dig too deep into this at this moment in time—but, surely, you need to be hitting at least three quarters of a target in terms of online usage, bearing in mind the issues around finance, bearing in mind the issues around workforce development. So, culturally, are you moving in the right direction? I'm querying that, listening to you.

Culturally, we're moving, certainly, in the right direction. As I said, in terms of our registered digital readership, we are moving in the right direction, but the problem is that not all those digital readers are registered. Therefore, we have to look at that. In terms of—

Surely the time is absolutely now to do that.

Yes, certainly.

The issue for us is that we are fully aligned with the Welsh Government requirements, because it's the library's requirement as well, to make digital information free at the point of access. The people of Wales own our collections; they are digitised so that they can be used beyond Aberystwyth. On that basis, we don't put any barriers in to people using. So, for example, if you wanted to use the wonderful Welsh newspaper archive or the tithe map service, you don't have to register, you can use them online.

When you register, there is always a barrier, and not everybody will then go through, or will understand the registration process. So, the library has these 1.8-odd million readers that we are targeting. With the registered users, they are very, very limited, the additional services you will get, and I think the question for us is: do we actually use that as a performance target? Because they are probably quite a specialist set of users who will come into the reading room and use our specialist—they're probably academics, they're probably people who are losing—perhaps the traditional library user, if you like. What we want to hit are the general public, not just in Wales, but beyond, because there are lots of people interested, or from Wales who live beyond Wales. And on that basis, definitely, the culture has changed. I was really pleased that we digitised far more digital items than we expected last year because that, for me, demonstrates that there is energy going into making more items available in a digital world.

The Wikimedia work that we've been doing has been really interesting. We have the UK's only Wikipedian; he's a permanent member of the library staff and is doing some fantastic work that is internationally recognised with Wikimedia. For example, library images on our website do get a good hit rate, do get a good response, but our images on Wikimedia and Wikipedia—last year, between 300 million and 400 million people viewed those images worldwide. So, for me, that's the partnership. We need to be working with Wikimedia, with Google, with Amazon, whoever, in order that our images and our collections are viewed using their networks.

Okay, and I'll come back to that, Chair. 

Yes, we can come back to that in detail. We need to get on to the archives now, so, Jenny. 

Thank you very much, Chair. The context, listening to you, has been very interesting because, clearly, the proposal to have this national broadcast archive must be a core part of your strategic plan. Could you tell us what the latest situation is in relation to your bid for the £5 million of lottery funding? 

We made our first application almost two years ago. We received the support of the then Minister, who is now the Cabinet Secretary, on behalf of the Government of Wales. It was part of our strategic plan for the future. We were looking to apply for the £5 million that had been allocated by the Heritage Lottery Fund in the summer, and we were informed by— 

The summer—which summer? 

This summer, in 2018. 

Okay. 

We were informed at that point by the Minister that he was not minded to give the £1 million of support by Welsh Government. Now, for an application to be accepted by heritage lottery, it has to have the support of the Government. So, at that point we decided not to apply. We were going to apply again at the start of this month, on 4 December, but, again, we received a letter from the Minister saying that he was not prepared to commit the £1 million from Welsh Government. There was a question raised in the Senedd last week, which many of you participated in, where he said the money was available but he was still unsure about certain aspects of the application. 

I have to say, on behalf of the National Library of Wales, we were asked in January of this year for certain information, which we supplied. We had a further letter asking for more information, which, again, we supplied. So, as far as the national library is concerned, we have done everything within our power in order to ensure that this application succeeds. And £5 million from an external body is a very, very important investment in terms of the National Library of Wales and, as I said earlier, it does mean that certain situations that would be facing us very soon can be alleviated by this money.

And the important thing is, this is not taking us away from our strategic plan. It is an integral part of our strategic plan. You know, quite often when you get external money, it deviates you from you're trying to do, but this is actually a core part of our work, and taking us down that digital pathway, which, as you said, is very important in terms of library services, not only in Wales, but throughout the world these days. So, that is the current stuation.  

I wonder if we can delve a little bit deeper into what reasoning the Government has given for not supporting the plan in its current form. 

Well, they've asked us for certain information, which we've supplied. As I understand it from the response he gave in the Senedd last week, he is saying that he is worried about the core services of the library. The core services of the library are dependent on the grant aid we receive from the Government, and the pressures on the core services arise from the fact that the £9.85 million we received this year is less than the money we were receiving 10 years ago, when I was Minister. 

We are very keen to resolve the situation. Personally, I'm very happy to meet with the Minister's officials, and we have now got a meeting arranged on 19 December. I think it is important that we understand the Minister's concerns, and I'm hoping the officials will be able to help me there. 

You're only meeting the officials; you're not meeting the Minister. Again, obviously, you haven't had the six-monthly meeting. You're meeting the officials. Why is it that the Minister isn't meeting with you on this issue? 

I understand we're meeting the Minister. 

You are meeting the Minister.

In February.

But that's—. Obviously, this is a live issue now, so—. 

I did ask for a meeting with the Minister when we were first informed in July that he was unwilling to bring forward the £1 million. I was not allowed a meeting at that particular time, although I asked for an urgent meeting, because I thought the situation was serious. 

I have to say, on behalf of the National Library of Wales, on behalf of the board, we want this matter resolved. We want to come to an agreement with the Government so we can move forward. This is one of the most exciting projects that has ever been brought before the Heritage Lottery Fund from Wales, perhaps the most exciting project ever. We've met all the thresholds in order to obtain this money, and what is important now is that we come to an agreement with the Government. The Government support is purely support of £1 million out of a project, which, when you put everything together, is £11 million. It's not a massive contribution, but the support of the Government is essential—

[Inaudible.]—that is required, so that the Government has stamped it with its approval, and that is signalled by the £1 million. 

Dai Lloyd, did you want to come in? 

Jenny.

I think it’s of some concern that this dialogue of the deaf seems to have been going on for about a year, and we're now in danger of potentially losing this project. Could you just tell us: when is the deadline?

The deadline is the start of March. The deadline, basically, is the meeting we have with the Minister and his officials next February, because we have a meeting of the board the following week. Therefore, we would have to take to the board whatever the Minister is prepared to offer at that point, and then the board would have to take a decision as to whether they want to go ahead with the application or not.

Okay. So, that's very clear. We need to just have a slightly better understanding as to why the Government is looking this gift horse in the mouth. It seems to me that one of the most important aspects of your proposal is that the library would be available to people in four different locations across Wales, so that those who are unable to travel to Aberystwyth would be able to access it in either Carmarthen, Cardiff or Wrexham. So, is—. I'm struggling to understand why this model of delivery might put a question mark over the financial stability of the national library.

Well, first of all, the application has to meet the requirements of the heritage lottery, and one of the requirements is that the public have access to the collection. The only way you can do that within broadcasting law—. What the Minister asked us to do in the summer was—. You wouldn’t be able to do it; the law would not allow you to do it.

Do what?

It would be to allow open access for the public to the collection. So, these centres are essential to allow the public to have access to the collection.

Now, I think the important thing is that the BBC have agreed to this, and that is the exciting element of this project. It’s not only that we have the collection, but people have the access to it. Therefore, I’m at a loss to understand what the problem is.

Okay. So, the legal advice you've had is that this project would be perfectly possible without breaching the broadcasting law.

Yes.

What the BBC have agreed—and I think it is unique; I don’t think the BBC elsewhere in the UK have made these types of agreement—is that the library will have a licence to show the digital archive in premises that the library rents. And the three strategic partners that have agreed to host the centre will be providing that rent-free, except in Carmarthen, where there is a peppercorn rent. And they have also agreed in writing that, in 2024, when the lottery funding ceases—the lottery will fund the project for five years—they will contribute 50 per cent of any running costs of the delivery model that will be agreed. I think we have to agree that delivery model further down the road, because we need to have the experience of the project. By then, of course, hopefully, the archive will have been catalogued and the access and the centres will be more about local community groups, individuals, schools, having access to and using the archives themselves. Therefore, we will have five years of establishing it, cataloguing it, ensuring that the archive is widely publicised and made available, and then, after 2024, it will be a matter of keeping those centres open in a sustainable way.

And I fully accept that you need due diligence in terms of any major project, and fully accept the Minister's requirements in that regard. Indeed, the board has also asked for due diligence here. I do hope that, when we have the meeting later this month, we will be able to bottom out some of these practical issues and understand better what the Minister’s officials’ concerns are.

As the president said, we do always have to remember that this has still to be a wow project to get £5 million from the lottery. So, providing some form of changes or alterations to the project, of course we will sit round a table and look at those and see if that addresses the Government's concerns, but I think it does have to be in the context then of us still being able to put in for a project that will stand up against large projects we will be competing against from large organisations across the UK. But I think it is incumbent on me and incumbent on us, and I agree, to do our level best to sort this out in the short term, as you suggest.

I think the other important aspect, Jenny, is that it's important to remember that heritage lottery funding after this round will change. Therefore, these amounts of money will not be available after this round. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds being available, rather than millions of pounds. Therefore, if we can't put it into this round—and the heritage lottery have been very flexible with us in terms of allowing us time to come to an agreement with the Government, but unless we can put it into this round, this amount of money will not be available.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for describing the urgency of this matter.

Just one final question, really, which is: is that five-year timescale of initiating and embedding the broadcast archive into the library's heritage, is that sufficient a time to do that, so that, at the end of five years, it'll then just be a steady state and it'll just be one of your many collections?

That is the intention, but it’s the intention that during the five years also we'll be working with at least 200 community groups across Wales. We will be focusing that work on areas in the Fusion programme. So, they will be schools and community groups in deprived areas, because it is a very visual experience that we hope will attract new audiences to the library’s collections. And, of course, we also have the ITV archive, which is not digitised to the same extent; it’s only digitised in part. And who knows? There may be an opportunity for the S4C archive during those five years as well.

We would have, in that case, an international broadcast archive. It would be an archive of international standing for broadcast archives. Certainly, those are the observations that we have been getting internationally on this project, that it is a model for other countries to adopt. And that’s very encouraging for us, but also I think it demonstrates that this particular medium could attract new audiences, and new audiences perhaps who wouldn't necessarily be interested in our printed collections, for example.

Well, that’s the most confusing thing for me, because about 25 per cent of our population have challenges with the written word. This is not something they will do for pleasure. But, our oral and visual culture is accessible to everybody, so I am at a loss to understand why the Government is prevaricating on this matter.

Well, one example, I think, of the library moving into a new area would be working with the Alzheimer’s Society to package DVDs, using library volunteers to present programmes, for example, because we know that people with dementia have difficulty in recalling life events, but watching familiar television programmes, perhaps from their childhood and often their earlier childhood, is very reassuring and comforting. Now, we know that, and I think this project provides opportunities perhaps for us to look at different ways of reaching people using this very visual medium.

It's very difficult for us to pin down what the Minister's objection is, because the letters we get are general. But it seems to me that the Minister's line is that the BBC should pick up the ongoing costs after 2024. That's basically it, isn't it? The fact that you've got 50 per cent of the cost, the Minister thinks that you should get 100 per cent of the costs, of £400,000. So, it's a £200,000 jeopardy figure that he sees and that may affect your whole model in terms of the library. I can see how he may want to get maximum value for the public purse, but that £200,000 seems to me to be not enough money to warrant a huge project like this being put into serious jeopardy. Would you agree?

Yes, I would agree, and it also raises a point of principle, doesn't it? It means that if that's the case, the National Library of Wales cannot accept any collection where there's not a financial contribution from the organisation offering us that collection. It means we can't function as a National Library for Wales. Surely the question here is: is this collection important? My view is that it's the most important collection of the social history of Wales for the last 70 years and it should be housed in the National Library of Wales. Surely we can come to some arrangement with the Government to allow us to receive £5 million of public funding from the national lottery or heritage lottery for that. I mean, I don't know of any organisation that has actually turned down £5 million, and certainly in the present financial climate it seems a strange situation that we can afford to do that.

Rhianon.

Thank you. I don't think anybody would disagree with that at all around this table or within Government. But, I think that underlying this, there seems to be—. You mentioned core services, and I touched earlier upon a huge failure to meet your target around digital users. You mentioned capacity. You mentioned workforce planning. For me, listening to this, there would be a concern—. Obviously, you have your meeting to come, and you have the Wales audit reports and your planning processes ahead, but it seems to me, listening, that there is a concern about your core ability to manage outside of having this transformational amount of money, and the new mandate that goes with that; it could actually compromise your current running of your current service, which you could argue that you are failing to do. Now, that's very harsh, but how would you respond to that, bearing in mind how important this collection could be, not just to the archive but to Wales internationally?

The core duties are dependent on the core funding from the Government. The ability to carry out those core duties is solely dependent on the core funding coming from the Government. As I have said on a number of occasions, we are now receiving less than we were receiving 10 years ago, and that's the problem.

And that's the reality across the public sector.

That's the reality we are facing. If we don't move forward—. The important thing about the broadcast archive is that it is part of our strategic plan for the future. It's not something additional that we are doing; it's part of our strategic plan. Therefore, it is part of our core services, so it allows us to move forward and allows us to bring in external funding in the short—

But you have not yet met even half of your target on your current digital registration.

Can I just ask which target you're referring to? 

In terms of registering for digital usage.

The registration, I think, is not for us a significant figure because, as I've mentioned previously, 95 per cent of our services are free at the point of contact. You don't need to register. So, the only way that we could increase that realistically is to make everybody register, and then we would get 1.4 million. But, I think that we would get less than that because—as you all know around the table, I'm sure—when you have to register for a service, it does put a barrier, and it would certainly put a barrier for people who were unsure about how to register, et cetera. So, the actual registered users, I think, is not a significant figure for me.

The significant figure is the 84 per cent that we've reached of the digital users, which I fully agree with you needs to be targeted and needs to increase through marketing, whatever, and through our partnerships with Wikipedia, et cetera. But, that's the significant figure: how many people are using us digitally? That, at that moment is 84 per cent of the target that we set.

So, in regard—

It's 10 per cent more than were using those services last year.

Yes, and I understand that directly.

For me, the most important is the increase in the number of volunteers you're getting from deprived communities. It seems to me that you are moving in the right direction.

So, in that regard, there seems to be, from my understanding, a more limited approach to public-facing work. You've mentioned Fusion, and you've mentioned the importance of this transformational funding for the future. So, how would you therefore explain and reassure me that this funding and this project could actually transform the amount of outward external-facing work that you seem to be currently producing, bearing in mind that that's a struggle at the moment?

That's where the money goes.

First of all, the collection would be digitised by the BBC. Therefore, we'd have more digital material available. This collection is exceptional in terms of the last 70 years. I don't think I'm being over-optimistic in saying that there would be a great deal of interest in this particular archive. Therefore, over the years, you'd see more and more people—many thousands more people—using that service, and the digital figures would increase. It's important to note that—. I understand your concern about the figures, but it is due to registration. If you look at the online figures, it is 10 per cent more than last year. So, to give the impression that we are somehow decreasing in numbers is not correct. It's a technical matter about registration that has created that.  

So, in regard to reassurance around exhibitions—

This would increase our numbers substantially. I don't think anybody can challenge that.

Okay, so just to—

This is the last question now, Rhianon, sorry. 

It's the same question, Chair, if I may, and I still haven't got an answer. So, in regard to the amount of your external-facing work, you've mentioned the Fusion project and programme, and how important that is to reaching out to a certain section of our population, and your charter in terms of what you need to be delivering to Wales, across Wales—and this is why I keep banging on about digitisation—so how are you going to be able to further that work at the same time as working on this new, massive project if it's delivered to you? How can you reassure me?

Well, first of all, I was asked almost three years ago, when I was appointed as president, to ensure that there was greater access to the collections in Aberystwyth—that they were opened out to the whole of Wales and further afield. I believe we've already done that. We will continue with our digital programme—more and more of the collections will be digitised. Over and above that, this collection will also be added to our digital collections. So, in that sense, there will be more opportunity for people to access the collections in Aberystwyth without actually having physically to come to Aberystwyth. As well as that, we have other programmes that will add to that. So, yes, I am confident that, in five years' time, there will be a substantial increase in the numbers of people accessing collections in the national library through digital.

The project is predicated on providing access to people and focused on deprived communities. So, we would be working with 200 community groups. That's vastly more than the library works with currently and it's very exciting for us as an organisation. We have a 300-page activities plan within the proposal and—

Your current proposal or the new—?

In the current proposal that HLF have agreed in round one, there is a 300-page activity plan. So, in many ways, this project will actually be the transformational project for us to work with a very, very great number of—

Some would argue that that should be the case now.

It's an interesting one, and it is all about where we put our resources and, as the president's mentioned, what our statutory requirements are, and that's perhaps why we see this project as being so important to us, because it will move us somewhere we've never been before.

Okay, thank you.

Of course, if the Welsh Government wants to give us £6 million in additional money, we wouldn't have to ask the heritage lottery for the £5 million.

Diolch, Chair. You've already outlined some steps in terms of progress, in terms of coordinating your roles more strategically and more collaboratively, and that's extremely welcome for the writers and authors of Wales. So, in that regard, how are the bursaries going to be targeted for writers in a more collaborative way? Have you got a strategic, unified plan yet? I take it probably 'no', because it's not been brought forward to the board yet, this letter from the Minister. So, what are your future plans in this regard?

We had a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the next steps, under the leadership of civil servants from the department, and it was agreed that we would prepare a short strategy document together to outline what the next steps are, and we have taken some small steps, like one of our members of staff is now a part of the bursaries panel, and it was very welcome. The panel felt that his contribution was very worthwhile. We also agreed that we—. Because our panels meet five times a year, so it's a much more regular occurrence than the bursary panels, and we have that much broader scope, that we would share in a more structured way the gaps that we perceive to exist in Wales so that we say, 'Okay, we need to concentrate on this particular subject', and Literature Wales have agreed that they will support that by making particular calls for specific subjects, by saying to authors, 'Look, we need some gritty, young adult, dystopian fiction', or, 'We want something for under fives that looks at the legends of Wales', or, 'We want some adult fiction that is easy to read for reluctant readers'. So, they will actively invite those subject areas. 

So, that's very encouraging. In regard to the embryonic stage we are in, in terms of this cultural collaboration now for the future, do you feel that this is actively going to work as we move forward? Because there has been much water under the bridge in this particular matter, and I think it's really important for writers and authors across Wales that we get this right. So, in your regard, you are absolutely wedded to the idea now that there will be a more collaborative and strategic approach, and you believe that you will be working towards more unified strategies around the bursaries. 

I think—. I wouldn't say they're 'unified', but they're very joined-up.

They're complementary. 

They're complementary. 

Okay. 

Because the way it works is our grant system is geared towards the publishing industry, so it goes to publishers, and the grants from Literature Wales are geared towards writers and—

I'm a former member of the books council, so—. Just in case others don't know.

And so they work very differently. But if we can coordinate and say, 'These are the gaps that we perceive in terms of talent', Literature Wales can support where maybe presses might feel, 'It's commercially not viable, but, actually, there are some really good ideas'. Literature Wales can feed authors through the grant system, and let them develop and take some risks that maybe a commercial publisher would not take, because, ultimately, all the applications that we get come from a publisher, and those publishers take a view on whether they want to take a risk on a particular publication. So, I think they are very complementary. 

I think also, just to add to that, although, of course, I'm reliant here on reports from Helga, because I don't sit on that particular joint committee at the minute, but what they're also working towards is constructing some sort of clear map of the provision that's available. So, you can see quite clearly then where you should turn, depending on what you have in mind, because I can understand, from the author's point of view, you've got two bodies and, actually, they are distinct and they do complement each other, but that may not always be clear to authors. Therefore, it would be good to have a chart, effectively, that would show exactly what the different schemes are intended to do. So, that's also in hand, as I understand it. 

Okay, and that would be very useful for us to be understanding of in the future, as a committee. You've mentioned, I think you called it the 'holy cow'. I remember 10 years ago, as a non-Welsh speaking parent of a Welsh-medium child, stating this very issue. So, I'm still marginally concerned that we haven't moved any further forward on that, bearing in mind the 1 million Welsh speaker target, bearing in mind investment across early years. Surely you have a very strategic role within that in terms of propagating future readers and, obviously, future writers? Why has that not been progressed? 

Well, I can't speak for the Welsh Books Council before I joined it. I am absolutely committed to making this happen. I'm a Welsh learner myself; I know exactly the challenges one faces when trying to get hold of books and understanding them in the very early stages of learning the language. I'm 100 per cent committed. I do think it needs to be done sensibly and sensitively as well, because the efforts that are made for the Welsh language community also need to be taken into consideration. But there are some—

Surely, there is too much sensitivity around this matter. If you know that you have a cohort of non-Welsh-speaking parents and this issue hasn't changed—it's grown—surely we now need to grasp the proverbial bull by the horns and go for it. 

Yes, and we're going to do that. There are already some developments under way where, for example—. There is actually no didactic consensus on what is the best way of doing this, whether it's bilingual books, whether the English text is underneath it, whether you should have flaps where there's—

That'll be for your discussion. 

There are actually some didactic considerations, and we need to work more closely with the education sector to really drill down to what it is that actually works, because I think in the past there have been maybe too many assumptions made about what actually works, and also not all things work for all people. That's another thing, but I tend to take a 70-per-cent-success-rate approach: if it works for 70 per cent of people, that's— 

Okay, I have a final question, if I may, Chair. The independent review, which I've referred to earlier on, said that your grant support does not encourage risk taking and testing of the market. So, have you any view?    

Again, I can't speak for the Welsh Books Council before I joined. I certainly am not risk averse. I quite like to try things, but we also have small sums of money available and we have to be careful that they are used in a sensible way. We have just recently, on the Welsh language side, I would say, taken risks through the support of Welsh magazines, and there were two websites that don't strictly fall into what we would typically fund: Mam Cymru is one, and the other one is Parallel Cymru. There were some concerns about some of the development they need so they didn't qualify for a fully fledged magazine grant, but they got development grants where we are giving them guidance on which areas they should be developing. There's absolutely no guarantee that anything will come of that, so I think this is a good example of taking some risks. 

With other areas, such as audio books, they are extremely difficult and expensive to produce. I don't feel that it would be a sensible risk to take out of the current grant provisions, but we're making some applications that—we're making to some third sector, especially Nesta, to see whether they will support some testing of the market, how we can develop—

And in regard to your position as chair, Wynn, have you got a view on that?

Sorry, yes. I was just thinking then, actually, that was why I had my head down. I was remembering—you know that format that's been so popular in Japan, what I call the picture books. There's a special name for them, isn't there?

Graphic novels.

Yes, those. I well remember the Welsh Books Council going out on a limb, actually, and commissioning some of those in Welsh. That didn't go down well. It turned out that, in fact, there isn't a great market in Wales for that type of book. It's a small example of the risks that we do routinely take anyway. I mean, there are certain innovative—

It's hard to understand, given the market for Marvel and—

Yes, it is, isn't it?

You'd think that would translate.

I think the market has changed, actually. I do think the books council was maybe a little bit ahead of its time. 

Do you want us to have another go at it?

Possibly. 

I like them.

We are ready—. We are ready because of that—

You should make a female politician superpower. 

You're supposed to do that, are you?

If you think about—

Yes, that would be good. Not thinking of anybody in particular. [Laughter.]

—Mellten the comic magazine—

They're very expensive. 

—for Welsh children. So, we are—. I think one of the key things is that we have to respond to how the market changes, and graphic novels and comics are a good example. Also, it is about—even within Wales, markets work differently. We had an extremely successful Eisteddfod, and comics sold disproportionately better in Cardiff than they probably will do in Llanrwst, and this is just a fact of life, and we need—

And you've not considered a bilingual Marvel comic with a strong female lead? We'll leave that to you—operational. [Laughter.]

Okay, we'll move on now. 

I will take that away as food for thought.

I could get into trouble. [Laughter.]

David, we're going to go to digital first, if that's okay. 

Yes. I think, last year, you said to this committee that you felt digital activity and digital engagement was an area you needed to do better in. Have you made some progress? Are you hopeful for the future? 

We've definitely made some progress in terms of our digital marketing, because, basically, I encouraged and instructed the sales and marketing department to really engage much more creatively because I think there was a sense previously that the books council should be very much operating in the background and shouldn't push itself too much. I've encouraged them to be a bit playful and to use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the way they are used and not worry too much about putting a foot wrong, because that was, I think, really the hindrance in the beginning, and I said to them, 'Look, take some small risks within certain parameters and see how it goes', and our social media following has really, really increased. We're routinely seeing 20 per cent to 25 per cent increases on our followers, engagement has increased, and following that involvement, we've—.

I've just recently reorganised the sales and marketing department to be split out so that we have a sales department that now also includes schools officers, and we're going to have a dedicated marketing department and also communications department. It's challenging to make this happen, because we have no additional funding. So, this is restructuring internal capacity to answer those issues, and the next step will be that we're looking for a more strategic partnership with PRs and communications agencies that can do the delivery for us so that we create the content and they make sure this content arrives in the right places because that level of expertise is unaffordable to us. We can't hire in the talent—the capacity—at those kinds of salaries. So, we're going to have a mixed approach where, internally, we're creating the stories and the content and then we're using the expertise to deliver it. 

In terms of the more obvious digital provision, which is Gwales.com, we have not made any progress because this is very much tied up with a bid for financial support to wholesale review and refresh the digital provision at the books council, and that includes its systems for distribution, finance and grants. There is, at the moment, an outline bid with Welsh Government. They confirmed that it made sense, but also confirmed that it was difficult to find the money. So, we're working, at the moment, with officers to see from where the finance for this can come. But, as you can imagine, a website that supports 15,000 individual titles with content is a pretty vast undertaking, and it's not something that we can do on a shoestring.

We had done a test bid with the National Lottery to see whether they would be interested in it, because we felt this is very much a community provision. They closed the door at the first test phase, saying, 'Doesn't qualify.' You have to try again, and try differently. I'm not going to be deterred from that. Certainly, looking at third sector funding opportunities is a key issue for us here, and we, very fortunately, connected with the Institute of Fundraising, and they have selected us to do some mentoring and some upskilling with our team, and we will be looking at other third sector grants, specifically for the digital provision, because it is just very costly to develop. But irrespective of the financial realities, we will have to do something in this area because, for me, Gwales.com is an important window, not just here, but also internationally. 

As chair, that's the biggest challenge that concerns me, actually, the IT challenge, because it's quite serious because it is quite challenging. It isn't only that the system that we've got and which we're entirely dependent on is now getting old, and, therefore, it does need updating, but, unfortunately, the company that installed it and that supports it is going out of business in a few years' time, and, therefore, we have had advance warning that, thereafter, there'll be no support for that IT system. So, we have to find a new one, and that's an expensive undertaking, and any help the committee could give us in that regard would be greatly appreciated. I mean, Helgard is already trying to think of all sorts of possible avenues, and it has already been raised, of course, very pointedly with the Minister, but it does concern me because, obviously, the books council can't function without a proper IT system, and just one aspect of it, to come back to what Helgard said, is there's a need now to refresh Gwales. I mean, the reason, you see, why Gwales needs refreshing is because the Welsh Books Council was first in that field in many respects in Wales, and it has been first with many innovations in the digital field. I mean, we could list them between us, going right back over the years, the apps and the e-books and all the rest of it. We've enabled publishers to take advantage of the digital revolution, but now, unfortunately, as I say, we ourselves are beginning to face a challenge. 

David. 

I wanted to talk about e-books as well, which, actually, you've heard mentioned and to say they've not quite become as dominant as was, perhaps, expected five or six years ago. I should mention I've published an e-book, and I was greatly helped because I did it in collaboration with a think-tank. Editorial and design work in particular was done by them, and it got reasonable distribution and got reviewed in several places. It was on constitutional thoughts: it was never going to be a mass seller, so it was, perhaps, quite—

Oh, I don't know; it was a failure of marketing. [Laughter.]

So, an e-book was quite a good approach. So, I'm just wondering what—. It seems to me, with e-publishing, it opens the market to a lot of authors. Now, the quality's going to vary, but is there any way of developing some basic packages to help with the actual design and the processes and where they may distribute and how that is done? And then, despite the fact, you know, if it does open to people a lot more opportunity, some literature will first appear in an e-book format that will really—. It will be a jewel, won't it, because we will be coming across new talent or new insight or whatever? So, how's this all affecting your work, or is it a bit parked in a corner now and we're not quite seeing the shift we were expecting?

It's quite an interesting—. Again, it shows how different the markets are. English language e-books are firmly established—they are seen as just another format. The majority of our English language publishers in receipt of grants publish pretty much everything as an e-book, and they then distribute through their various platforms. And it's just how it works. On the Welsh language side, the uptake has been much, much smaller. Even though we made, for quite a number of years, specific grants available for conversion to e-books in the Welsh language, the take-up is very, very small. So, some of the Welsh publishers are taking a strategic approach—they look at their list, they look at the books that lend themselves the most to e-books and they'll publish them into that format. But the take-up vary rarely is more than 5 per cent of the print sales, whereas, for some English books, it's often 25 to 30 per cent. So, that's the e-book provision that we support.

It doesn't happen the other way around where people publish in e-format first? That's the form of publishing, then, so it's not published traditionally.

It's not something that happens very often, if at all, with Welsh publishers. There are, however, in Britain, a number of commercial organisations that specialise in that. They're offering publishing services, and Amazon offers publishing services to authors—anybody can publish a book with Amazon if they so wish. So, in Britain, there are services available that authors can access, to varying degrees, depending on how much they are willing to pay—they get editorial services, a design service and so forth. So, there is actually a solid commercial provision that authors can access. I don't see it as the role of the books council to compete with those commercial providers. 

Okay. So, there's no gap in the market, then.

Not really. I think the only place where there may be a gap is, of course, on Welsh language skills, but there are a lot of freelance editors working who can be contracted in to ensure that the text is of a good quality. So, I don't see that as a role for us to compete in, in a section that is mainly not located in Wales but is accessible to British authors.

Thank you.