ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s British public life came to be dominated by right wing politics and ideas perhaps more than at any time since the nineteen thirties. The remedy lay in a range of policy options from wholesale privatisation of public services to the development of quasi or internal markets within public institutions. This chapter concerns the impact of the restructuring of the British welfare state on public libraries, and community librarianship. However, the challenge of the 'new right', which paralleled its critique of other state institutions, was vociferous, outspoken and attained a high public profile in the broadsheet press. An entrepreneurial approach encouraged customer focused change and innovation, and this could only be good news for user oriented approaches. Other commentators broadly supported the adoption of entrepreneurial techniques, but had reservations about business values and ideology. Community librarianship, by the early 1980s, had become more than simply a series of initiatives and service practices.
