I attended another meeting yesterday focussing on the problems besetting the British public library system. Tim Coates has written about it on his Good Library Blog. I was delighted to see his reference to my old friend William of Ockham. Not much is known about his life except that he was born in Ockham in Surrey and the medieval church there has had a stained glass window of him installed.

The paintings of him aren't very helpful but here's a colourful one looking rather like a cartoon monk.

What I really like about him is the vagueness of it all. His name is spelt several different ways. According to this brilliant article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy he wasn't the originator of his famous philosophical razor concept, nor did he even use the word 'razor'. The concept is written in Latin - entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - and can be interpreted in any number of subtly different ways.

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

"Simpler theories are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones.

"Don't multiply entities beyond necessity."

"Plurality should not be assumed without necessity."

“It is useless to do with more what can be done with less.”

The amount of hot air being expended on library funding, management and objectives might be significantly reduced by the application of old Bill Occam's razor and a review based on these five Occamesque observations from Tim Coates.

-  The library service is for people and its only purpose is to respond to their needs  (currently it does not do this adequately)

-  It is essentially about reading  (currently it is not sufficiently so)

-  Its operation must be simple (because at present it is too complex)

-- Those responsible for providing the service are those who work in the libraries (currently they are not able to be).

-- Those accountable to the public are councillors  (currently they do not account).

And please may we ignore for this exercise other bons mots such as 'The devil is in the detail' or Einstein's "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."

Bill's contemporary version is "Keep it simple, stupid" and I suggest that all library acronymic participants adopt this as their mission statement.