The Government's Response: Key Principles The central message of Empowering the Learning Community is that greater collaboration is needed between institutions in the library and education sectors in order to secure better value for money and support our national agenda for lifelong learning. The lack of such institutional collaboration can result in a barrier to participation in learning. In addressing the Task Group's recommendations, we have been mindful of the legislative, administrative and financial constraints within which the library community currently has to operate. However, we believe that the focus for all action must be learners - and potential learners – themselves. Their needs and wishes should drive the system. The Library and Information Commission's report argues forcibly that collaborative working can improve the quality of people's learning experiences. However, there are a number of factors to take into account in considering collaboration. For example, the needs of different groups (for example, families, school students, young people seeking work, adults in work and community groups) vary widely. The particular circumstances of individual institutions will also dictate how they might work together. Finally, geographical location can also have an effect. Our aim in responding to the Task Group is, therefore, to go with the grain of initiatives which reflect local needs and to encourage institutions at national and local level to take account of best practice. We do not wish to impose 'top-down solutions'. There is already a good deal of collaboration between the library and education community at both national and local level. For example: the British Library has an annual programme of financial support to higher education and local authority libraries; and the Higher Education Funding Council for England encourages collaborative working with its sector and funds the loan of research books to other institutions. Both bodies have recently formed a Task Force to support the needs of research libraries. Where a school decides to site Information and Communication Technology (ICT) equipment funded by the National Grid for Learning in its library, consideration should be given to allowing community access to these facilities out of school hours, where practical. the National Lottery's New Opportunities Fund supports Community Grids for Learning; local education authorities are encouraged to work closely with other sectors, including libraries, as part of the Regional Broadband initiative (which aims to deliver vfm broadband connectivity for schools);  and in areas such as Sunderland, Sheffield, Shropshire and Norfolk, public libraries and educational institutions are collaborating in imaginative ways to support learners in their communities. It is clear to us that there is a great deal of potential for developing and expanding such practices - to the mutual benefit of institutions and the wider community. But we believe that, to achieve this, potential partners need greater knowledge and understanding of: what learning resources are available locally and how they can be accessed; what learning resources local people want and/or need; and how effective different collaborative arrangements are. In order to take forward the ideas set out in Empowering the Learning Community, the Government has identified several priorities for action: to identify best practice in collaborative working; to evaluate and disseminate the effectiveness of different approaches; to identify the perceived and actual barriers to participation in learning and to consider options for removing them; to devise tools to identify user needs and to monitor and benchmark collaborative projects; to encourage publicly-funded organisations to work across sectors in support of lifelong learning; and to encourage debate in the English regions on how to develop local collaborative working. In acting on these priorities, DfEE and DCMS will work with Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the successor to the Library and Information Commission.

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