Report of the National Libraries Committee.

  • Great Britain. National Libraries Committee
Date:
1969
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the National Libraries Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/340 page 17
    shows that, when allowance for this is made, the most intensively used stocks at Bloomsbury are pre-1700 literature and 20th century publications. The least intensively used stock was 19th century material. (d) Ways in which the library was used 55. Less than one fifth of all visitors to the library expected their work to be completed in one day or less. On the other hand nearly a third of the users estimated that their work would take longer than three months to complete. The April survey establishes that over half the visitors use the library to carry out a relatively long, continuous piece of research. In August, this proportion was even higher, about two thirds. 56. Both surveys showed that well over half the readers tried to obtain their requirements in another library before going to the British Museum Library. This supports the Trustees’ view that one of the most important functions of the BML is to serve as a library of last resort. Not surprisingly, the Department of Manuscripts differed from the other library departments in that only a quarter of its readers had tried other libraries. The surveys also established that about two thirds of the visitors to the library were principally seeking items that were known to them before their visit. Previously unknown items of literature were identified mainly by use of the BML catalogues and indexes (two fifths of all readers) and by consulting other reference books (one fifth of all readers). 57. Both the April and August surveys revealed that 6 per cent of all visitors intended to use departments of the Museum other than the four library depart- ments on the same day as their visit, but only about half of these considered it essential for their work to do so (Figure 14, page 93). The surveys indicated that there were only six visits by members of the staff of the Museum departments to the reading rooms during the combined period of the surveys. The Trustees have emphasised to us, however, that the staff use the library collections in other ways—for example, by personal visits to the shelves and by requisitioning books. There are no statistics by which an estimate of the importance of the former can be obtained, but the Trustees have stated that in a full year about 2,700 books are issued to staff of the Museum departments. Of these, about three quarters are delivered by the Museum’s internal messenger service, without the staff members who originate the requisitions having to visit the library. (e) Use of photographic services 58. The Trustees of the British Museum have provided information about the growth of the library’s photographic services. In the Department of Printed Books, the number of photographic orders has risen from about 3,000 in 1958 to over 20,000 (including rapid copy orders handed in at the reading rooms) in 1967 (Figure 2, page 18). During both user surveys an attempt was made to assess the potential use of the photographic services. A third of all readers indicated that they could have used photocopies instead of the original material which they consulted at the library. Of these, rather more than half could have supplied sufficient information to enable a photocopy to be made without their having to visit the library. Therefore, approximately one fifth of all visits to the BML could be expected to be satisfied by photocopy orders, if the user
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