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.

    79/340 page 61
    country. We have noted particularly, that, in less than seven years, the NLLST has become a most important source of information for industry throughout the country, and as such is undoubtedly making an important contribution to the country’s economic wellbeing. Nevertheless, we have considered carefully whether there is a logical justification for having two large national scientific collections which at considerable cost substantially duplicate each other—the NLLST for lending and the NRLSI for reference. In Chapter 5 we have given figures for the direct costs of the NLLST’s services, but these exclude the cost of accommodating staff and stock. Our reason is that such figures as are available for buildings for all the libraries covered by our terms of reference are so artificial as to be misleading, if used for assessing the cost of providing modern facilities of the standard required. In estimating a realistic cost for the different kinds of library service, we must, therefore, add to the actual cost of staff, materials, etc., a notional sum for accommodation based on realistic present-day costs. For the NLLST, we have assumed a figure of 22s. per year per square foot of working and storage space, to cover the first cost of building, amortisation, maintenance, rates, heating and similar expenditure. On this basis the total unit cost per loan issue would be approximately 23s. (Appendix D). 241. In their evidence, the Trustees of the British Museum have argued that the maintenance of two comprehensive scientific libraries is not only costly, but also unnecessary, and that a single collection of scientific and patent material in central London can meet the needs of all users, by providing simultaneously facilities for photocopying and for personal reference. We do not think that much weight should be given to the present relatively low demand for photo- copies in comparison with loan requests. We believe that in time the present pattern of demand, conditioned as it is by the experience of many years when the supply of photocopies was both costly and slow, will change. The relative costs and advantages to both the user and to the supplying library of satisfying a request by loan or by photocopy have not been thoroughly investigated— and we hope that the DES will promote such a study as soon as practicable. 242. But the extent to which photocopies can replace loans is, in our opinion, secondary to whether a single collection can simultaneously perform a dual role when the total level of demand is high. The NRLSI has been designed on the open access principle to enable it to be used most effectively for browsing and general reference. On the other hand, the NLLST is organised very differently, in order to facilitate the rapid and certain location of publications for photocopying or despatch. Whereas the NRLSI at present successfully maintains a relatively small photocopy service, mainly used for patents, it is much more questionable whether it could handle sufficiently expeditiously, even with augmented facilities, the volume of demand of the present NRLSI and the NLLST together, When, in addition, it is appreciated that the use that is made of the existing photocopying and reference services of the NRLSI will almost certainly contine to grow substantially and that the loan and photocopying demands on the NLLST increased by 143,000 during 1968—the highest figure in that library’s history of rapid growth (Figures 4 and 5, pages 26 and 27)—it is likely that at least a 20-fold expansion of the photocopying capacity of the NRLSI would be necessary in the next decade, if it were decided to handle the combined traffic there. Quite apart from the fact that the costs of accommodation
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