Roly Keating
Chief Executive
British Library
96 Euston Road
London
NW1 2DB
06 June 2014
An
open letter to Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library
Dear Roly,
I spoke to you a while
ago at a dinner of the society of Bookmen where you gave a presentation, and I
suggested that British Library, if it is to serve Britain, rather than just
London, should have reading rooms across the country, at least in the major
cities such as (in alphabetical order) Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol,
Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Southampton.
I would like to explain
my reasoning for this proposal, together with some suggestions as to how it
might be achieved.
The British Library is
intended (together with the National Libraries of Wales and Scotland) to serve
all the people of the United Kingdom in their scholarly activity. However, for many people it is extremely
expensive to have to travel down to London in order to consult the Library’s
collection. As the number of books that
can be reserved is limited it can often take several days of research at a time
to cover all the books that are wanted, and this means either multiple train
tickets or the even greater cost of staying overnight in London. Scholars who
are based outside London therefore need great dedication to give up whole days
for what may turn out to have been the wrong books and either deep pockets or
someone else who will fund their travel.
I appreciate that the
late opening of the Library which at least means that it is possible to get
several hours work in the library whilst making use of saver tickets, but it
still means taking a whole day away from work, and adding perhaps four or more
hours travel time to make use of the library.
There is also the problem that arriving later, as cheap tickets require,
means that all the desks may already be taken.
Therefore to better
serve the people who live outside the M25 I think that there is a need for
access to the library more locally.
Given that the vast majority of books are now stored in Boston Spa and
therefore have to commute to London there is little reason why they should not
also commute to other locations.
I envisage this working
by cooperation between the BL and university or city libraries which could
dedicate some space specifically for consultation of BL resources. This space would obviously have to be
available to any BL ticket holders, and whether it is staffed by BL staff or
subcontracted to the local library would a detail that needs to be sorted out. Given the cost of distributing books and the
(presumably) considerably smaller size of local reading rooms it may not be
appropriate to have daily deliveries, but once or twice weekly should be
possible to each branch from Boston Spa (with books from London’s holdings
presumably going via Boston Spa).
Not only would this
significantly reduce costs for scholars based in the provinces it would also
reduce pressure on reading space in London.
I am aware that there
are many problems that would have to be resolved (clearly many fragile books and
manuscripts cannot easily be moved, but that is a fraction of the holdings). There would also be some additional funding
required to cover staff costs in the local reading rooms and distribution of
the books to them, but if the British Library is to truly fulfil its remit to
be a library for the whole nation, rather than just for London and the wealthy,
then I am sure that with some effort these could be resolved.
I hope that you will
consider these ideas and the possibility of at least a trial in a couple of
centres.
Yours sincerely
Tom Franklin
