Press Release - The British Library - Providing services beyond
the Reading Rooms
25 May 2004
Sir John Bourn, Head of the National Audit Office, told
Parliament today that the British Library is responding well to the
opportunities and challenges of providing services in the
electronic era, that the Library has undergone significant and
beneficial organisational change, and that it has made important
recent improvements to the services that it offers beyond its
reading rooms. At the same time some aspects of the service could
be made more user-friendly and the Library needs to remain vigilant
in ensuring that the full benefits from its programme to convert
material to digital form can be sustained in the long term.
Due largely to the advent of the electronic journal and the
development of new publisher business models, the Library’s
Document Supply Centre has seen the volume of its business decline
by almost a third between 1998 and 2003. The Library has responded
to this challenge well by embarking on a major programme of
modernisation so that its services continue to be valuable to
customers. It remains an important part of the United Kingdom’s
research infrastructure and supplied 2.76 million items to
customers in 2002-03.
Customers hold the Library’s document supply service in high
regard, particularly for its speed, customer interface and breadth
of collection. However, some consider that the service could be
made more user-friendly, especially in the area of catalogue
searching.
The price of the document supply service has increased
significantly in recent years. This is partly a result of the
Library ensuring that it recovers its costs at a time of falling
demand, but also due to increasing copyright charges (which are
outside the Library’s control). The system for setting prices is
complex and users would welcome better explanation for the charges
they pay.
Over two million people access the Library’s website a year. The
Library’s site (www.bl.uk) performs well in assessments of its
accessibility to people of all physical abilities. In terms of how
useable the site is, the Library has improved considerably over the
last few years, and follows best practice in a number of areas,
though some users still have problems with layout and clarity of
information.
An important aspect of the Library’s online services is its
digitised collections, which consist of digital images of some of
the most important holdings in its collections, such as the
Lindisfarne Gospels. These digitisation projects serve a range of
audiences and have proved to be popular. However, as the Library is
dependent on external funding for digitisation, it needs to work to
sustain free access to such material as funding is generally
concentrated on creating digital images rather than maintaining
them. In addition to this, given the resources (in terms of effort
and money) going into digitisation in the cultural sector and
beyond, it is important that organisations carrying out
digitisation collaborate to share best practice.
Sir John Bourn said today:
" The Library is providing an important range of
services beyond its reading rooms, which are generally of a high
quality. It deserves much credit for responding well to the
increased competition to its document supply services and for the
other improvements it is making to its remote
services.
Digitisation has proved to be popular. For example, it
gives us the opportunity to virtually "turn" the pages of
manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels. It is important that
the Library and other organisations collaborate to exploit fully
the great opportunities for providing materials of relevance to a
wide range of users. In addition the Library needs to take care to
ensure that access to digitised material can be sustained beyond
the short to medium term."
Notes for Editors:
- The British Library is the national library of the United
Kingdom and is a Non-Departmental Public Body sponsored by the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It was constituted by the
British Library Act, 1972, and is home to one of the world’s
greatest collections, comprising more than 150 million items
representing every age of written civilisation. The collections
cover manuscripts, printed matter, sound recordings and digital
materials.
- The British Library’s turnover in 2003-04 was £121 million. It
acquires a substantial part of its collections through legal
deposit. The Library’s Document Supply Centre is located at Boston
Spa, Yorkshire and is the world’s largest collection devoted
exclusively to document supply. Revenues from the Document Supply
Centre contributed £17.4 million to the Library’s turnover in
2003-04.
- Press notices and reports are available from the date of
publication on the NAO website,
which is now at www.nao.org.uk. Hard copies can be
obtained from The Stationery Office
on 0845 702 3474.
- The Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, is the
head of the National Audit Office which employs some 800 staff. He
and the NAO are totally independent of Government. He certifies the
accounts of all Government departments and a wide range of other
public sector bodies; and he has statutory authority to report to
Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which
departments and other bodies have used their resources.
Press Notice 54/04
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