National book reserve ‘unsuitable’ for Oxford
The Bodleian will not contribute to a National Research Reserve
The head of Oxford University’s library services has condemned plans to increase storage space in British libraries by destroying duplicate copies of rare books and journals. Ronald Milne, Acting Director of University Library Services, said the idea of giving up some of the Bodleian’s collections to a national reserve was unlikely to be acceptable to the university.
A recent report, published by the British Library and the Consortium of Research Libraries, proposes that a National Research Reserve (NRR) run by the British Library would hold a single copy of each printed item. This would remove the need for Oxford and other university library services to retain their copies of the rarer books and journals. It would also mean the Bodleian would no longer be able to lay claim to holding a copy of every book every published in Britain.
Mr Milne disagreed with the proposals. “We need to keep more than one copy of any published item in the UK in case disaster should strike and we are left with no record of our printed heritage,” he said. Lisa Bendall, who works at the Institute of Archaeology, said, “destroying library material in the way suggested would be absolutely disastrous.” Prof Averil Cameron, Warden of Keble college, agreed.
“While there are storage problems, it would be a serious diminution of research facilities and provision,” she said. Although the report proposes the NRR should initially be for lesser-used and more unusual serial holdings, other forms of library resources could soon come under its extensive jurisdiction.
The British Library would administer the collection and control access for researchers across the UK, while university libraries could destroy part of their collections as a solution to the shortage of space. Within the next decade research libraries in the United Kingdom will need to find an extra 280 miles of shelf storage space if they are to retain their current books and continue adding to their collections at the predicted rate.
Milne told The Oxford Student that while plans for the future of UK research libraries might be a good solution for many university libraries, it was not a suitable plan for Oxford, which is the largest university library system in the world. “It is, in part, these collections which attract scholars of the highest repute to those institutions... If Oxford is to compete globally then the approach taken to library provision must allow for ‘elite’ collections.”
2nd Feb 2006