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Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 210 - 219)

WEDNESDAY, 21 APRIL 2004

MRS LYNNE BRINDLEY, MR PETER FOX, MR FREDERICK J FRIEND AND MS DI MARTIN

  Q210  Chairman: Good morning. Thank you for coming and helping the Committee with its inquiry. I am sure you have been following it, line by line, sentence by sentence. Libraries have told us that there is a crisis in the provision of scientific publications: publishers vigorously deny this. Tell me the truth. Who is right? They cannot both be right.

  Mr Friend: There is certainly a crisis, in that libraries are not able to buy all the content that they need to supply their users, and the reason for that is that the periodical side of our budgets is rising much more rapidly than the cost of other information. That is the key factor.

  Q211  Chairman: Can you quantify that? Is there a way of measuring that?

  Mr Friend: We have supplied figures in the written evidence.

  Mr Fox: I can give a specific example. In Cambridge 10 years ago, scientific journals took about 25% of the materials budget, and currently that is 33% and rising, which means in our situation that that is taking about half a million pounds a year out of the resources available for purchasing books and journals outside the scientific area—maps, music and electronic resources and so on.

  Q212  Chairman: Publishers tell us that the problem lies with libraries and their failure to promote themselves to university authorities. They are saying you are a bunch of wimps really, I guess. Is that true?

  Mrs Brindley: That is an unacceptable comment, lacking in any evidence, frankly. I would support my colleagues in saying university libraries have made major efficiency gains to cope with enormous expansion of students. Indeed, from the British Library's point of view, we have coped with 43% inflation over five years in journals, which has meant an additional £2 million cost, and we have had to find that from internal efficiency gains. We have done that very transparently in a way that might be commended to publishers.

  Q213  Chairman: It is rumoured that a lot of people say that with the digital age you do not need those vast ranges of buildings that you have now, and the huge acreage they cover—not that I have noticed. Is that true, that the digital age makes it a very different game?

  Ms Martin: Our evidence is contrary to that remark, Chairman. We have seen an exponential rise in use of digital information, but we have seen no reduction in usage statistics of our buildings, or indeed in our book loan figures.

  Q214  Chairman: What about overheads? What proportion of library costs is spent on overheads, and how do you account for that?

  Ms Martin: If I could answer with some examples from the University of Hertfordshire, we have seen a reduction in staffing rather than an increase. We have had to re-direct that staffing to create an additional post to deal with licensing issues. I would say that there has been a reduction in overhead rather than an increase.

  Q215  Chairman: If somebody said, "be more efficient", could you be more efficient?

  Ms Martin: I think we have been being more efficient over a decade now.

  Q216  Chairman: It is just another bit of impertinence to suggest that, you think.

  Ms Martin: It is a requirement of the university. We have had to invest so much more in our information provision budgets that we have been forced to make efficiency gains in other areas to support that.

  Q217  Chairman: The idea being touted is that you are planning digital-only publications? Are you planning that? Are you going to increase the pace on that? Will it make any difference in terms of overheads; or are you just having to do it because nobody loves you any more in the university sector?

  Mrs Brindley: The evidence, and certainly the work done on behalf of the British Library in advance of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act, suggested that we would be living, at least until 2020, with a very hybrid system of both digital and print publication, so I think it is too simplistic to suggest that everything is immediately digital and that you do not need buildings and so on. The evidence, certainly from the use of our new building, is very much that people do still come in to consult material. They of course consult both print and digital material. One inhibitor to moving faster on the all-digital front is the lack at the present time of a secure, long-term preservation and access infrastructure to give that reassurance to libraries and indeed publishers and science, that that record of science will be kept in perpetuity, and providing access to it. That is clearly an area where the British Library has a very strong role to play.

  Q218  Dr Iddon: Turning to bundling of hard copy and digital copy, why is bundling so unpopular with libraries?

  Mr Fox: It is starting to skew the way that we spend our money. Bundling requires us to buy journals that we do not necessarily want in order to acquire things that we do want, and is pushing more and more of our budget into the pockets of a smaller and smaller number of publishers. It is skewing the budget. As with the answer to the first question, the cost of journals is reducing the amount of money available for other things. Bundling is reducing the amount of money available for the output of the publishers that do not bundle.

  Q219  Dr Iddon: Research output has grown, and with it the content of journals. Have your budgets grown in line with that?

  Mr Fox: No, our budgets have gone up roughly in line with the way that universities' budgets have gone up over the last eight years.


 
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