Editorial: Where does the British Library go from St Pancras?

Not surprisingly, there has been a fair amount of discussion in the UK national papers, the professional press, and also on various e-mail lists following the public opening of the Humanities and Rare Books reading rooms of the new British Library (BL) building in St Pancras earlier this year. When a project of this scale comes to fruition there will inevitably be some press and public comment. However the escalating costs, modern design, and construction delays of the St Pancras building have been so much the matter of public controversy over the last two decades that the eventual opening was bound to provide an opportunity to re-assess the whole project. After all, the origins of the project pre-date the establishment of the BL in 1972, and the initial projected date for the occupation of the new building was the late 1980s (Kenny, 1994).

Much of the recent comment has been appreciative of the new working environment provided for scholars. Most of the carping about the overall look of the building was done with several years ago, and took no account of the planning constraints imposed upon the architect, nor his aim to provide a building that was functionally impressive as well as aesthetically pleasing. Most of the recent criticism has been more in the nature of nit picking and complaints of the inevitable disruption of established work patterns. There were bound to be teething problems whilst the moves were still taking place, and they will no doubt continue over the next year as gradually more reading rooms are opened. However given the scale of the move, and that the building was handed over to BL staff only in July 1997 there is minor cause for congratulation that at least this aspect of the project was completed on-schedule and with a minimum of fuss.

I made my first visit to the new building in mid-May, a fortnight before writing this Editorial. I was not a user on this occasion – that will have to wait until the end of the summer term – but was attending a reception to mark both the opening of the new Music Reading Room, and the launch of a new distance learning module in Music Librarianship. However those attending the reception were given a tour of the Reading Rooms and associated workrooms, as well as provided with the opportunity of visiting the stunning public exhibitions in the three galleries. My initial reactions were quite positive, both in aesthetic and practical terms. From the outside the building is not as imposing as the British Museum, but once inside it appears to be most impressive, and above all conducive to research and scholarship, which after all is its primary function. In spite of earlier newspaper reports about shoddy workmanship, the standards in the public areas and the quality of the fixtures and fittings appeared to be high. The obvious pride in the new building displayed by our guide and also by other members of staff with whom we spoke, was also an indication that from a functional point of view the building was working effectively.

I was never a great admirer of the old Round Reading Room at Bloomsbury, which after the initial feelings of awe upon entering it for the first time, quickly proved to be an uncomfortable and distracting place in which to work. Whenever possible I would decamp to the North Library, or indeed use some alternative collection. The various campaigns to save the Round Reading Room always struck me as unfortunate and ill conceived: a distraction by a vociferous minority to the development of a modern national library service. The new accommodation for readers at St Pancras appears to be far more amenable, and takes full advantage of the opportunities offered by new technology, in terms of locating, ordering, and receiving and using materials. Of course there have also been claims that the development of information technology over the last two decades has rendered the whole idea of a large national library building superfluous, but only by people who have no need of research collections. During in a thirty-year career in libraries I have witnessed no end of predictions of the imminent demise of the printed book, coupled with the remorseless annual increase in book production.

The new site does have some disadvantages for both visitors and staff, such as the dearth of decent restaurants and bookshops nearby, but these problems should be of relatively short duration, as the scale of the enterprise will inevitably have an effect on the surrounding area. More significant however, have been the reductions in opening hours and staffing levels at certain times, and ominous rumours about further reductions in service in years to come. There is little advantage from the users’ point of view in having an automated system for ordering and delivering items, if they have to queue for twenty minutes at the end of the working day to hand them back. The current reduction in evening opening hours from the projected five nights a week to only two nights until 20.00 represents a substantial diminution of service levels.This is particularly so for remote users such as myself, who tend to visit the library for occasional bouts of intensive use. Thus it is now far easier for me to identify and order materials in the new library from home, but correspondingly more difficult to make use of them when I arrive.

At the root of all these problems is, of course, a question of money. The grant in aid from the British Government for the year 1998/9 is £80.45 million. The Treasury, still smarting from the enormously increased costs of the new building, largely brought about by its own and other government departments’ maladministration of the project over two decades, has informed the BL that planning should be on the assumption that this figure will not rise in real terms in future years. However there is already estimated to be an under funding of about £8 million merely to maintain existing programmes and to meet deficits carried over from 1997/8 (British Library, 1998). The immediate response is the already obvious reduction in overtime budgets, other results such as cutbacks in expenditure on acquisitions and conservation will take some time to become apparent.

The long-term prognosis is also fairly gloomy. Due to continuing growth in the rate of acquisitions (both in terms of costs and volume), the likely increased use of the collections in the new building, and the increasingly urgent need for preservation, this funding shortfall will have risen to about £19 million by the year 2003/4. These figures relate only to the maintenance of current policies and programmes and take no account of the considerable need to invest in emerging digital technologies. They also do not take account of previously unforeseen costs such as adapting computer systems to make them “millennium compliant”.

The BL is of course a hostage to its own previous strengths. The richness of its printed collections, not only in UK materials but also in all literatures inevitably attracts large numbers of visitors each year (and no doubt is the source of considerable invisible earnings to the British economy in this respect). The same could be said of the range of other formats and collections such as music, maps, manuscripts, and the National Sound Archive. The BL also operates one of the largest and most successful international document supply services and provides a range of bibliographic services which are the envy of other developed countries. The library has hitherto been active in promoting innovation and co-operation in UK and international library world, as well as acting as one of the agencies overseeing research and development in this area. Whether the BL can continue to fulfil all of these roles, or whether it must identify and concentrate upon its primary mission, is now the subject of urgent and detailed consideration.

‘BL2001’, an internal programme of change management, is described as ‘a major process of change designed to build on its current strengths and to meet the major challenges of the next few years’. The programme is managed by a steering group chaired by the Chief Executive, and will take as its starting point the strategic objectives for the year 2000, published in 1993 (British Library, 1993) and which still remain largely valid. During the spring and summer there is planned to be ‘an intensive period of discussion and consultation about the future led by task forces working on four key areas: a Strategic Review, a people strategy, communications, and income generation’. The Briefing Paper was issued in May to staff and trades union and for discussion at meetings of the Library’s Advisory Council and Advisory Committees, prior to the publication of a formal consultation paper to staff and users late in June. The deadline for responses to the consultation paper will be 1^st August for agreement of a new Strategic Framework document in October followed by discussions with the new Department of Culture Media and Sport in the autumn. The overall aim of the consultation exercise is to provide a clearer sense of purpose and direction for the BL into the next century.

The Strategic Review at the heart of the process will consider each of the BL’s various roles, which are identified and listed in detail in an annex to the Briefing Paper. Some of the peripheral responsibilities of funding LIS research, and representing the interests of the library and information professions to central government may devolve to the Library and Information Commission. However the core activity of collecting, processing, storing, preserving, and making available library materials will remain with the BL. This not only includes the UK legal deposit and heritage reference collections, but also the extensive overseas collections, the non book materials and all those items retained for document supply purposes.

Whether all of these functions and collections can be continued at the existing levels is open to debate. One of the subjects the Strategic Review will wish to consider is whether the time has come for bilateral agreements to be made with other national libraries regarding the provision of required items in their collections (in electronic format). An alternative scenario might be co-operative acquisition agreements for foreign materials with other specialist libraries in the UK such as the University of London School of Slavonic and East European Studies or the School of Oriental and African Studies. Other possible solutions to the funding shortfall may be through increased efficiency and more flexible work patterns, although to some degree likely savings have already been budgeted for. A fourth possibility may be some additional income generation either by developing existing commercial activities, through partnerships with the private sector such as the Digital Library Private Finance Initiative, which was launched in 1997. There is no mention in the documentation issued so far about the imposition of new charges for services, but presumably nothing can be ruled out.

One of the stated aims of the BL is to implement a cultural change aimed at achieving a vision of a national library which is: focused on its users, with funding for investment, adaptive and responsive to change and has high staff morale and good leadership. The somewhat brief consultation process with users will take place during the summer. However, what exactly constitutes a user? Is it someone who regularly visits the collections, or someone like me who will visit intermittently but who constantly uses the bibliographic and document delivery services of the BL at a distance? How will the needs of users of the National Sound Archive rate compared to those of map collections. It is open to doubt whether such an amorphous group with diverse interests will be able to articulate clear priorities in any meaningful way. Whichever of the difficult decisions is made will appear to some as a reasonable compromise given the financial siutation, and to others as an unacceptable diminution of the existing service.

Given the position of the BL as both the guardian of our literary heritage and also as a leader of the information professions in the UK, it is important that all those concerned with these matters should join in the debate on the future funding and levels of its service. It appears to be a singularly British trait that we can never go the extra mile and see visionary projects through to their natural conclusion. The BL has at last moved into its fine new building, and is standing on the threshold of a digital revolution, which will offer enormous opportunities for developing a national library service appropriate to the twenty-first century. It has the potential to be one of the greatest libraries in the world. Yet it is now being subjected to considerable financial difficulties, which will inevitably tend to undermine the achievement for decades to come.

David Stoker

May 1998

British Library. (1993). The British Library: for scholarship, research and innovation : strategic objectives for the year 2000. London: British Library.

British Library. (1998). British Library strategic review: initial briefing paper. (unpublished).

Kenny, Anthony, (1994). The British Library and the St. Pancras building. London: British Library.