Library Support for Features
Beyond the News and Current Affairs Output: an account of the BBC Reference
Library Service
(scanned copy - there may be
mistakes)
Those
who work in the press and broadcast media are essentially concerned with two
tasks: the reporting of news, and the providing of public entertainment. Of
these, the latter is the most important, and in the last resort, even the most
hard-bitten news journalist has to recognise that he or she is in the
entertainment business. As the Royal Commission on the Press stated in 1947/8,
"To be news an event must first be interesting to the public... And
second... it must be new"1.
All areas of the mass media therefore need to keep a balance between the novel,
the informative, and the entertaining, the exact mix of each will depend very
much on the character of the publication or broadcasting service. Newspapers,
magazines, radio, and television all need a steady diet of stories which are
interesting, exciting, glamorous, sad, or merely off-beat to engage and keep the
attention of their readers, viewers, or listeners. No mass audience publication
or broadcaster could survive by giving it's patrons a diet of hard news alone,
it has to be tempered, at times with lighter materials, and also on occasions
with more considered and reflective pieces.
The
various library and information units which serve workers in the print media
have therefore to be able to cope, not only with the traditional information
needs of those journalists working with the first few pages of "hard
news", but also to provide a service that satisfies the needs of others on
general features, reviews, fashion pages, problem pages, quizzes, and sports
coverage. In addition there are the requirements of the journalists who write
for the magazine supplement, the contents of which may be quite divorced from
what may be recognised as "news". This problem is just as great for
libraries serving broadcasters, where there are many and varied programmes other
than the news and current affairs sequences, which will have quite specific
information needs. Some of these will be essentially factual in content - such
as magazine programmes, or documentaries - others will be fictional - such as
drama or light entertainment. However they will all need a host of background
information to give a convincing and entertaining picture of the world.
Although
radio and television programme makers and broadcasters will have a very wide
range of information needs, and make use of many different audio and visual
formats, nevertheless the printed word continues to be the most versatile and
effective means of information storage, and will inevitably form the basis for
much of their research. Thus there is the continuing need for textual
information in all parts of the media; not just in the form of news cuttings,
but also in the form of books, periodicals, and other documents. Even the
traditional news journalists will sometimes require access to documentary
sources outside the limits of the traditional newspaper cuttings library.
This
chapter therefore examines the library support from printed and documentary
sources, available to journalists and programme makers in the world's largest
broadcasting and programme making organisation - the BBC. In particular it will
look at the Reference Library service, which provides information to BBC staff
primarily working in areas other than the traditional news and current affairs
output, rather than the News Information service (which provides the newspaper
cuttings libraries). This is not because the work of the latter is any less
important or demanding but rather because it is not dissimilar to the work of
many newspaper and other news libraries already described in this work (although
it is perhaps on a larger scale).
Over
the last sixty years the BBC has invested a considerable amount of its resources
into the provision of library and information services, some of which have
gained considerable renown. It is therefore worth examining the work of the
first of these libraries to be established in some detail. This is not because
it is typical of the library services provided in this field, but rather because
the service is so well established, and is involved with serving workers in all
sections of the press and broadcast media. Thus they face all of the same kinds
of operational difficulties experienced by other media reference libraries only
on a larger scale.
BBC
Reference Libraries - Historical Background
Speaking
of her days as the "Assistant to the Artistic Director" of the British
Broadcasting Company, Florence Milnes described how "the pavements between
Savoy Hill and the British Museum Reading Room were worn smooth by my repeated
journeys in search of information and it was apparent to me from the beginning
that there was, and increasingly would be, the need for a library which would
function in the same way as does a University Library for its students - a place
to which all those concerned in the art of broadcasting would come for help by
trained librarians"2. This
was in 1925, when British broadcasting was in its infancy, radio was still very
much a novelty with its audience, and the BBC did not yet see itself as a
channel for disseminating news. Yet it was already apparent that a diet of music
and entertainment alone would not be sufficient to sustain the radio audience;
ideas were required for programmes that would convey interesting, informative,
and above all accurate information. Miss Milnes, at least, had sufficient
foresight to realise that such programmes would have great need of an effective
library and information service.
However,
it was not until 1927, after the events surrounding the 1926 General Strike,
before Miss Milnes was authorised to begin such a service, starting with an
encyclopaedia, the Bible, and an unsorted mass of press cuttings. The BBC
managers at last realised they were dealing with a most powerful medium for
communication of information of all kinds, which had responsibilities to its
audience. From this small beginning, there developed the BBC's very large
network of specialist library and information services which together now employ
several hundred staff and deal in all forms of recorded information.3
Since that time, the information needs of the world's largest broadcasting
organisation have grown and diversified beyond the wildest dreams of the
pioneers, and the Corporation has established a range of large and very
effective library and information services coping with the different storage
media required as an essential part of its work. Yet at each of its main centres,
the BBC continues to maintain an extremely busy library service, providing
information from traditional printed sources, such as books and periodicals, and
also increasingly from Online and other computerised services. In spite of the
many specialised libraries in the BBC, Miss Milne's original idea of a
"university" library for broadcasters, has not therefore been
superseded.
The
BBC Reference Library service, as it soon became known, grew fairly steadily
during the first half century of its existence, and gained a reputation for very
high standards, but it did not really change or develop along with the
institution it was serving. By the mid-seventies it had become a curiously
old-fashioned institution with one large and very well used central library
(based close to Broadcasting House, the centre for domestic radio broadcasts)
backed up by two significantly smaller branch libraries serving Television and
Overseas Broadcasting in London. Books were still seen as the major resource for
answering enquiries and providing information, and in the Central Reference
Library at least, the periodicals collection was kept and manned quite
separately, with comparatively little co-ordination or contact between their
respective staffs. Although the Corporation as a whole was subscribing to vast
numbers of periodicals and newspapers, delivered directly to production offices
and not seen as a potential library resource. Only a tiny proportion eventually
found their way back to the library.
In
the meanwhile the whole pattern of British broadcasting, and the structure of
the Corporation had long since changed. Above all the Television Service by then
employed far more staff and had potentially had far more complex and demanding
information needs than either of its two elder sister services, yet the
accommodation for the branch library for the Television Service was then
woefully inadequate and the staff were then working in impossibly cramped and
pressurised conditions. Secondly, broadcasting was no longer as centred in
London, except for a few local and regional programmes. National Broadcasting
centres in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and Network Production Centres
in Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol were all making ambitious and
sophisticated programmes for broadcast throughout the British Isles, although
without adequate access to many of the information services based in London. A
number of much smaller Reference Libraries had also been established in the main
regional broadcasting centres, but these were under separate management, and
they tended to be badly understaffed and underfunded, and so were never
self-sufficient. Many of the programme makers working outside London saw
themselves as greatly disadvantaged compared to their colleagues at the centre.
Another
major problem was that because the staff were always so busy, there was never
any time to edit the bookstock which just continued to grow. A proportion of the
books were acquired by purchase, but many more were former review copies or else
had been received by gift or bequest. Also because of the potentially unlimited
subject interest of users of the service, it was impossible to say with
certainty that any item would never again be required. Thus the Central Library
also tended to quickly outgrow its space allocation, moving during the mid 1960s
from a suite of rooms allocated to it in Broadcasting House, to the Dining Room
and a host of basement rooms in the old Langham Hotel opposite.
Ultimately
it was the very high prices of property in central London which forced the BBC
to reconsider its policy with regard to the location of its staff during the
early 1980s and gradually to transfer many centralised functions to new and much
cheaper accommodation in west London. Plans were drawn up to evacuate the
Langham and a number of nearby administrative offices, leaving only the network
Radio Service in Broadcasting House. The opportunity was taken to institute a
major re-organisation, rationalisation and modernisation of a number of BBC
library and information services during the early 1980s. These began in 1982
with the creation of a large new Department known as BBC Data which was
responsible for a number of library, information, and documentation centres in
London and the home counties, all dealing with textual materials.4
However
the major changes to the structure and work of the Reference Libraries took
effect in 1985. The large and monolithic Central Library that had more than
filled the Dining Room of the old Langham Hotel was replaced with a much slimmer
one designed to meet the needs of domestic radio only, and for the first time it
was also possible to integrate the periodicals collection with the book stock.
The bibliographic services staff of the old Central Library, and some of the
less used book stock were transferred to new accommodation adjacent to a new and
much enlarged Television Library at Woodlands, in the White City area, and close
to the Television Centre. At the same time many thousands of little used volumes
from the original library stock were withdrawn and sold.
The
1980s also saw major developments in the BBC's main regional broadcasting
centres, with the appointment of professional library managers to improve and
co-ordinate the small and varied library services in each centre. The existence
of such posts also provided more effective contact with the various libraries in
London.
Description
The
BBC Reference Library service is now one part of a much larger BBC Department
(BBC Data) which also encompasses, an equal number of newspaper cuttings
libraries (known as News Information Units), various specialised information
units such as the Pronunciation and Events Units, and a number of documentation
centres (including several registries, a Records Management Centre, a Script
Library, and the Written Archives Centre. There is no longer a General Manager,
but the various services are responsible to a Chief Librarian and a Registrar.
There were also a group of middle-managers responsible for the operation of each
of the libraries serving one of the three main broadcasting Directorates (Radio,
Television and External Services), so that there can be some degree of
co-ordination rather than competition between some of the different types of
library serving one group of customers.
There
are now four BBC Data Reference Libraries in London, serving the Radio,
Television, and BBC World Services. At
the time of the creation of the new and enlarged Reference Library for the
Television Service, the original small and cramped library in the Scenery Block
of Television Centre was also retained, refurbished, and converted into an Art
and Design Library to meet the special needs of the Design and Scenic Services
staff. Each library therefore aims to serve a particular group of clientele,
within the Corporation and has a large degree of autonomy. Yet equally they will
also make their resources available to the others, and to some extent will be
reliant on them. The four libraries also share a number of bibliographic and
computer services, encompassing book and periodical acquisitions, cataloguing,
circulation and Inter-library loans.
In
addition to the libraries in London there are also six smaller, but broadly
similar units in the larger regional broadcasting centres. The regional
reference libraries are managed locally, and are independent of BBC Data,
although they could not hope to be self-sufficient and so there is a large
degree of co-operation with those at the centre. There is also a specialist
library serving the BBC Monitoring Service at Caversham near Reading. The four
reference libraries in London have a stock of about 100,000 volumes and employ
about seventy staff.
The
term "Reference Library" in this context, is, and always has been a
misnomer; they have always provided books and other library materials for loan
to production staff, as well as providing a quick reference enquiry service,
principally by telephone. The name was only adopted to differentiate the
original library service, from the many new collections of gramophone records,
photographs, films, newspaper cuttings and scripts which were established as the
information needs of the Corporation became more diverse.
The
Users
The
work of this library service centres around the provision of a fact checking,
background information, and general inspiration for radio and television
programmes, of all kinds. Its principal customers are the makers of those
programmes, whether producers, scriptwriters, designers, directors, production
assistants, researchers, or technical operators and engineers. There are also
many categories of support staff associated with the provision of a programme
making and broadcasting service; such as the lawyers, publicity officers,
systems analysts, accountants, educational officers, personnel officers, all of
whom will require the services of a specialist reference library as an essential
part of their work. The BBC also engages in a number of commercial activities:
it is a major book and journal publisher in its own right, produces and
distributes gramophone records, cassettes and videotapes, and maintains its own
merchandising and sales units. Any member of the BBC programme making,
engineering, administrative, or sales staff is therefore a potential user of one
or more of these collections.
In
addition to the abovementioned, the BBC also undertakes two very particular
functions, both of which require their own dedicated and specialised reference
libraries. The first of these is the Engineering Research Department at
Kingswood Warren, where research is carried out into electronics,
telecommunications other broadcasting technologies, and where there is a
constant need for up to date scientific and technical literature. The other is
the BBC Monitoring Service at Caversham near Reading, where the Corporation
undertakes the monitoring of overseas radio and television broadcasts on behalf
of the British Government. To undertake this work effectively, the staff require
access to up to date and very detailed geographical, political, and biographical
information for the countries they are monitoring.
The
main users of the Reference Libraries are however the programme makers; the
producers, journalists, researchers, scriptwriters, announcers, directors, who
are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the broadcasting
network. These are frequently very creative and talented people, who can be
among the most demanding and ungrateful of all library clientele. They are
working in a very competitive business, and have had to be fairly egotistical
and ruthless to achieve what they have achieved, and will be anxious to move on
to bigger and better things. Many
are also insecure, both psychologically and literally (frequently employed on
contract for specific projects rather than as a member of staff). These are of
course very sweeping generalisations about a large and very varied group of
library users who by their nature tend to be individuals. There are of course
also many gracious, intelligent, and above all sane individuals among them.
The
number of individuals involved in the making of any one programme will vary
quite radically depending on the nature of that programme and the broadcasting
medium. The large teams of producers, production assistants, researchers
frequently brought together to work on prestige television programmes are
virtually unheard of in network radio, where much of the research work will be
undertaken by the producer and his or her secretary. In local radio the team
involved in one programme might well consist of a producer (who may also be
acting as a sound recordist and studio manager), a production secretary and the
contributor. The relatively high turnover of staff, in all programme making
areas, and the large number of temporary employees can create many problems for
the library services provided for them, principally because it involves them in
a constant battle to make potential users aware of the services available in the
Corporation, but also in terms of keeping track of individuals, who may have
urgently needed materials on loan.
Many
programme makers also tend to be hypersensitive and obsessive about their
present project, regarding it as the most important ever undertaken. This will
occasionally result in them making unreasonable demands on staff to drop
everything and go to endless lengths to satisfy their current request. Equally
they will occasionally give exactly the same enquiry to more than one type of
library, without informing them, or even notifying the other when one of them
has provided the answer. If left unchecked, these practices could result in an
extravagant use of resources, and be to the detriment of the service offered to
other users. Certain individuals also have a tendency to ignore any rules,
regulations or other petty obstacles that seem to be in their way, such as the
need to return books borrowed from other libraries. As a group, they can also be
very interested in the work of potential competitors in other parts of the same
organisation, and yet obsessively secretive about their own plans. They would be
happy to share an other's information sources and contacts, but not their own.
The
way in which some programme makers and broadcast journalists work will also
affect their use of library and information services, with some of the most
talented among them making discoveries through following hunches or by
serendipity, rather than a systematic search through the available sources. They
do not always know exactly what they are looking for, although they will
recognise it when, and if, it is eventually found for them. Many are working to
extreme deadlines (although sometimes these are self-created) and with rigid
restrictions on the amount of treatment they can give to a topic. Hence they are
frequently looking for digested material, which is why such heavy use is made of
newspaper or periodical articles, or popularisations of a subject. There is also
the need to trace an articulate expert in the field who may be interviewed and
questioned. They are not worried from what source their information comes, and
on the whole will take their sources for granted. They are constantly moving on
to new subjects or looking for the new angle on an old subject. This is also one
area of information work where the failure to trace published material on the
subject of their enquiry is exactly what the enquirer was hoping for. Serving
them can be a thankless task, but nevertheless a very rewarding task.
Enquiry
Services
In
the two largest library collections, serving the network radio and television
services respectively, the majority of enquiries are received and answered over
the telephone, with books, and other documents being despatched to production
offices by messenger where required, or else set aside so that the enquirer
might later visit and inspect them. Most users tend to be quite at home
conducting their business in this way and in any event they will be dispersed in
a number of different buildings, and rarely work in the same building as the
library. Equally the request may have come from one of the regional centres,
local radio stations, or an overseas offices, in which case the Corporation's
own delivery service, Datapost or facsimile transmission will be used to supply
the materials.
This
is not the case however in the much smaller World Services Library in Bush House
which is situated in the same building as the majority of its users, and so will
be visited by a larger proportion of its clientele. These may be programme
makers working for the English language World Service, or else one of the many
foreign language services. Similarly, the Television Art and Design Library is
very conveniently situated for use by the scenic and costume designers who make
up the majority of its clientele. These users will frequently need to consult a
wide range of different illustrative materials, and tend to have enquiries which
cannot be conducted over the telephone.
The
enquiry work of the various Reference Libraries is extremely varied and
rewarding for those staff involved, who unusually in such information work, will
frequently have the opportunity of seeing or hearing the fruits of their
endeavours on the air. Enquiry assistants are expected to provide information in
every conceivable discipline and at every level, from Childrens' and Schools
broadcasts to the work of the Open University, which makes use of a large number
of broadcast hours. An enquiry might be the checking of an individual fact, or
else it might encompass identifying and providing materials for the preparatory
research for a twenty part television series, scheduled for completion over a
two year period. It might be for brief programme notes to a classical music
concert to be broadcast that evening, or else providing background information
to a news story. Equally it might be information for a half-hour radio
documentary, or comedy show, or just a few points of consumer advice for an item
in a magazine programme.
There
is also the constant need to check facts of every conceivable kind - names,
addresses, dates, weights and measures, forms of address, titles of
publications, famous quotations, answers to quiz questions, or whatever before
material is broadcast. Such requests may have been submitted as a script days or
weeks ahead of broadcast, or far more commonly, will have cropped up minutes
before the programme is set to be recorded, or to go live on air. Thus many of
the requests are extremely urgent, and may involve several staff working
together. However at the same time some major projects or series might be
several years in the planning and production. This latter category might involve
the library staff throughout that period, with the production staff quite
legitimately requiring to use certain materials for a year or more. Undoubtedly
the BBC's reputation for generally high standards of factual accuracy has been
due in part to its investment in its library services.
Any
factual information given in answer to enquiries by the reference libraries has
to be reliable and, above all, up to date, for a large proportion of it might be
broadcast without further verification. The audience seem to take a delight in
informing the Corporation of any factual inaccuracies, and although these are
the responsibility of the producer or journalist, the library service is quickly
made aware in no uncertain terms if it has ever given incorrect information.
Answers are therefore frequently cross-checked in different sources, and any
errors, inconsistencies or ambiguities discovered in standard reference works
will be noted at the relevant point. Similarly the most heavily used directories
and biographical works will be updated on a daily basis from news items in the
press to ensure that the information given in them is as up to date as possible.
Thus the appearance of the New Year and Birthday Honours lists regularly cause
several man hours of work to up-date such works as Who's Who, Dod's, Debrett's,
or the Diplomatic Service List. Similarly the publication of each new edition of
these and other such works creates further hours work annotating them to bring
it up to date with the changes that have taken place whilst they were in the
press.
Past
experience and occasional disputes over the answers to the questions set on
radio and television quiz shows have shown that many famous printed
encyclopaedias will give quite different answers to the same question. This is
not merely the result of the information being out of date, many otherwise
reliable sources are occasionally ambiguous, inconsistent or simply wrong.
Equally they may have different answers as a result of differences in
definitions of the original question. Typical examples of such differences are
found in data relating to lengths of rivers, areas of oceans, holders of
sporting records. To alert themselves to any potential problems of this kind,
many of the important radio and television quiz shows now employ the Reference
Library staff to cross check their scripts to verify the answers in independent
published sources, at the same time removing any possible ambiguities from the
questions.
In
addition the BBC also has the unusual requirement to provide a "negative
check" service for any proper names or other means of identification which
are to be used in a fictional context to avoid the broadcast, so far as is
possible, of any inadvertent libels. This is in part due to the severity of the
British libel laws and to the very public nature of the Corporation's work and
its considerable potential to influence reputations. Over the years there have
been a significant number of such cases where the names used in fictional
programmes might have reasonably been linked to living people. This has either
resulted in acute embarrassment or nuisance to individuals, or else claims for
damages or loss of reputation, which have usually been settled out of court.
The
staff undertaking this work have to be aware that they are usually working with
names that will be heard by the audience rather than merely read. Thus it is
necessary not only to check any proper name in the form given in the script, but
also any homophones. For example in one comedy show about prison life the main
character ultimately found himself sharing a cell with the judge who had
convicted him, who himself had subsequently been imprisoned for corruption.
There was of course no judge with the name as given in the script, but to the
intense embarrassment of all concerned there was a real judge with a name
spelled differently, but pronounced in exactly the same way.
Any
names of individuals, companies, or products, any addresses, telephone or car
numbers or any other similar items of information which might cause such
problems have therefore to be checked to see that they do not exist before they
are used in drama or comedy programmes. This can involve staff searching through
various trade professional and directories, as well as contacting outside bodies
such as the various Royal Colleges or the Metropolitan Police to check on the
names of medical practitioners or policemen. Business and trade names, in
particular, can cause many problems in this respect, and at times it can be
extraordinarily difficult to be certain that a particular name does not already
exist, or is in the process of registration. In the past, this has involved
library staff in semi-weekly visits to Companies House to check their registers,
although for a number of years this has been done online. Scriptwriters and
library staff have also to be aware of the large number of registered trade
names that have been adopted into the language as generic terms from their
products, such as Hoover, biro, Sellotape, Xerox etc. In the vast majority of
such instances there is no problem and the owners of the trade name are pleased
to have the free publicity. However if, for example, a programme portrays a
situation of lives having been lost as a result of a failure in a public address
system, or else a portable building has been crushed by a falling tree, and uses
the widely accepted trade names to describe these products, it could result in
at least a broadcast apology, and at worst a substantial claim for damages.
A
significant proportion of the enquiry work, particularly for the Television
Service, has a visual element, and will involve the tracing finding of
illustrations, maps, plans, designs, or visual descriptions, perhaps from
historical sources. These might be of individuals, places, buildings, furniture,
tools, and items of costume or any other kinds of object. For example the
library might be asked what clothes would be worn by a nineteenth century navvy,
or how was the Kremlin furnished at the time of the Soviet Revolution, or
technical details of an Edwardian motor car. This demand for illustrative
materials affects the work of the library in many ways. A proportion of the book
stock will have been selected for its illustrative matter, and "coffee
table books", and glossy magazines will therefore have a useful place in
the library. Similarly there is therefore a need to incorporate details of the
presence or otherwise of any illustrative matter, including whether or not it is
in colour, within the catalogue entry for each book. Sometimes the most unlikely
sources can be the most useful, such as the kitchen utensils catalogue, which
provided a designer with the necessary inspiration for a Dr. Who spaceship.
Finally the Television Art and Design Library maintains it own substantial
collection of classified illustrations for this purpose.
Where
enquiries cannot be answered from the BBC's own library resources the staff will
frequently approach other outside bodies on behalf of their clients, or at least
advice on potential sources of the information. The aim is to ensure that
outside agencies will be approached in a rational and efficient manner, and only
when it is really necessary. Unfortunately this practice does not prevent
individual producers or researchers from following their natural inclination of
trading on the Corporation's reputation by telephoning a leading expert or the
foremost institution in the field, for relatively straightforward requests for
information. One such example was the producer who demanded to speak to the
director of the London Zoo for information that might easily, and far more
quickly have been supplied to him from Grzimecks Encyclopaedia of animal life.
This single example could be multiplied ten thousand times over.
Subject
Specialists
The
majority of the professional staff employed in the reference libraries are
general enquiry assistants, who might be called upon to answer enquiries on any
subject. However among their number there are a few who also take responsibility
for specific parts of the collection, such as Music, or Drama, or Government
Publications, and will specialise in answering enquiries in these fields. There
will also be other assistants who check Quiz Scripts or undertake Negative
Checks. However in the mid-seventies the reference libraries also began to
recruit a limited number of highly qualified subject specialists, responsible
for certain quite specific subject areas where there was a great deal of
specialised broadcast coverage. The two initial appointments covered industrial
affairs, and natural resources and the environment, although the latter post was
subsequently replaced by a 'Social Affairs' specialist. Also a further post was
created covering Science (in particular Medicine & Biochemistry). Later the
library assistant responsible for the BBC Research Department library was given
a wider remit and also now assists programme makers in their coverage of
engineering, and in particular broadcasting technology.
The
Subject Specialists, who now work alongside the reference library service are
qualified, and have the opportunity to provide a far more detailed information
service within their respective fields of interest, than has been possible in
the past. They can offer detailed advice at every stage in their projects to
programme makers, particularly in television where the producers expertise will
be in the art of making good programmes rather than in the subjects they are
covering. The Subject Specialists are also encouraged to keep up to date with
the developments in their respective fields, maintain their own information
files, foster useful contacts, and where necessary prepare briefing papers.
Similarly they can also provide SDI and other services to alert those who they
know are interested in a particular fields of developments or possible new
ideas.
However,
by the nature of their jobs, the Subject Specialists can only deal with a minute
proportion of the range of enquiries received every day by the Reference
Libraries, and managers responsible for the provision of the information
services have often to make difficult decisions about whether the limited
financial resources available are better devoted to providing such a high
standard of service to a fairly limited number of customers.
Stock
The
raw materials for the Reference Library service are wide ranging collections,
principally of books (including a comprehensive collection of general reference
works) periodicals, maps, pamphlets, reports, and illustrations of all kinds.
The types of material sought might range from the most abstruse scientific
monograph or research paper, to a Peanuts cartoon book. Equally the request
might be for a report published within the last half hour, or for a loan copy of
a biography published in the eighteenth century. Each of these requests is
equally important and the material may be required equally urgently. Urgency,
when requested, may be measured from within a matter of minutes, to within a day
or so. Increasingly however, this traditional printed material needs to be
supplemented by access to an increasing range of computerised information
services - some of which are used more or less daily, whilst others only on
occasions.
The
great majority of the materials stocked are of the same range of subjects and
academic level as might be found in any large public library, although with a
slight bias towards the humanities, and the performing arts. Unfortunately, once
an item has been added to stock it is virtually impossible to say with certainty
that it might never be needed again, and even outdated scientific textbooks are
occasionally called for to provide background materials for a programme about a
famous scientist or scientific discovery. No matter how much material there
might be held on any single subject, this will be inadequate if someone makes a
decision to create a series of programmes around it. Similarly unpredictable
political events, such as the Falklands War or the revolution in Romania can
have a drastic overnight effect on the demand for materials on one subject.
In
addition to the general collections, there is also one special collection of
materials relating to the history of broadcasting. This has been developed
primarily for the BBC's own internal purposes, principally because of the
absence of any other equivalent collection, in Britain. However this is
collection is also frequently used as a resource by historians of the media in
Britain, and in particular to supplement the valuable collections of archival
material in this area held by the BBC's Written Archives Centre at Caversham.
Although
the library service serving the Research Department began to make use of online
information retrieval soon after it became readily available, the main BBC
Reference Libraries, or and other information services were relatively slow to
make any significant use of the new technology. This was due in part to
conservatism and to the pressure of work, and also in part to outdated telephone
equipment and an overloaded and very unreliable telephone system in the early
eighties. However the establishment of a Subject Specialist dealing with
medicine and biochemistry in particular, who was then working away from the
other pressures and problems experienced by her colleagues, soon demonstrated to
the documentary programme makers in the Television Science Features Department,
the advantages of having access to the main biomedical databases, for quickly
establishing recent scientific developments who are the experts working in
particular fields.
As
has been the experience of many other libraries, the recent introduction of
real-time computer systems to deal with book circulation, and cataloguing has
gradually helped to overcome the initial reluctance by staff to make use of
automated information retrieval services of all kinds. As a result, all parts of
the reference library service now make use of a wide and growing variety of
online services. These range from the full text news databases available on
Profile or Nexis, to bibliographic services such as Blaise, services providing
financial or directory type information such as the details of company
registrations available on the Jordan's database, to other specialised services
such as Polis (which is used for monitoring parliamentary discussion relevant to
the work of the Corporation, so that senior management might be alerted.
Acquisitions
Most
books, reports, and other publications requested will be purchased, so long as
they are available in print. As a publisher and bookseller in its own right, the
Corporation is exempt from the terms of the Net Book Agreement, and is therefore
entitled to a trade discount on such purchases. However, frequently the demands
of urgency will override the advantages of a discount, and so items will be
purchased retail from one of the many large bookshops in central London, or
directly from their publishers. Each day messengers are despatched for this
purpose. Similarly the frequent need for multiple copies of important Government
publications within minutes of their publication has necessitated special
purchase arrangements with the Stationery Office and once again the use
dedicated messengers to make a daily, and occasionally twice-daily visit for
their collection.
All
parts of the media tend to feed on one another, and journalists and programme
makers of all kinds have a voracious appetite for each other's products. Just as
many items in newspapers and magazine derive from radio and television
programmes, so do many broadcast items begin life as information published in
the print media. Thus the BBC in London alone purchases over 300 copies of each
major daily newspaper and 130 copies of major political and economic weeklies
such as the Economist. In addition individual copies of large numbers of
specialist periodicals and overseas newspapers are also subscribed so that each
day at least 2,500 items are received. By tradition, this work, which is more
akin to the work of a newsagent, is undertaken by the staff of the Purchasing
and Acquisitions Unit of BBC Data, although only a small proportion of the
items, handled are destined for the Reference Libraries or News Information
Units. The vast majority go directly into production offices, where they are
used as a raw material for programmes.
Outside
Loans
Much
of the required material will be out of print and will have therefore to be
borrowed from other libraries, through the Outside Loans Unit, sometimes in
multiple copies. For example the decision to dramatise a novel that has been out
of print for three or four decades might involve an enormous struggle to locate
and obtain sufficient copies for the producer, scriptwriter, script editor,
designers, and other members of the production team, and then either to persuade
the libraries to allow them on long term loan, or else later borrowing other
copies to replace those that have to be sent back. The library staff undertaking
this work know that as soon as the original publishers hear of the planned
televising, they will hurriedly re-publish the work to coincide with the
broadcast, so thereafter the book that has given so much trouble to trace will
once again be available for sale from every railway bookstall.
The
Corporation long ago abandoned any idea that it could ever be self-sufficient in
its book and periodicals stocks or able to meet all the potential information
needs of its clients. Fairly early on it established a unit to borrow more
specialised materials, from the many and varied libraries in London. However,
due to the nature of its work, and the pressures of time under which most of the
library users were operating, the traditional inter-library loan procedures had
to be abandoned as being too time consuming. Staff have now to locate most
materials using an online service, verify their availability by telephone, and
then arrange for immediate collection by a dedicated messenger service.
The
BBC borrows very heavily from a wide range of public, academic and special
libraries in London, either as of right as ratepayers, through subscription or
corporate membership, or frequently through the good will of the librarians
concerned. Where items are not immediately available for collection in London,
resort must either be made to the British Library Document Supply Centre, or
else from public libraries further afield, through the London and South-eastern
regional library bureau (LASER). The extremely heavy use made of the LASER
service is reflected in the special subscription levels to that service. It also
resulted in the BBC Reference libraries being used for a field trial of the
LASER online computer system to assist in providing locations for loan copies of
books.
Working
in the Outside Loans unit is probably one of the most thankless tasks in
contemporary librarianship, because it is a constant balancing act between
satisfying the pressing needs of the programme makers, and maintaining
reasonable relationships with the loaning libraries who are not used to the
special needs of people in the media, and the rather cavalier attitude that they
sometimes adopt to other peoples' property. Undoubtedly it is the producers and
researchers themselves (and particularly those working in television) who in the
past have done most to impair the efficiency and effectiveness of this service
by not taking sufficient care of loaned materials, or taking them overseas, and
on occasions defacing them, thereby undermining relations and perhaps
restricting access to that collection for future borrowers. This has
necessitated a considerable tightening up of procedures and the devotion of
scarce staff effort, into ensuring the subsequent return of materials.
It
can also be singularly galling for staff in this unit to spend an hour or more
on the telephone locating an urgently required book and then arranging for it to
be collected by a messenger or taxi and delivered to a studio by given deadline,
only to find that the item for which the book was required had been dropped from
the schedule, because something else had come up in the meanwhile. However this
sort of situation is a fact of life in all media libraries, and has to be
accepted by the staff working there.
Other
information services
Within
the overall umbrella of BBC Data, there are also a number of other associated
information services which serve the whole Corporation, and are not part of the
Reference Libraries as such but which work closely with them. The two most
important of these are the Events Unit, and the famous Pronunciation Unit.
Many
news organisations, and occasionally news libraries, will undertake some form of
collation of the information and announcements they receive about forthcoming
events, usually to compile news diaries. However, in addition to the need for
information about future events, there is also a constant demand for similar
information about anniversaries of all kinds, which are always a popular standby
to fill empty column inches or programme slots. Both of these tasks are
undertaken by the BBC Data Events Unit, which produces quarterly and weekly
lists detailing forthcoming festivals, conferences, exhibitions etc. This
information is then used to assist in the compilation of a monthly retrospective
news diary issued two months in arrears, and various lists of anniversaries.
The
Pronunciation Unit exists to provide an advisory service on any problems
associated with English pronunciation, or the pronunciation of foreign words to
an English speaking audience. It does this by maintaining card indexes of
recommendations for the pronunciation of proper names, places etc. where
possible choosing a form used by the by the person referred to or natives of
that place. As with the Events Unit, the Pronunciation Unit also disseminates
information to broadcasters by issuing daily lists of recommended pronunciations
of names that are in the news and also maintains lists of Members of Parliament,
famous musicians, sports personalities etc.
Thus
programme makers and other staff working throughout the BBC have at their
disposal a very wide range of very library services, there are in fact so many
of them that it has been found necessary to list them in an annual Guide to BBC
Libraries and Information Services. However in addition to the multiplicity of
special libraries dealing in a wide range of media, they are also particularly
well served by a general Reference Library Service which has been providing
accurate and reliable information on a virtually unlimited range of topics for
more than sixty years. Despite problems with accommodation and a demand for its
services which regularly outstrips the resources made available to it, the BBC
Reference Libraries have continued to develop to meet the needs of modern
broadcasting in Great Britain.
David
Stoker
January
1990
Footnotes
1.
Royal Commission on the Press 1947-49, Report, (London: HMSO, 1949)
para.372. (Cmd.7700).
2.
Florence Milnes, 'The BBC Reference Library, formation, history and
development, 1927-1958', The Library World, (1959). 171.
3.
The BBC publishes an annual Guide to BBC Libraries and Information
Services (for internal distribution) to enable staff to keep track of the wide
range of such services.
4.
For a more detailed account of the work of this department see David
Stoker, 'BBC Data as information provider and publisher' The Reference
Librarian, 17, 1987, 161-176. Subsequently reprinted as W. Katz (editor)
International aspects of reference work (New York, 1987).
of publications