Library Service Provision for Researchers: Proceedings of the Anderson Report Seminar Organised by the Library and Information Co‐operation Council (LINC) and the Standing Conference of National and University Library (SCONUL), Cranfield University, 10 and 11 December 1996

Citation

James, S. (1999), "Library Service Provision for Researchers: Proceedings of the Anderson Report Seminar Organised by the Library and Information Co‐operation Council (LINC) and the Standing Conference of National and University Library (SCONUL), Cranfield University, 10 and 11 December 1996", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 95-113. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.2.95.16

Follett and its fall‐out roll on: this will prove to have been one of the most important milestones in the history of UK academic librarianship, one which has clarified issues, given a framework to electronic library projects, given me a new Library building, but above all established a more coherent policy and changed many deep‐set attitudes, all at a time of enormous political, educational and technological upheaval. The work of Professor Anderson will prove to have had its lasting effect, not only as a member of the original commission, but also for his subsequent work in helping to steer a course into a co‐ordinated policy for access to Library materials for researchers.

None of this is simple or easy: innumerable professional debates continue to testify to that. This is another contribution to the debate. The Anderson Report was circulated for comment in 1995 (Joint Funding Council’s Libraries Review Report of the Group on a National/Regional Strategy for Library Provision for Researchers) and we all had our formal say in response to the first draft. Now we are looking at what it all means in terms of library administration, funding, co‐operation (and competition for that matter). This was a timely and valuable summary of a contribution to the continuing debate: I should really have attended, but was otherwise occupied and like those (surprisingly many) colleagues who were not there either, I now have the chance to read the proceedings.

Professor Anderson himself opens the volume with the background to his report and his hopes for its implementation. Lynne Brindley gives the technical background of developments in digitalisation, having an important effect on much of what was discussed. Henry Heaney is in his usual erudite and entertaining form in reviewing acquisition and retention policies (while denying responsibility for anything he says). Andrew Miller was also in his usual entertaining form in redressing the balance of the major aspect of the question omitted from Follett: the role of the public library. That omission is now being repaired and Amanda Arrowsmith, Directory of Libraries and Heritage, Suffolk County Council, gives a second public library paper on the vital topic of local collections for research. John Blagden was his ever iconoclastic self in analysing the true costs of access against holdings, while Malcolm Smith from the British Library outlined the importance of grey literature. Geoffrey Smith looked at the regional dimension and then Frances Thomson chaired a wide‐ranging plenary discussion. For good measure the volume also reprints the Anderson Report in full.

We will all have to consider these issues (and not only in the UK either), whether our institutions consider themselves teaching or research universities (and the difference is largely one of degree, not of absolutes). We have already seen numerous initiatives arising from the report and its deliberations especially from CURL. Co‐operation and access to one another’s collections, but without “free‐loading” is very much the flavour of the month. Some of it we have seen before in collaborative acquisitions schemes and the rest; the wandering scholar (pay the academic to go to the book, rather than send the book to the academic) takes us back to the Middle Ages. There was plenty of food for thought both for those at the original seminar, and now for the rest of us. This is a useful and wide‐ranging contribution to that debate which has enormous mileage left in it yet.