Please reply to Paul Gentry at the RSS, not to me. For universities
outside the M25, which have not been sent a letter in the first instance,
it would be advisable to approach Paul Gentry and Paul Allin to do so.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 08:52:23 -0000
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: HISTORICAL STATISTICAL BOOKS: PARTNER INSTITUTION WANTED
The following letter has recently been sent by the Royal Statistical Society
to the Heads of Library Services of universities within the M25 (ie within
London, broadly defined). Please read on (and urgently!) if you are
interested in your institution becoming the partner that we are keen to
find. You may wish to discuss this with your Head of Libary Services before
contacting Paul Gentry at the RSS.
Thanks.
Paul Allin
Senior Hon Sec, RSS
======================================================================
19 January 2000
HISTORICAL STATISTICAL BOOKS
The Royal Statistical Society is looking urgently for a partner institution
to hold a collection of some 1,500 to 2,000 historical statistical books.
We want to work together to conserve a heritage collection and to make this
accessible to fellows of the Society and others. The books are presently in
very temporary storage and plans envisaged for their future have not worked
out. The Society is therefore seeking fresh expressions of interest in
undertaking the role outlined below, by 5pm on Friday 4 February please.
The background to the collection is briefly as follows. The Statistical
Society of London, the forerunner of the Royal Statistical Society, was
founded in 1834. A principal aim was to establish and maintain a library of
books relevant to all aspects of statistics. The collection now in
temporary storage consists of books from those early days, supplemented by
the donations of various other collections but depleted through the way in
which the collection has been passed around and dispersed during the last
150 years. There are no recent books in the collection and a catalogue of
the older books had not been computerised (now being prepared).
The collection contains what would be a fascinating historical core,
including:
- around 1,000 books dating from before 1850, many written by people from a
variety of backgrounds who used statistics to inform public debate, for
example on free trade or on public health reform;
- books owned by eminent statisticians (Quetelet, Babbage, Newmarch, Porter
and Yule), who made major donations or bequests to the then library of the
Society and from which we can see how the development of statistics has
progressed;
- an extensive collection of 'tracts' ie bound volumes made up from
individual papers or offprints. The set of tracts that we hold seems to
represent efforts made in the late nineteenth century to bring together key
papers on issues of the day, or series of papers by individual
statisticians.
We also hold, on long term loan, historical books on demography, population
and health statistics, acquired from 1837 onwards by the General Register
Office. These were passed to the Society after the GRO and the Office of
Population Censuses and Surveys became part of the Office for National
Statistics. ONS is content for these books to be included in the historical
core collection that the Society wishes to conserve.
However, there is not sufficient room in the Society's premises to hold the
complete historical collection and so we are aiming to establish a
partnership to hold and manage a significant part of the collection.
The role envisaged of a partner institution is:
- to work jointly with the Society to explore options for holding and
managing the collection in future. This will include identifying sources of
external funding (eg National Lottery) to establish the collection and to
develop uses that can be made of the collection. We want to make sure that
we take good care of, and make best use of, a unique resource for the
twenty-first century; and
- until more permanent arrangements can be made, to take delivery of boxes
of books and to provide secure storage for them in the short term, on a
goodwill basis and at no cost to the Society.
Please contact Paul Gentry at the Society's offices, as above, or email him
at if you wish to pursue this. I am sorry to give such a tight deadline -
Friday 4 February - but we have to make decisions by then about the material
in temporary storage.
I look forward to hearing that we have been able to secure the future of
this collection. Thank you for your interest.
Yours sincerely
(signed)
PAUL ALLIN
Senior Honorary Secretary
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