> BL/HE Task Force announcement
>
> The British Library and the UK Higher Education sector have
> a mutual interest in closer strategic collaboration.
> Supported by the British Library Chairman, John Ashworth
> and the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding
> Council for England, Sir Brian Fender, a Task Force has
> been set up which now embraces all UK Higher Education.
> Building on a history of collaborative discussion, eg
> between JISC and the British Library, the Task Force aims
> for specific initiatives for mutual benefit, in line with
> the British Library's increasing strategic emphasis on
> collaboration to deliver its objectives.
>
> Membership includes for the British Library: Brian Lang,
> Lynne Brindley, David Bradbury, Geoff Smith and Malcolm
> Smith, and for Higher Education Mary Auckland, Reg Carr,
> Lorcan Dempsey, Paul Hubbard, Mike Hopkins, Nigel
> Macartney, Ronald Milne, Ian Mowat, Charles Oppenheim,
> Malcolm Read and Alicia Wise.
>
> The Task Force believes that strategic collaboration will
> bring benefit to both parties, and will allow the national
> higher educational needs for research, learning and
> outreach to be met in the most coherent and cost-effective
> manner possible.
>
> To that end the BL and HE have each agreed £50,000 funding
> contributions to initiate a practical agenda starting with
> the three areas below.
>
> The first area is that of potential mechanisms for
> coordinating the development of a distributed national
> collection of library research resources, including the
> need for, and feasibility of, the creation of a national
> body for this purpose. The study is being carried out by
> Margaret Wallis and Nick Moore for the Information Strategy
> Research Unit at the School of Information Management,
> University of Brighton.
>
> The second area will be a study of the relationship between
> the British Library's and Higher Education libraries'
> objectives, leading to the development of high level
> performance measures of the British Library's contribution
> to the HE sector.
>
> The third area will be an examination of the way in which
> the British Library and Higher Education inter-lending and
> document supply services currently inter-relate, and how
> the system of mutual support can be improved. There will
> be discussions with SCONUL, CURL, COPAC, LAMDA and others
> about the scope for greater collaboration.
>
> The Task Force has also considered other matters, such as
> the contribution of the National Preservation Office to
> BL/HE collaboration, and would welcome suggestions from the
> HE sector of other areas where closer strategic
> collaboration is felt to be important.
>
> Contact names are:
>
> Geoff Smith, Director of the British Library's Co-operation
> and Partnership Programme, email [log in to unmask], for the
> British Library, and Joanna Harrison email
> [log in to unmask] for UK Higher Education.
>
>
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