Surely the Library being dispersed is the worst of all possible worlds. I think we should campaign for the British Library to take it over lock stock and barrel. I used to use it reasonably often but then the access rules were changed. If they are short of readers that may be why !!
PDH
-----Original Message-----
From: Promoting discussion in the science studies community
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Peter Rowlands
Sent: 15 September 2004 10:48
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Science Museum library
It's not the best solution, and doesn't address the serious shortfall in
funding things of cultural importance in our society - it may even be the
thin end of the wedge - but, as a temporary solution, to keep things going,
if people paid 0.50 or 1.00 for consulting the Library, that would just
cover the cost. Is this possible? 200,000 seems a relatively negligible sum
for such a vast resource.
--On 14 September 2004 19:49 +0000 Jon Agar <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> x-post hps-discussion
> =======================
>
> This story just appeared in today's Times: the issue is currently being
> discussed by the British Society for the History of Science and other
> interested parties--
> Jim Secord
>
> September 14, 2004
>
> Black hole in finances may mean the end for science library
> By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent
>
> ONE of the world's finest science libraries, which holds original editions
> of works by Ptolemy, Newton and Einstein, will be broken up unless the
> Science Museum can fill a £200,000 hole in its budget. The Times has
> learnt
> that the museum in South Kensington, London, is considering plans to give
> away 95 per cent of its collection of half a million books, journals and
> documents, because 10 years of falling government grants mean it can no
> longer afford to keep them. The library, which was established in 1883 and
> until the 1960s was Britain's national library of science, technology and
> medicine, is in jeopardy because of a 400 per cent increase in the service
> fees charged by Imperial College, London, which houses and manages the
> collection. Unless the Government provides funds to meet the £200,000
> annual
> shortfall, museum executives will either donate most of its contents to
> the
> British Library or replace it with a slimmed-down version at a disused
> airfield in Wiltshire. Either option would drastically curtail public
> access
> to a library that received more than 500,000 visits last year, and
> dismantle
> one of the world's most significant research resources for the history of
> science and medicine. The museum is beginning a public consultation on
> which
> course to take. The library, which is currently merged with Imperial's,
> contains approximately 500,000 items on shelves that total 18km in length.
> Its oldest work is the first Renaissance translation, published in 1496,
> of
> the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy's Almagest, in which he established
> the
> theory that the Earth stood at the centre of the Universe. Other rare
> books
> include a 1704 edition of Sir Isaac Newton's Opticks, a copy of Gustave
> Eiffel's La Tour de Trois Cent Mètres, donated in 1900 by the engineer who
> built Paris's most famous landmark and a 1917 edition of the General
> Theory
> of Relativity inscribed by Albert Einstein. Its document archives include
> 119 titles by James Watt, the notebooks of the mathematician Sir John
> Herschel, Sir Frank Whittle's original thesis on the jet engine, and an
> Apollo 11 flight plan signed by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The
> National
> Museum of Science and Industry which runs the Science Museum, the National
> Railway Museum and the National Museum of Photography, Film and
> Television,
> says it will have to disperse most of this collection because its funding
> has not kept pace with inflation. Since the 1997 general election, core
> funding for the museum has fallen by £7.7 million and its most recent
> grant-in-aid increase was 2.6 per cent, compared with a minimum of 4.7 per
> cent for Britain's other national museums. Free admission has placed
> further
> strain on resources, as the compensation paid for lost income by the
> Government does not make up for increased costs. The library has survived
> until now because of an agreement with Imperial, which charged an annual
> rent of £63,000. Imperial has now raised this to £262,000 per annum,
> excluding VAT, because of its own financial problems. Lindsay Sharp,
> director of NMSI, said that while the museum does not want to disperse its
> collection, it does not have a choice. "We have extremely rare materials
> here that are the written counterpart to the objects our visitors see in
> our
> galleries," he said. "It is almost unheard of for any major national
> museum
> not to have its own library, but the financial pressures are intense. None
> of the options are particularly appealing, but unless the Government
> addresses the financial issue we will have to implement one." Jon Tucker,
> head of the Science Museum, said: "The problem is the steady erosion of
> the
> museum's underlying funding. This means that Imperial's service charge
> hike
> ? which we quite understand ? immediately rendered the library
> unaffordable." Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, chairman of NMSI's trustees,
> said: "If the grant had kept up with inflation, then we might have been
> able
> to get the extra money by stretching, pulling and shoving. As it is, we
> are
> presented with little choice." While executives are still lobbying the
> Department for Culture, Media and Sport to increase its annual grant to
> save
> the library, they believe it is unlikely that extra funding will be found.
> Sponsorship, which already raises £1.3 million a year across NMSI's
> museums,
> is not felt to offer a long-term solution. NMSI is consulting users,
> scientists and members of the public on which of two plans to implement.
> Under one, half the collection would be given away to universities, while
> the other half would be moved to the Science Museum's reserve site at
> Wroughton, a disused RAF airfield near Swindon. The second plan is to
> keep 5
> per cent of the collection on the museum's main South Kensington site,
> including the most valuable works, and loan another 20 per cent to the
> British Library. The remainder would be given away to other university and
> public libraries. Either plan would cost about £2 million to implement,
> and
> both would reduce public access. Wroughton would not be able to handle the
> current volume of users and is difficult to reach, while British Library
> users must apply for a pass and show a need to use the collection.
>
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