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Dear Mersenners, You may know that the various higher education funding councils for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are funding a new national initiative, the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP). This will inject stlg30M into UK research libraries over the next three years, and is specifically intended to improve access to research materials through e.g. preservation and cataloging of collections, facilitating collaborations between institutions etc. RSLP have invited the British Society for the History of Science to take part in a consultation exercise through which they will set priorities for the programme. We have made a preliminary response, but would like to obtain a far wider range of views from users of UK research libraries in the history of science community. We would therefore welcome responses from list members to the following questions (the more, and more detailed, responses we get the better, as we can then present concrete suggestions to RSLP): 1. Are there major problems accessing library and information resources that would be helped either by more collaboration between libraries, or an injection of funds for cataloguing and preservation? 2. Are there areas in which there are particular problems in locating or accessing particular kinds of material? 3. Are there particular categories of material which would benefit from priority attention in terms of cataloguing/preservation over the next few years? 4. Are there any broad categories of collections which might benefit from cross-sectoral projects e.g. collaborations between university and public or national libraries to develop reader information services or convert existing catalogues to electronic form? 5. Are there particular types of material which would benefit from being in digital form? If you would like to respond to any or all of these issues, or if you have any other comments which you would like BSHS to include in its response, please send them directly to Jeff Hughes, BSHS Secretary, at: [log in to unmask] The deadline for our response is 15 April 1999. With thanks, apologies for the length of this mail, and best wishes, Jeff *************************************************** Dr. Jeff Hughes Lecturer in History of Science & Technology CHSTM, Maths Tower, The University, Manchester. M13 9PL. UK Tel: 0161 275 5857; 0410 224 855 (m) Fax: 0161 275 5699 *************************************************** %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%