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
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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
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