Report of the National Libraries Committee.

  • Great Britain. National Libraries Committee.
Date:
1969
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the National Libraries Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/340 (page 39)
    Sources of Finance 148. All the cost of maintaining the SML and of providing its library services is met from public funds. Salaries and general administrative expenses are accounted for by the Department of Education and Science, whilst building maintenance 1s the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Building and Works. The costs of purchases for the library, together with those for stationery and printing, are met out of the HM Stationery Office vote. Publications for the library are, however, also obtained through donations and exchange. Services (a) National responsibilities 149. In meeting its national responsibilities, the SML provides reference facilities, together with an information and bibliographic enquiry service, for the general public. The total number of visitors to the library’s reading room has remained virtually constant at about 20,000 per year since 1963. This total includes all types of user, but a survey carried out on our behalf by the Keeper and his staff from 11th March to 6th April, 1968, showed that only about one third of the visitors sampled were not from the colleges and museums in South Kensington. 150. The library’s information and bibliographic service handled nearly 5,000 enquiries during 1967/68, excluding help given to visitors in using the library’s catalogues and services. About three quarters of them were phone enquiries, although one in eight involved a personal visit by the enquirer. 151. For many years the SML lent from its stock to Government establish- ments, universities, learned societies and certain approved libraries. However, in 1962 the NLLST took over from the SML the main responsibility for postal lending. Since then, the SML has restricted its national lending to those categories of stock not held by the NLLST. Loans of this type from the SML have remained at around 15,000 per year for several years, which, as the use of the NLLST grows, represents a declining proportion of the combined total of the two libraries’ satisfied requests. At present the SML’s contribution is slightly more than 2 per cent of the total. 152. The SML also operates a public photocopy service—including the production of microfiches—for literature held in the libraries of the four main South Kensington museums, viz. the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Institute of Geological Sciences. In 1967, photocopy requisitions received by the SML from the public totalled 20,400, of which 2,700 were forwarded from the NLLST. Over nine tenths of all orders were satisfactorily completed. In addition, the library photocopies without charge for Government departments and the staff of the local museums. The output of this service in 1967 was only slightly less than the volume of — photocopy supplied to the public. (b) Services to local institutions 153. In meeting local needs, the SML is both a working collection for the staff of the Science Museum, which has no departmental libraries, and an essential part of the library system of Imperial College, for which it provides