As the amount of information produced and consumed around the world increases at an unprecedented rate – and appears in diverse and rapidly evolving formats – how are national libraries to ensure that they continue to collect material that is important and relevant to researchers now and for generations to come?
This is the question at the heart of the British Library’s content strategy, which will be offered for wide-ranging consultation tomorrow (April 25th 2006), and which will help determine the Library’s purchasing priorities for the coming years.
The strategy relates mainly to international material that the Library collects using its acquisition budget (currently around £15m p.a.) – which is in addition to UK material received by the Library via legal deposit.
Key changes proposed in the strategy include:
- Overseas collecting to take greater account of changing patterns of international research, with more priority given to China, India, Anglophone Africa and Latin America;
- Increased focus on certain areas of the social sciences, including international law, politics, economics and social policy;
- Increased focus on non-textual materials such as primary research data and visual/audio-visual collections;
- An accelerated shift to electronic formats in some areas – for example, ‘grey literature’ and conference proceedings – to respond to moves from print-based publishing to online-only distribution;
- Supplementing existing strengths in manuscripts and archives with a greater focus on e-manuscripts – for example by collecting digital archives from key literary, political and scientific figures;
- Review of purchasing strategy for overseas newspapers to ensure collecting is fully aligned with existing areas of particular depth (Middle East, South Asia, Eastern Europe and North America).
To read the strategy in full go to: www.bl.uk/about/strategic/contentstrat.html
The publication of the content strategy on April 25th 2006 marks the start of a 12 week consultation period during which the Library hopes to generate an ongoing dialogue with users and other stakeholders. After the closing date (July 21st 2006) feedback will be analysed and a summary of views expressed will be made available at the end of the year. The content strategy will then be revised as appropriate and rolled out through 2007.