Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 92)
TUESDAY 31 OCTOBER 2006
BRITISH LIBRARY,
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Q80 Alan Keen: In our new media inquiry
that we are carrying out at the same time as this Google told
us very confidently that in four years' time an iPod could contain
all the music that had ever been recorded in the world. Surely,
that technology which is speeding forward at a rate must be useful
to you. Have you been given information as to how quickly the
technology will improve?
Mr Thomas: Storage is certainly
improving, but the problem is the technology required to read
the stuff. As you know, the technology on one's computer desktop
changes from time to time. What one has to do is migrate the stuff
on one's iPod to some new format that can be read by current technology.
That is the real challenge we face. If one recalls the Amstrad
personal computer, the format has now completely changed and it
has to migrate into the current desktop formats.
Q81 Mr Sanders: In terms of newspaper
storage, you are trying to get some form of government contribution
and you are also accessing a number of non-governmental sources.
Have you approached the newspaper industry itself given that publishers,
surely, have their own archives and there is a danger here of
duplication?
Ms Brindley: We are following
a multifaceted strategy. Because the problem is so big we are
trying to break it down. First, it forms a very significant part
of our bid into SR. This is a continuing programme. The DCMS has
been very supportive of our wish to ensure that we have adequate
storage. We hope to be able to continue to improve storage, including
for newspapers. As to access, we are beginning to get external
money. Obviously, we are talking to the industry and have interesting
relations with it. It is an industry with its own difficulties
in terms of support. I think that it genuinely sees this as part
of its total heritage as well as ours, but it is an industry that
is struggling with its own future challenges in terms of the newspaper
business. At the moment we are not having any huge success in
getting resources from the industry.
Dr Field: Speaking generally of
the publishing industry as a whole, if one takes the whole span
of publishing from the late 15th century to the way it now is
publishers have not hugely invested in archiving. Indeed, very
often when they create digital back files of materials published
in print they will come to libraries like the British Library
because they do not have complete and perfect runs. It is only
in the area of digital publishing that they see sense in investing
in archives, but that investment is underpinned only so long as
there is deemed to be commercial potential in it. When it reaches
the point where they cannot generate income their commitment to
long-term preservation will not be there. That is true of publishing
across the whole field, and it is part of the dialogue that we
are having with the audio industry at the moment. That industry
has been pleased to recognise the British Library as the de
facto national archive for the whole of the industry. As far
as newspapers are concerned, it is a very financially challenged
industry at the moment, not least through the challenge of the
internet and the collapse of advertising revenue in particular.
Whilst they are very sympathetic to the need for a newspaper heritage,
again they are not willing to commit money unless they can see
there is a viable business plan to underpin it. Some of the big
nationals, for example The Times, have been able to digitise
pretty well the whole of their archives because there is deemed
to be a commercial market out there, but the vast majority of
the UK newspapers we hold are local and regional. We talk not
simply to the industry organisations like the Newspaper Publishers
Association and the Newspaper Society but to some of the individual
trade publishers. They are not really in a position to get the
investment they need from the industry. One has only to look at
the situation in London at the moment where recently two free
evening newspapers have been launched. This is well documented
in learned articles in papers like the Economist and so
on. The industry feels too challenged financially to enable it
to invest. Further, our national newspaper collection is not confined
to the UK; it is the Commonwealth's newspaper collection and,
in some senses, the world's newspaper collection. The UK newspaper
industry quite rightly feels that it should not be put in the
position of having to preserve this for everybody. I have been
working very closely with the industry over a good number of years.
Whilst there is enormous sympathy for it and we have had tremendous
press coverage recently from people like Donald Trelford, Rupert
Christensen and so on, there is no prospect of a significant financial
investment coming from the newspaper industry.
Q82 Mr Sanders: I am concerned about
duplication of effort. If one has The Times archiving everything
surely rather than your having to do the same job can one not
swap data?
Dr Field: One of the things we
are talking about—because now newspapers are essentially
produced digitally—is trying to separate what is in print,
which we hope over time to convert to digital, from what is now
being produced digitally, so even the print newspapers are essentially
produced as digital PDF feeds. Unfortunately, to return to our
position in terms of legal deposit there is no statutory legal
deposit in this country three years after the passage of that
Act for anything other than print. We would certainly be willing
to enter into a dialogue where we began to get new newspaper material
in digital form. It is not necessarily the case that the industry
will give a long-term commitment to that. Again, the commercial
exploitation of online newspaper content is delivered largely
through licensing arrangements with the Newspaper Licensing Agency.
Its commitment essentially is that whilst there is business sense
in doing that, historically the newspaper industry's archiving
has largely been around news clipping services. Most of those—we
were recently approached by the Daily Mail—have given
up on that. Essentially, their archive is their online archive
for the past few years. Beyond that, newspapers themselves are
increasingly dependent on the services which the British Library
provides.
Q83 Mr Sanders: You always need a
hard printed copy, do you not, because the danger with a digital
file is that it can be hacked and altered? Legally, you need the
hard copy should there be a dispute?
Dr Field: Yes, but our strategy
is that if we take in hard copy and literally preserve it as an
artefact—we wrap it up in acid-free paper and store it in
our repository—we will need recourse to it only as a last
resort. Current access within the reading rooms could be delivered
from digital content where the digital content was an exact replica.
But the problem is that we have had many dialogues with the Newspaper
Licensing Agency. Our particular challenge is not so much around
the nationals but the hundreds and hundreds of regionals and locals.
At the moment the NLA does not have the rights to that material.
Again, in relation to the UK material essentially what we desperately
need to do is accelerate implementation of the legal deposit legislation
which has now been on the statute book for three years.
Q84 Alan Keen: I understand that
Colindale is nearly full. What will you do after Colindale? Presumably,
you must be doing it now.
Ms Brindley: We have quite a complex
strategy to deal with this. For the long term the Board is very
keen to vacate that building. We have an associated building there
which is under a lease which will run out in about 2010. It is
also a building that is not fit for purpose in terms of storage
quality, nor in terms of the sort of services expected. There
is a very strong wish on the part of people who use the St Pancras
building and the reading rooms there to have a more integrated
approach to access. As part of our SR submission one of our priorities
is to ensure that we continue our programme of building storage.
Most of that is being done. We have a 46-acre site in Yorkshire.
It is rather cheaper to build storage in Yorkshire than central
London. That is the strategy that we would like to follow to ensure
that we can keep the newspapers in appropriate conditions there.
As to access, we are investigating surrogates and working to get
money to digitise increasingly and provide service from that.
Q85 Alan Keen: I think that you were
all quite pleased with this Committee's previous report. What
came of it? Did you benefit from any of the recommendations? Did
DCMS take notice and help you more, or was it academic?
Ms Brindley: One of the major
recommendations was the one to us relating to digitisation. I
think it was recommended that we should become the library for
the many, not just the few. I think that that spurred us on to
enormous effort to open up the British Library to everyone who
can benefit from using it. In that sense we have been encouraged
by the Committee and taken action in that way, and DCMS has supported
that strategy.
Alan Keen: I think you can tell
from this meeting that we care about it. Obviously, if there is
anything else that you want us to put in the report that has not
come up we are happy to receive further submissions.
Q86 Mr Evans: I visited the British
Library a few months ago. I thought it staggering. It seemed to
be a library for the many, not the few, because it was absolutely
packed in all aspects, including the new business section which
is very successful. Looking at the newspaper side of it and listening
to your aspirations, just to keep a copy of all the regional newspapers,
never mind the national ones, is a problem. Any of us who has
ever bought papers and kept them at home for a few weeks knows
how quickly they amass. What you are trying to do is hugely ambitious.
Within your financial restraints, do you think you are able to
achieve what you have set as targets?
Ms Brindley: You would hardly
expect me to say yes to that question.
Q87 Mr Evans: What more do you need?
Ms Brindley: We are rightly ambitious.
We have about 50 million page accesses to our website as well,
so it is not just a packed building. Our biggest concern at this
point—I know that it is a concern shared by many bodies—is
the potential negative outcomes from the CSR spending review.
We are deeply concerned.
Q88 Mr Evans: Are you already getting
bad vibes from that?
Ms Brindley: We have been asked
by the department and, obviously, the Treasury to model two scenarios:
one is a 5% per annum cut and the other is 7%, and that is cumulative,
so effectively the worst case is 21% over the period. This is
deeply difficult for an institution which is hugely successful
now by every measure. We have taken out £40 million in efficiency
gains; we have lost 20% staff and we are delivering more and more.
We cannot just do more by efficiency gains. In terms of SR the
impact would be devastating. We are probably in the top two or
three libraries in the world. For example, if we had to cut our
acquisitions to that level the impact would be that we would have
at least 50% less spending power over the period. We would move
from the top to the middle of the second division. Once we stop
buying we cannot buy again. This is material which just comes
in via the pipeline to which you rightly referred; it is 11 kilometres
a year. Once lost we would never get it again. That is just one
example of potential cuts, and it is a deep worry to us at this
point.
Q89 Mr Evans: As far as concerns
the public, if you had to make those cuts how would it impact
the public either by access via the Internet or turning up at
the British Library?
Ms Brindley: Part of meeting such
a horrendous scenario would mean a very careful look at our opening
hours. Clearly, we would have to close extra days a week, and
we have already modelled that. We are already helping ourselves
in terms of revenue of £25 million. No other national library
in the world does that. We are doing a lot to help ourselves,
and we will continue to do that. I think that the Board would
try to protect the core, and what would be at greatest risk would
be some of these exciting public programmes, exhibitions and the
ways that we have opened up. Those would be the short-term impacts.
From the Board's point of view, it would have to take the long-term
view to protect its collecting and the stewardship of its collections.
Q90 Mr Evans: Turning the British
Library into a pound stretcher will hardly enhance its reputation
among the general public, particularly with its aspirations in
regard to new media. You talked about sound recordings and how
difficult that was already. Are you having difficulties in being
able to access other information that you want to preserve? This
has already been touched on in relation to web pages. Where do
your aspirations finally rest? Do you basically want to collect
virtually everything that you believe will be important to future
generations? Where does it end?
Dr Field: I think that question
needs to be divided into our responsibilities in terms of the
publishing output of the UK in all its many manifestations. Obviously,
we have statutory responsibilities here. Government thought it
very important that those responsibilities should be extended
to the digital arena and those need to be translated into the
practical pieces of secondary legislation that will enable us
to get on with that job. We also have a significant responsibility
in terms of underpinning UK research broadly defined, not just
academic research, to develop what is called in our foundation
Act a comprehensive collection, so we buy from all over the world.
That is one of the distinguishing attributes of the library here
from which the UK benefits enormously. In practice in the UK we
have quite a centralised model of provision. Money which we spend
through the British Library in developing that national collection,
which is available on site and remotely, ensures that other bodies
and agencies in the UK do not invest to such a great extent. There
is an enormous advantage for higher education here. One of the
points we would want to make is how strongly we support the agendas
of other departments like DfES and, on the research side, the
DTI/OSI. All of the work that has been done by bodies other than
ourselves, like Sir Brian Follett's work on the Research Support
Libraries Group, has clearly demonstrated the national cost benefits
of investing through a centralised provision with a distributive
model such as we have, as opposed to setting up lots of duplicate
provision all over the UK.
Ms Brindley: In this sense we
also underpin the public libraries sector in terms of interlending
and document supply. Where local collections do not meet needs
we supply services through public libraries to the public.
Q91 Mr Evans: Would all of this be
under threat if you did not get the funding or you had to make
the cuts that you have been asked to make?
Ms Brindley: Yes.
Q92 Mr Evans: You will not be able
to make the efficiencies just by opening later and closing earlier.
Something will have to give?
Ms Brindley: We have modelled
this with DCMS. The department is deeply understanding of our
point and very supportive in making the arguments on our behalf.
It would be across the piece. Therefore, there would be a 50%
acquisition impact, partly because we have an inflation factor
of 6.6% on our acquisitions. It is well above the normally accepted
inflation factor. We would have to close down our services significantly
in terms of opening hours. The other thing that we are looking
for is investment in the digital infrastructure that we talked
about earlier. We would have to put that on hold. These are very
real threats to the future of a great institution.
Dr Field: We would come back essentially
to the philosophy and practice of our approach as outlined in
the second section of our document in particular. This is a well
thought out and balanced long term stewardship of all these elements
and one cannot pick and choose. The whole thing begins to collapse
like a pack of cards if one tries to take out elements of it.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
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