As with the preceding section, it is assumed that parts of the Library’s holdings are digitised; and that some or all of these can be accessed by readers remotely, that is from outside the walls of the Library.
It is a reasonable assumption that British Library digital resources will be available, on some basis, to a wide population via the medium of the Internet (though see section 5.1 for warnings concerning Internet predictions). Library patrons will thus be able to read and refer to these digital holdings from their own desktops, without needing to visit a Library reading room.
The term "BL resources" today would probably be understood to mean any items deposited at or acquired by the Library. This includes not only heritage collections but current publications such as scholarly journals. Increasingly, current publications are being made available in digital form (see sections 5.3 & 5.4); so it is likely that some of the fastest-growing collections of digital works at the Library will be in the form of current serials and monographs which are deposited or acquired in digital format.
Delicate questions of intellectual property rights arise from this assumption. Digitisation of any work which is not free of copyright (including almost all current materials) implies the need for an agreement with the intellectual property owner(s) regarding its use. Conventionally, such agreements prevent use outside the Library, for evident commercial reasons. As the Library may well wish to digitise materials which are not free of copyright, and may acquire current materials in digital form, more flexible agreements of new kinds would be needed to allow remote access. Such agreements may involve new commercial arrangements, such as charging per access or per minute; this study makes no assumption on such arrangements, other than that they can be negotiated if there is a desire and commitment to do so.
As with access to digital resources inside reading rooms, only some readers will be able to use digital resources remotely; others will always require paper originals (see Figure 6). However, not all readers who might accept digital surrogates will be able to take advantage of remote access:
Using the percentages in Figure 6, we can compute upper limits to the level of remote use, for some reading rooms.
As 95% of readers require originals, the absolute upper limit to a decrease in demand is 5%. But this upper limit would require that every manuscript which the 5% of users require is available digitally (either already digitised or digitised on request). As the collection is large, and as many manuscripts are difficult to digitise (they are faint, they are in old bindings, they are large) it is reasonable to suppose that the actual decrease will be significantly less than 5%.
About 50% of readers could be satisfied by digital surrogates. The same arguments apply as with readers of the Manuscript Students’ reading room, namely that this would require every score to be digitised; as with manuscripts, many scores are difficult to scan. Additionally, it is a feature of Music reading room use that readers often refer to several scores at once, for comparative research; while it may be possible to do so on screens, good software tools for doing so have not been developed. The decrease in demand for reading room space will therefore be much less than 50%, limited by the works digitised and by the practicality of referring to them on screens.
A feature of the SRIS users population which is probably unique among the readership of the Library is that almost all could be satisfied by digital surrogates. In addition, many of the works referred to - namely current periodicals - will be available digitally.
There is no data available which shows the age profile of materials read at SRIS (the open access shelving makes it difficult to gather such information). By way of a substitute, we can use data from DSC[18]. Patterns of retrieval at DSC are not identical to those at SRIS, if only because the open access policy encourages readers to browse older editions speculatively; but they form a reasonable basis for estimates at this level of accuracy.
The DSC survey shows that 45.5% Science and Technology materials requested are two years old or less. As explained at the end of section 5.3, we can assume that 50% of journals will be available digitally in five years time; within a year or two of that time, therefore, the past two years’ issues of those titles will be available digitally. 42% of SRIS users are from the academic sector [19]; so the following computation shows the upper limit to the level of remote use by academics:
percentage of readers who are academics 42% percentage of materials requested which are two years old or less 45% percentage of requests by academics for materials two years old or less: 42% x 45% 18.9% percentage of these requests which can be met by digital surrogates 50% percentage of all SRIS requests which can be met by digital surrogates: 18.9% x 50% 9.4%Note that this upper limit of 9.4% (say 9%) will not be reached straight away, because of the factors outlined above. On the other hand, this figure ignores non-academic users, some proportion of whom should also be able to take advantage of remote access. After a five year horizon, it seems likely that an increasing proportion of STM materials will be available digitally (though this is not definite - see section 5), and therefore the potential for remote use will grow.
Patents represent a special case, for several reasons:
It would be conceivable to obtain in digital form the vast majority of the 34 million or so patents currently held on paper, and to make these available outside the Library. This would, in principle, allow a large majority of readers to perform their research without needing to visit the reading room. However, while the cost of the patent files would be low, the hardware and integration effort would be very costly.
As there is no data on the proportion of readers requiring originals for other reading rooms, it is not possible to apply the same estimating technique.
It is worth pointing out that the calculation performed for SRIS, which is based on recently-published items accounting for a high proportion of use, cannot be repeated for other reading rooms because the profile of the age of materials requested varies enormously. For example,
A more profitable line of enquiry may be to attempt to discover the most heavily-used materials in individual areas which:
For example, it is possible that highly-used materials such as:
may form the basis for such exercises. This clearly cannot be undertaken without more detailed studies on suitability for digitisation, usability and usage patterns, which is beyond the scope of the present study. However, if it proves possible to identify suitable subsets, there is the potential both to relieve pressure on some reading rooms and to improve service to readers distant from London reading rooms.
A reduction of demand for reading room space can be expected from access to Library resources from outside reading rooms. The greatest effect will be in SRIS, because that is where recent materials are most used, and recent materials will be available digitally. The reduction in SRIS will be a maximum of 9%, without the Library engaging in substantial digitisation exercises; but this maximum will not be reached in practice.
Some reading rooms will see little or no reduction in demand; any reductions will depend on the selection of materials to be digitised by the Library.
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