The Internet, and digital media generally, offer opportunities for the Library to distribute knowledge of its catalogue easily and efficiently. In practice, this means that readers of all kinds could be expected to have improved access to the catalogues. This improved access would increase the demand for items from the collection, and hence for reading room space.
The Library historically has made its catalogues widely available, for example on microfilm. Currently, the main catalogues are available:
There is considerable anecdotal evidence that improved access to catalogues results in increased demand for reading room space. Most of this evidence comes from university libraries, and very little is available as quantitative data.
An example is Die Deutsche Bibliothek, which reports a 25% increase in reader numbers when its OPAC was made available in reading rooms and to selected universities. However, this was in 1990, and it is a matter for speculation or detailed research to determine whether post-unification changes played a part in causing this increase. Note that this, of course, relates to the introduction of a level of service which the British Library already provides.
If the Library improves its catalogue distribution (eg by extending the scope of the OPAC, by increasing the number of universities which have access to the OPAC, or by lowering the cost of BLAISE-Web or similar services) the demand for reading room space will increase. Because provision is already good, the increase will be small.
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Converted to HTML by Isobel Stark of UKOLN, August 1996