All British Library reading rooms are included, except for those at the National Sound Archive and Boston Spa.
For these purposes, a digital resource is anything which is published in computer-readable format. The definition of published is not developed here in detail, but is understood to take a meaning consistent with the Library’s habitual use of the term.
The term digital is used to distinguish between computer-readable information and analogue electronic information. In practice, the use of analogue electronic data is generally restricted to broadcasting (of television and audio) and publishing some recordings (VHS cassettes, audiocassettes, etc). Analogue electronic data is excluded from the scope of this study.
Digital resources therefore include publications which are produced both on paper and in computer-readable form (eg so-called "parallel" editions of journals) and those which are unavailable in any other form (eg multimedia CD-ROMs, ROM cartridges). By far the largest proportion of such resources is made up of:
The remainder of this report focuses on these and, of course, on the Library’s own resources (digitised parts of its collections, OPACs etc.) regardless of whether they are in one of the two forms above.
This study recognises the considerable differences between reading rooms;they attract different kinds of readers (from academics to industrialists) who use a wide variety of materials (from birch bark fragments to books, from current periodicals on open access shelving to irreplaceable manuscripts) in a variety of ways (from browsing to detailed study). Almost any conclusion on reading rooms must be qualified by its applicability to some or all reading rooms.
Reading rooms are also distinguished by their expert staff. Readers make considerable reference to staff, who are able to help locate and interpret materials. As evidence of this, over 470,000 reader enquiries were recorded by reading room staff last year [1]. This point is significant when considering the potential of network technologies to replace reader visits with remote network access.
Information was gathered by means of interviews, desk research and a briefing meeting.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight British Library reading room management personnel. It was not possible to interview representatives of the Newspaper Library, but helpful information was supplied by its Head and staff. Other interviews were also conducted with selected members of management. All these interviews were conducted face to face.
Several other members of staff were contacted by telephone, and a wide range of external experts was contacted by telephone and e-mail. The experts included individuals from other national libraries, university libraries and specialists in electronic publishing.
Internet resources were searched, and a literature search was commissioned from BLISS. Questions were posted on two relevant Internet discussion lists. It is significant that these activities uncovered no significant data.
The final activity was a briefing meeting, attended by many of those consulted earlier, plus other subject experts.
Names of all individuals who contributed are listed in the annex.
This report is intended to fulfil two objectives:
The remainder of this report is set out as follows:
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