22/7 The British Library

via The Good Library Blog by Perkins on 22 July

From Roger Pearse

I live outside London, and I really don't see a lot of value from the British Library. Why shouldn't it suffer cutbacks? It's an institution that makes nothing much available online, and charges like a wounded bull for any of its services. Isn't it just a bloated bureaucracy? It's telling, surely, that its reaction to threatened cuts is not to cut staff but services to the public – the reaction of every self-serving bureaucracy.
Can someone explain to me why we, the general public, need to fund this organisation? With figures that show the benefit to us all?

Hazel's comment:
I'm sure that regular readers will understand my immediate reaction to this tirade. Mr Pearse may not see a lot of value from the British Library but there's several thousands of other people who do. And I fail to understand how cutting the number of staff would result in anything but reduced services. We, the general public, need to fund this organisation because it is the repository for all items published in this country and we must have somewhere for them. If you are going to have this wonderful collection of material then it makes sense to allow access to it for study, research and interest. And if you want a copy of an article, for your own private research, then you should be prepared to pay for it. As I understand it the price that you pay includes an amount back to the publisher and the cost of actually finding the item and copying it etc.
And it's a wonderful place to work even if you don't live in London.