A high-level joint task force was formed in September 1999 to identify areas for future collaboration between the British Library and Higher Education. Membership included for the British Library, Lynne Brindley, David Bradbury, Geoff Smith and Malcolm Smith; and for Higher Education Reg Carr, Mary Auckland, Neil Beagrie, Alice Colban, Lorcan Dempsey, Paul Hubbard, Mike Hopkins, Nigel Macartney, Ronald Milne, Ian Mowat, Charles Oppenheim, Malcolm Read and Alicia Wise.
At the first meeting of the Task Force, it was agreed that there was a mutual interest in ensuring more effective and efficient overall provision in the context of a distributed national collection of research resources and, consequently, each organisation agreed to jointly fund work and investigations towards this end.
The Task Force commissioned four studies:
The reports from each of these studies, prepared by consultants, were treated as working papers for the Task Force. An overview report on the work of the Task Force, summarising the outcomes and recommendations of the studies, and describing other areas of joint activity was prepared for and agreed by the final meeting of the Task Force, and went forward to the new Research Support Libraries Group described below. The overview report - Adobe PDF 80K (download from the Concord Library Co-operation website) is available.
Also available are a version of the 'distributed national collection' report - Adobe PDF 80K (download from the Concord Library Co-operation website), distilled and revised by members of the Task Force and the collaborative storage study - Adobe PDF 88K (download from the Concord Library Co-operation website).
The Task Force took a close interest in other areas in which the British Library and Higher Education have been working together, eg in investigating the feasibility of a national union catalogue reports available, in development of the BL’s ‘zetoc’ electronic table of contents service for Higher Education users; and in the joint provision of a national focus for collection description work.
The members of the Higher Education/British Library Task Force shared the view that their joint investigations and deliberations were a success. The joint work signalled a new willingness and provided proof of an ability to work together to common end that has not been consistently evident in recent years. There was unanimity on the need for a shared strategic vision and the necessity of building a framework for future sustainable and effective collaboration.
Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 23 November 2004