Following the recommendations of a consultancy conducted by Coopers and Lybrand in 1997, and further consideration of a range of alternative options, allocations have been based on the data obtained from a survey of a sample of more than 4700 researchers (including research active staff, post-doctoral research assistants and postgraduate research students) on their use of HE libraries. The survey was commissioned by the RSLP Steering Group from Research Surveys of Great Britain and was conducted by telephone, post and electronically earlier this year.
The survey revealed very extensive use of libraries beyond those of their 'home' institution by staff and research students in all disciplines. An extremely large number of HEI libraries received some visitors in this way, though a majority had only a few dozen such visitors each year, and most usage was highly clustered into a relatively small number of libraries. The survey also showed considerable clustering with respect to which libraries were widely considered by researchers to be important for their discipline, but many institutions' libraries received at least a few 'votes' on this measure.
Bearing these points in mind, the Steering Group has adopted a broad view of which institutions should be considered for compensation, and included in the first round of calculations all those in the top 50 institutions in the survey in terms of numbers of users of their libraries and/or those that featured as the 50 most important institutions’ libraries for research in respondents’ disciplines. There was considerable overlap between these two groups of institutions, hence calculations were performed for 57 institutions [*].
The funding formula was derived from the data in a way that would not over-emphasise particular types of use made of certain institutions and included all key indicators that could meaningfully be deployed: number of reported users in the survey, number of respondents including the library among the top five in terms of importance to their field, number of visits received, and an estimate of the costs of library/archive staff time generated by interactions of all kind by survey users with the facility.
When the calculations were completed for the 57 institutions a very marked break point emerged at around the £25,000 figure and this, which was also the figure previously identified as a reasonable lower limit by the Group, has been used as the cut-off point for funding. Making the break at this point provides funding for 48 institutions which between them share around 85% of all users of libraries of institutions other than their own.
*Please note that the University of London Institutes were treated as single institutions in the funding methodology, but those which qualified for grant have been listed under the University of London.
| No. | Higher Education Institution | Annual Allocations (£) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Oxford | 812,601 |
| 2 | University of Cambridge | 566,345 |
| 3 | University of London | |
| Senate House | 164,216 | |
| Institute of Advanced Legal Studies | 59,957 | |
| Warburg Institute | 47,471 | |
| Institute of Historical Research | 43,129 | |
| Total | 314,773 | |
| 4 | University of Manchester | 253,707 |
| 5 | London School of Economics and Political Science | 234,103 |
| 6 | University College London | 201,012 |
| 7 | University of Edinburgh | 175,346 |
| 8 | Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine | 165,574 |
| 9 | University of Glasgow | 164,077 |
| 10 | University of Leeds | 151,306 |
| 11 | University of Birmingham | 110,687 |
| 12 | University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology | 105,996 |
| 13 | University of Durham | 96,561 |
| 14 | School of Oriental and African Studies | 84,308 |
| 15 | University of Liverpool | 83,308 |
| 16 | University of Nottingham | 81,193 |
| 17 | University of Warwick | 79,796 |
| 18 | University of Bristol | 78,656 |
| 19 | University of Sheffield | 69,045 |
| 20 | University of Newcastle upon Tyne | 66,901 |
| 21 | University of Southampton | 61,627 |
| 22 | University of Leicester | 61,255 |
| 23 | University of Sussex | 60,405 |
| 24 | Institute of Education, University of London | 59,244 |
| 25 | University of Aberdeen | 51,069 |
| 26 | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | 50,101 |
| 27 | Manchester Metropolitan University | 48,562 |
| 28 | University of Strathclyde | 44,416 |
| 29 | University of Northumbria at Newcastle | 43,216 |
| 30 | University of Reading | 42,712 |
| 31 | Cardiff University | 41,258 |
| 32 | King's College London | 40,063 |
| 33 | University of Bradford | 37,647 |
| 34 | University of Salford | 36,997 |
| 35 | Lancaster University | 36,987 |
| 36 | The Queen's University of Belfast | 36,959 |
| 37 | University of Exeter | 36,839 |
| 38 | University of York | 36,599 |
| 39 | University of Bath | 33,640 |
| 40 | University of Central England in Birmingham | 31,995 |
| 41 | University of Essex | 28,148 |
| 42 | University of Stirling | 27,641 |
| 43 | Aston University | 26,853 |
| 44 | Heriot-Watt University | 26,681 |
| 45 | University of St Andrews | 26,369 |
| 46 | University of Lincolnshire and Humberside | 26,253 |
| 47 | University of East Anglia | 25,595 |
| 48 | University of Kent at Canterbury | 25,577 |
Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 26 November 1999