24 November 1998

To:	Vice Chancellors/Principals and Librarians/Directors of Information Services at HEFCE/SHEFC/DENI/HEFCW-funded institutions

Dear Vice-Chancellor/Principal/Librarian/Director of Information Services,

RESEARCH SUPPORT LIBRARIES PROGRAMME

A General and background

1) As you will probably know, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council and the Department of Education for Northern Ireland are funding a new national initiative, the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP). This letter is to update you on progress with the Programme and to indicate the likely timetable for future developments.

2) The Programme is currently being set up. Funding for HEIs will start in 1999-2000 and, subject to commitment of funds by the HE funding bodies in respect of the final year, is expected to finish in 2001-2002, with up to £30M being disbursed over the three years.

3) RSLP derives from the deliberations of the Follett Review (1994) and the associated Anderson Report (1996). It brings together both traditional and new forms of access to library information, with specific reference to support for research. The principal beneficiaries of the Programme will be researchers employed in UK HEIs and their postgraduate research students, though there will be significant benefits for other groups. Implementation of this strategy meets directly, in a library context, the call for collaboration and sharing in the use of the research infrastructure envisaged more generally by the Dearing and Garrick reports.

4) Although RSLP represents the final plank of the post-Follett proposals, the Programme is not a continuation of the previous NFF programme, but a new venture which is guided by strong steering and management groups, which are adopting a strategic approach. An important aspect of RSLP is that it will be informed by the views of the HE research community. Consultation is already underway.

B Programme strands

There are four strands to the Programme, viz:

Supporting access to major holdings libraries

The Coopers and Lybrand Report, Study of the level and costs of use of higher education researchers (1997), furnished persuasive evidence that external researchers pose disproportionately heavy costs on the libraries they visit. Funding under this strand will compensate those HE libraries most used by external researchers. Allocations will be informed by the results of an extensive survey of the HE research community which is currently being commissioned, and will not involve a bidding process.

Collaborative collection management projects

Building on the work of the Follett Report, the Anderson Report recommended a programme of collaborative collection management activities, based on networks of library holdings and embraced the concept of a Distributed National Resource in particular groups of disciplines or types of materials. Proposals will be sought for demonstrator projects to explore the benefits and trade-offs of a variety of different kinds of collaborative schemes. All bids should be consortial. Although libraries and archives outside the HE sector cannot be funded directly by RSLP, proposals involving cross-sectoral partners (eg national or public libraries) will be welcomed. Some projects may be co-funded by other grant-awarding bodies.

Research support for humanities and social sciences collections

The post-Follett programme of non-formula funded grants for cataloguing, preservation and improved access to major humanities collections has been widely endorsed by the HE community. Discussions with researchers, however, indicate that some holdings of great potential importance for research were not covered by the programme. Because of the formal focus on humanities, some significant social sciences collections are also believed to have been missed. RSLP will invite proposals, within targeted thematic areas, which improve information about, and access to, materials through retrospective conversion, improved indexing and cataloguing and preservation. The Programme may also provide small amounts of support for transitional exit funding for a very limited number of projects funded under the Specialised Research Collections in the Humanities initiative. In order to provide a strong user-based priorisation to this programme, and to maximise the cost-effectiveness of the investment, consultation with the scholarly community about priority themes is already underway. Some partnership funding will be required.

Targeted retrospective conversion of catalogues

Funding under this strand will be confined to projects with direct links to the programme areas identified in (b) and (c) above. Some partnership funding will be required.

C. Programme Schedule

Expressions of interest will be sought from institutions in the second half of January 1999. There will be six weeks to respond. Guided by the Steering and Management committees, the RSLP office will then seek to build on the most promising expressions of interest so that potential partners are brought together. Institutions will subsequently be asked to submit full bids, and will have four weeks to respond.

Allocations will be announced in early summer 1999.

D. Further information

The Programme Director, Ronald Milne, will be pleased to receive comments and suggestions and to respond to requests for further information, either now or in the future. He may be contacted at the RSLP address, telephoned directly on 0131 651 1494, or mailed at ronald.milne@ed.ac.uk.

Yours faithfully,

Professor Michael Anderson
Chairman, RSLP Steering Committee