<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Internet Happenings, Events and Sources


Tuesday, April 13, 2004  

British Library Prepares for the Future
http://www.researchinformation.info/rijanfeb04lynne_brindley.html

The British Library has done extensive research on the needs of tomorrow's networked knowledge society and has made recommendations for how librarians can adapt to provide users with the new kinds of service and support they will need. "At the British Library, we have introduced a market-facing approach to ensure that we align our services with the needs of our five key audience groups: researcher; business; library and information sector; learner; general public. We have also restructured internally to support our market-led strategy, and appointed a head of marketing for each audience group," writes British Library chief executive Lynne Brindley. The British Library has actively canvassed its patrons for suggestions, conducting focus groups and surveys with businesses and individual visitors. In response, it's developed a service geared toward the secure electronic delivery of documents to users' desktops, providing access to more than 100 million items under a copyright-compliant arrangement. In terms of managing digital resources, the British Library has focused on guaranteeing the integrity of the national published archive, says Brindley, "not least of which has been our work with publishers and other U.K. legal deposit libraries to secure the extension of legal deposit legislation to cover e-publications… (to) ensure the long-term preservation of our digital heritage." In addition, the British Library is planning to build a digital storage system that "will take any form of electronic material, and be highly scalable." In an effort to incorporate lessons learned from other institutions facing similar challenges, the British Library is active in a consortium that examines best practices in long-term preservation and is working with the Library of Congress and the Dutch National Library to share that knowledge.

posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:00 AM
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