I am writing - at some length I must confess - in reply to your "Open Letter" to British Library staff. I welcome your invitation to give my views on some of the issues you raise, and I have given a great deal of thought to this reply. That is one reason for its length. Another reason is that there can not be simple answers to complex questions.
I am not alone in being bewildered by some of the events of the past few months, and the multitude of changes, both in structure and nomenclature, which we have been required to absorb. It is hardly surprising that the Library seems to be suffering an identity crisis: so are the staff!
But the crisis goes deeper than terminology: whatever new names are devised to describe what we do, it is still the nature of our day-to-day work which concerns us most, and between those of us who still endeavour to fulfill the numerous and varied tasks required in a great research library and those who plan strategies and objectives there is now a gulf so wide that I wonder if it can ever be bridged. The demoralization felt throughout the Library at all levels is threatening to destroy what has been achieved by prodigious personal efforts over more than a century. It seems to me, and I dare say to many of my colleagues, an unarguable principle that before change can be brought about in a large and complex institution there must be an understanding of what that institution actually is. I am not convinced that the changes in direction and organization which have been imposed during recent months derive from any clear perception of the objectives which made the British Museum Library the envy of the world.
When the British Library was formed in 1973 it inherited, in the new Reference Division, a library with a distinctive tradition, and a reputation without parallel in any country. That reputation was not built by any corporate identity: it was built upon the guiding principle of excellence in acquiring the printed and manuscript sources for the history of civilization; excellence in describing them, thereby making them available to scholars and students; and excellence in preserving them for posterity. None of these achievements would have been possible without the essential intellectual excellence of the staff who were responsible for the growth of the collections. And the larger the collections became the more important it became to have staff who could help readers with the inevitable problems associated with size. The catalogues produced by the departments within the Library between 1875 and 1975 sought to make available to the world of scholarship throughout the world many millions of books, newspapers, maps and manuscripts covering every subject in every language: but even catalogues cannot equal the assistance afforded by the librarian who not only has achieved mastery of his subject but also possesses a profound knowledge of the collections. Testament to the truth of this can be found in thousands of prefaces to scholarly books.
One reason why staff feel despondent about the way developments are taking place is a suspicion that management tries to implement too much too quickly. Nothing tangible ever seems to get finished. Another reason, I think, is that there is a widespread belief among curatorial staff that management is always looking for uniform solutions to inherently different problems. This belief implies that until global solutions have been found, any action is likely to be ill-considered. This is, of course, nonsense; and is one reason why seven years on we still do not have a clear idea of what preservation is all about. The point is, we never will! For the simple reason that circumstances are in a continuous state of flux. If only we could arrest the universe's mutability for long enough to think clearly, all would be well. But the universe has precious little concern for what I call "procedural lapse". The institution is itself evolving, and we must take account of that evolution. We can do no better than tackle problems seriatim, much as doctors in the aftermath of Belsen had to do.
Implicit in the way the Library projects itself should be a recognition that, since we live in times of quite extraordinary change, it is not going to be possible to tackle all problems simultaneously. Technology is developing at a rate faster than we can possibly accommodate it within the Library. Sensible choices must be made, effected quickly, and adhered to. To the solution of each problem there must be a clear understanding of:
The cardinal sin, it seems to me, is in considering too many options (and there never is just one solution to a problem): decision is paralysed, and by the time one is made we are overtaken by events. At a fairly primitive level of management- theory must be the proposition that some solution is better than no solution. Nowhere can this better be seen than in the disgraceful state of the conversion of the General Catalogue.
The "identity crisis" which seems to have prompted your letter to staff suggests to me that the changes in structure recently made have not been carefully considered. You say that an "organization's identity cannot simply be imposed from above or even from outside - it must be drawn from within." That is precisely why the Library's reputation and public image is what it is: the greatest collection of documents in the world, in the custody of a staff who regard themselves as trustees of the past for the benefit of the future. Given that we continue to develop, and preserve, our collections; make them available to readers by means of catalogues (whether printed or in machine-readable form); and support the collections with staff who understand them; then I do not think that this reputation is at risk. But a great research library is not like an organization marketing "goods" to a mass-public as easily deceived by marketing techniques as it is by shallow advertising. The British Library does not need Saatchi & Saatchi to persuade readers that it is a great, virtually indispensable resource for the study of the past. That this is so you can verify for yourself, on any day of the week, by walking through the various reading rooms we maintain.
If you were to do that you would find that the Library has not one, but many identities: there are readers whose research involves them, sometimes exclusively, in one department: Maps, Music, Manuscripts, Newspapers, Official Publications; some habitually use the Reading Room, some the North Library; there are readers in SRIS who have never entered the Bloomsbury building, and vice-versa; those for whom the resources of NSA fulfill all their needs; those for whom the British Library are the Oriental collections in Store Street. There are many thousands of remote users who have never even visited England, but nevertheless depend on us for their research. As one of my colleagues put it to me recently, we are more like Harrods than we are like Sainsbury or Safeway. The thirst for knowledge is decidedly not a "mass" need which can be satisfied by any particular brand of beverage.
For thousands of researchers in almost every country in the world the General Catalogue, in its various printed forms since 1900, is the symbol of the Library's achievements, and it can be found in the libraries of all institutions concerned with research. Of the many problems which have to be faced one of particular importance is the conversion of that catalogue into machine- readable form. That project has had an unhappy history, not least because of the essential difference between the cataloguing standards established by Panizzi and those which the British Library officially supports internationally. The international cataloguing standards established in the wake of MARC are essentially constructs which, while recognizing the enormous new potential of the computer as it was perceived in the 1960's, never took account of the fact that resources would shrink; that the cost of input would soar; and that once libraries had access to machine-readable records for contemporary books they would inevitably want to convert their existing manual records for older collections. For major research libraries these records are a mosaic of changing practices. In the case of the British Library, GK records have an ancestry stretching back to 1841. There is some homogeneity in the printed GK3, but the Reading Room copy is now an intricate mixture of old and new, and much in-between.
Panizzi resisted a national plea for a printed catalogue, until he felt certain that the result would be unified in structure and detail. The GK2 experience dealt a decisive blow to the notion of a single unified catalogue which incorporated both the existing stock and current acquisitions. The classic example of a catalogue overtaken by events is that of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which for the earlier letters of the alphabet is a century out of date with that library's holdings. It seems to me that in a library our size we have no choice but to accept the fact that a single unified catalogue will never be realised.
This is not to say that the Library should abandon hope of eventually having records of its holdings in machine-readable form: but how that is to be done is clearly the most pressing problem which must be solved in the few years left before the first phase of St. Pancras.
Given that we need, and expect to have, a machine-readable index to the catalogue up to the point where it was officially closed, there exist numerous supplementary catalogues which range from the detail provided in the catalogue of fifteenth-century books to the various foreign short title catalogues. For English books printed before 1641 the record provided by STC is virtually complete. For the period 1641-1700 Wing is adequate, and the University Microfilms volumes provide additional points of access. For 1701-1800 ESTC will soon be comprehensive and is available on-line. NSTC will provide access to authors, subjects, and place of imprint from 1801 to 1918. There are numerous catalogues of Oriental books, and there are the various catalogues of Manuscripts, Music, Maps and Newspapers are all well served by separate catalogues.
The nineteenth century had its advocates for the principle of descriptive uniformity, with associated dogmatism, in dealing with library materials. This was, not surprisingly, connected with the ideal of a "universal catalogue" - a vision not far removed from the aspirations of the architects of AACR2! In the British Museum reason fortunately prevailed, and so emerged the diversity of descriptive inventories we have inherited. It was, perhaps, Bond who fully appreciated the radical difference between the needs of users in such different departments as Printed Books, Manuscripts, and Maps. Some materials need cataloguing; some need indexing. For users the index has always been of greater use in research than the catalogue. That is why the Department of Manuscripts has always been unable to keep pace with acquisitions, and why the Subject Index has always been frustrated since T.H. Horne. His catalogue of Queen's College is a model of its kind: but could never form a model for a large encyclopedic library. In many ways the Göttingen Sachkatalog is the only one of its kind in the world. I doubt that it can be done for a library the size of the BL, even though its entries are very brief.
Computers do, it is true, diminish the labour of double- cataloguing, but it seems to me self-evident that we must strive to develop a simple format for the Library's collections which permits a practicable transformation from print to electronics. And that format should be flexible enough to accommodate the various kinds of emphasis which materials as different as maps and newspapers require. Above all, the format must be simple enough to make that transformation practicable and affordable.
The British Library has undertaken a leading role in supporting international standards for the cataloguing of printed materials, and this is going to make it very difficult to adopt - within the Reference Division - standards which could be regarded as degressive. The question we must ask is: whom do we, and should we, serve? I note that Donald Urquhart has recently renewed the argument about "simple" records [Assistant Librarian, 77:4, April 1984], and his view is doubtless shared by many a librarian facing the costs of maintaining a catalogue according to the standard implicit in full AACR2. Historically, those who occupied positions of influence in libraries also occupied positions of influence in scholarship. The membership lists of the Library Association and the Bibliographical Society during the early years had many names in common. The working life of an Edwards, a Garnett, a Bradshaw, was a mixture of librarian and scholar. They actually used libraries, and had a rich understanding of the problems on both sides. We are today, in an environment increasingly bureaucratic and technocratic, in danger of losing sight of the fact that libraries are not ecclesiastical bodies!
Subject cataloguing, and the benefits it might bestow on "curious" enquiry is as old as cataloguing itself. The difficulty is that, as society changes, and our intellectual view of the universe changes, so too does the framework within which we classify books. The cataloguer's distemper with "headings" is equalled only by the philosopher's distemper with subject "headings". The simple "mechanistic" philosophy of a Dewey, with his decimal universe of knowledge, seems to me as unhelpful as LCSH, BMSI or PRECIS. In machine-readable form the description of a book, given adequate indexing, seems to me more than enough. And it is precisely where subject classification approaches the "exact" (chemistry, technology, medicine) that keyword-indexing is sufficient. Where the former drifts into imprecise interpretation of "matter" (Gulliver's Travels, Erewhon, Culture and Anarchy, The Water Babies, &c.) it is unlikely that indexing of any sort is going to be helpful. I have yet to meet a scholar who admitted that his research was materially assisted by a subject catalogue more refined than that of Gesner. The old British Museum headings are, in spite of their intellectual crudity, as revealing as any, and are keyword derived. But the "XCI Rules" predisposed the cataloguer to fix upon the substantive title-phrase, author statement or name. With title-indexing in a computer file the enquirer has more options, and therefore a greater likelihood of finding what he wants. It has always seemed to me obvious that the physical description of a book presents far fewer problems than describing what a book is "about". ESTC is not subject-coded: yet I have seldom encountered complaints from scholars that wished that it was.
It is my feeling that subject classification is accurate when it is least required, and inaccurate when it is most required. One has only to look at the history of classification to realise that one person's "religion" is another's "philosophy"; that "chemistry" can be "magic", that "fiction" can be "satire". There ought to be a permanence about the physical description of a book; that is what bibliography is about. I am doubtful that we can ever hope to devise an intellectual framework which places a book in a permanent contextual position. Which is why Hunter on the gravid uterus is describable and forever obsolete, whereas Joyce on Dublin is indescribable and forever relevant.
It has always seemed to me a naive expression of faith that the transformation from massive duplicate cataloguing in the card-index era to machine-readable cataloguing would necessarily bring the benefits foreseen by the Indiana Network Conference of 1971. Cataloguers are as reluctant to accept another's description in machine-readable form as they are in manual form. Within even ESTC - as a world-wide project - there are fundamental disagreements about detail between libraries that are participating. London University derives a basic record from ESTC for the Porteus Collection project quite cheaply: but then spends as much on tinkering with the derivative as it might have done if it had started from scratch! This is nonsense, and results in a situation not very different from that which computers were supposed to liberate libraries. On a scale which has to be seen to be fully appreciated, the National Library of Australia (using the WLN system) devotes resources to producing an acceptable AUSMARC record which far exceeds the expense which would have been incurred in continuing in the old way. Unless libraries face squarely the fact that the flood of world printing is such that only shared resources can balance the difference between the rate of accession needed to keep "league status" and the capability to make acquisitions accessible using the new technology, we shall be forced to adopt a policy which reduces acquisition to the level of what can be processed. For a great research library this would be an admission of defeat.
ESTC has, perhaps unfortunately, demonstrated a fact which scholarship is just beginning to grasp: that bibliographical information in machine-readable form represents an advance in the handling of information about books as profound as the transformation from manuscript to print. The generation which will patronize St. Pancras will be as impatient with traditional methods of access to the literature of the past as Bembo must have been when he made his journey on mule-back from Italy to St. Gallen to examine a text of Cicero. But seizing opportunities has never been a characteristic of the dogmatic mind, and I fear that already opportunities are being lost because of the ever-increasing gulf that separates those who administer libraries from those who use them. When libraries become victims of orthodoxy (especially ecumenical orthodoxy) they threaten the very purposes they are supposed to serve.
I have dwelt at length on cataloguing because catalogues are the most immediate link between users and a library. Do you realise that more resources (human and financial) have been spent on cataloguing our collections since 1787 than on acquiring them?
No two research libraries have identical collection development policies, and it would be surprising if they did. Some of the largest ones have similar policies, of course, even if their foundation collections have different origins. All large libraries have collections which were gained by accident rather than design. The "royal" collections of several national libraries are a case in point. But collection development, even on as grandiose a scale as envisaged by Panizzi, is inevitably governed by factors of an unforeseen nature. There will always be, therefore, a proportion of any research library's collections unduplicated in other institutions. Derived cataloguing can only ever be a partial solution to the problem of converting manual into machine-readable records. But it is a vitally important partial solution. And it is fortunate that, notwithstanding the orthodox desire for uniformity, the computer in fact liberates us from the tyranny of the "right card in the right place". I daily demonstrate to visitors in S8 the fact that one can find a book on the ESTC file even if the crucial data concerning author, place of publication and date are wrong! Nowhere is the failure to perceive the difference between a card catalogue and a machine catalogue more evident than in OCLC which produces a daily torrent of computer-generated cards. It reminds me of those early printers who, possessed of a resource of enormous power, sought only to imitate manuscripts.
An increasing proportion of the Library's resources are being devoted to management and the promotion of management skills. Before too long there will be few of us left to actually carry out the work necessary to allow the acquisition and processing of books to continue. There are literally hundreds of staff now who never handle a book, let alone meet a reader! They compile reports which no-one bothers to read; carry out surveys which serve no useful purpose; compile statistics which are largely meaningless; devise elaborate plans which are obsolete by the time they materialize; etc., etc. Some of us are puzzled by the fact that the more administration we have the worse our problems seem to get. My own estimate is that we now devote about 30% of our resources to planning and administration, with no demonstrable improvement in providing necessary services to readers. In H&SS alone there are over 100,000 books awaiting processing so that readers can have access to them.
My own definition of management is a simple one: it is understanding what one wants to do, and motivating those for whom one is responsible to get it done. Pseudomanagement consists, for the most part, in the empty rhetoric of jargon and half-understood principles. If change is really to help in restoring the confidence of staff in the objectives of the Library then it is imperative that objectives are clearly understood and stated. That cannot be achieved by the mere promulgation of a Staff Notice. It is a pity that announcements of changes are invariably couched in a directive rhetoric. Apart from the fact that the implications of such notices will hardly be grasped by the staff involved, they serve only to reinforce the widely-held view that the library's destiny is governed by considerations of structure rather than clearly articulated objectives; that the library is an ecclesiastical body not a collection of individuals working towards a common goal.
I am sorry that I have strayed into particularities: but it is often the detail which betrays the insufficiency of "corporate" planning, especially when it is undertaken by people who have no understanding of the problems associated with supplying information to a public whose collective curiosity is beyond grasp; whose idiosyncrasies must be abided; whose occasional discourtesies must be ignored.
I am prepared to agree that some change is overdue: but there is a difference between change for its own sake and sensible change. Changing nomenclature in an institution like the British Library serves to confuse, not clarify. It has taken ten years to get the world of scholarship adjusted to the fact that the Reading Room is not a part of the British Museum; that the State Paper Room is the Official Publications Library (now changed yet again). But the collections have not changed; nor have the expectations of thousands of users. Where is the gain in confusion? Woolworth regards maroon as an obsolete colour, and is busily redecorating its stores to a more fashionable one. Does anyone seriously think that redecorating the Reading Room to the now fashionable pink or yellow will encourage more readers to engage in the pursuit of knowledge?
In the mad pursuit to cast the Library as purveyor of a mass commodity to whom are we appealing? Our readers? Whitehall? The Press? What purpose is served by inelegant promotion of the obvious?
I apologise for burdening you with such a tedious response to your letter and questionnaire, but since you will undoubtedly receive numerous anonymous replies, some of which will be unprintable, I thought it appropriate to take your request a little more seriously than some might.
I do not suppose that anything I have said will deter you from imagining that it is possible to promote the Library as another instrument of progress, like electricity and gas. We might even engage in the sort of advertising war which compares Fiat with Ford.
As one who has derived inestimable benefits from the resources of the Library as reader and consultant staff-member over a period of thirty years I remain convinced that our principal assets are our collections and our staff. They deserve more than empty rhetoric.
I do think that you would gain more by visiting Bloomsbury and talking informally (and frankly) with staff at all levels than be circulating questionnaires. We are all busy, of course, but not so much so that time could not be found to share with you some of the reasons for our despondency. There are precious few links with the centre, as it is. You might even acquire some sense of the real identity of the Library which makes us care about what we do and contributes to the frustration which we feel when that identity is threatened.