06 BRITISH LIBRARY ANNUAL REPORT 2003/2004
Measuring
our
value
Assessing the British Library’s To measure the consumer surplus, the Notwithstanding, the results indicate that
contribution to the national consultants analysed the results of surveys each year the British Library generates
economy is a complex matter, completed by over 2,000 beneficiaries who value around 4.4 times the level of its
requiring consideration of a were selected at random from different public funding, revealing that investment
number of different dimensions. groups including members of the wider in the British Library pays huge dividends
public as well as direct users of the Library’s to UK plc, and that the Library represents
Traditionally, attempts to assess these products and services. They were asked: value for money for the British taxpayer.
benefits have taken the form of qualitative It illustrates the tangible benefits to the
case studies – telling good stories perhaps, How much they would be willing to pay nation that flow from the strategy of
but failing to provide a comprehensive for the Library’s continued existence. investment in the knowledge economy,
evaluation. Now a technique, supported information technology, and research
The minimum payment they would be
by the Nobel Prize winning economists and development.
willing to accept to forgo the Library’s
Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow, permits existence.
a coherent quantitative evaluation of the This value benefits not only those who
total benefit to the nation of publicly-funded How much they invest in terms of time access the Library’s collections and services
institutions and programmes. Recognising and money to make use of the Library. directly, but also benefits members of the
the value of this technique, the British How much they would have to pay to public throughout the UK who reap the
Library commissioned a research study use alternatives to the Library, if such indirect benefits of the world-class scientific
to estimate the economic impact of the alternatives could be found. research, creativity and innovation that
Library on the UK economy. The study is underpinned by the British Library.
was conducted jointly by two independent
research organisations, Spectrum Strategy While the methodology used is the most The British Library intends to commission
Consultants and Indepen. appropriate available, this work is still not further studies to build on this significant
an exact science. The results reported were first step.
In commissioning the study, we set out to conservative given that, for practical reasons,
discover the value enjoyed directly by users the study didn’t capture the complete range
of the Library as well as the value enjoyed of products and services which the Library
indirectly by UK citizens. In both cases the offers – such as website usage. In addition,
economic welfare that the British Library the results excluded any value generated
generates has been measured by the size for non-UK users of the British Library.
of the consumer surplus, i.e. by the value This is likely to be substantial and to generate
gained by beneficiaries over and above reciprocal value for the UK economy. Finally,
any cost to them of the Library’s services – it is important to keep in mind that this
users of our reading rooms pay nothing, methodology only provides a snapshot
while users of our document supply of the British Library based on 2003 and
service pay fees. doesn’t capture emerging services such as
digitisation and other web-based services.
BRITISH LIBRARY ANNUAL REPORT 2003/2004 07
Researchers Businesses General UK Library Young
Public Network Learners
Serving our users
The British Library serves five
principal user groups.
RESEARCHERS GENERAL PUBLIC YOUNG LEARNERS
Everyone with specialist research needs, People from all over the world enjoy the An increasing number of young learners visit
including post-graduate students in every Library’s free exhibitions – both real and the Library and benefit from the e-learning
discipline, turns to the Library for current, virtual. Visitors to St Pancras can choose from resources we make available online. 8,173
historical and international research material. a programme of public events that ranges schoolchildren and their teachers took part
These users make nearly 400,000 visits a from literary panel discussions to conferences in our St Pancras-based workshops last year
year to our state-of-the-art reading rooms, and themed talks. Library publications and visits to the learning pages of the
while our remote information supply which, in addition to books, include audio British Library website increased fourfold.
service is the largest and one of the fastest CDs of wildlife recordings and international Teachers’ notes and creative guides to our
available. Our customer alerting services music, and interactive CD-Rom versions acclaimed exhibitions help young visitors to
offer access to over 20 million articles of our greatest treasures, appeal to a wide interpret items on display. We also provide
from academic journals and conferences. general market as well as to specialist read- 2,000 pages of online material to enable
Details of 9,000 new articles are added to ers. learners to develop investigative and cre-
the database every day. ative research skills in support of the
UK LIBRARY NETWORK National Curriculum.
BUSINESSES The British Library works with the UK
Over 80% of the highest spending UK library network to promote collaboration
research and development companies use between institutions and networks at a
British Library services, and more than regional and local level. Our touring exhibi-
10,000 small and medium-sized enterprises tions and online resources help improve
(SMEs) use our priced information supply access to our treasures for thousands of
services. Users can tailor our research servic- regional users. We also
es to their deadlines and budgets, support digitisation projects to reunite
and our staff offer information retrieval material of regional importance that has
expertise in the sciences, medicine, technol- been dispersed around the country. In addi-
ogy, intellectual property, legislation and tion we are co-operating with Newsplan
market research. Our services include 2000 to preserve and improve access to
access to the world’s largest collection of archives of local and regional newspapers.
patents, and specialist journals and data- UK citizens use the Library’s vast collections
bases to which many SMEs cannot afford to through their local library
subscribe. via inter-library loans and document supply.