Previous page

Table of Contents

Next page

Annual Report of the Library Syndicate for the year 1999-2000

Three major building projects started on schedule during the course of the year. At the main West Road building, work on the extension to the north-west corner, to create enlarged reading rooms for users of the Library's most precious materials, the rare books and manuscripts, and a state-of-the-art photographic and digitization centre, began in September 1999. This project involves the demolition of much of the area previously occupied by those departments, and means that they will be housed in temporary accommodation for the next two years. The staff in the Special Collections Division are to be congratulated on the fact that the Temporary Manuscripts and Rare Books Reading Room opened without any break in service to readers, and, generally, the room works well, even if it is at times rather cramped. Its main problem is that of excessive heat, either through sunshine or the heating system, which now operates outside the control of Library staff. The building work has required other staff either to move or take on extra duties on a temporary basis. Some departments, especially Legal Deposit, are operating from corridors, which makes their work very difficult and interrupts the work flows essential to the efficient organization of material; the Photography Department is operating from a temporary building and experienced considerable difficulties over the course of the year; and the Music Department, Official Publications Department, and West Room have taken on extra responsibilities for fetching material formerly the preserve of Rare Books or Manuscripts.

At the other end of the building, work on the south-west corner began in July 2000. This extension, which is essentially a mirror image of that at the north end, will house an enlarged reading room for readers of Official Publications and the Royal Commonwealth Society collections, a new area for users of items obtained on inter-library loan, and an IT resources area, which will provide access to a range of electronic resources, with appropriate technical assistance on hand, and more adequate accommodation for the Legal Deposit Department and the Library Offices. Construction is scheduled to follow on directly from that at the north-west corner, but in this case the 'extension' is being built first; the departments currently in the area to be demolished will be decanted when the north-west corner is complete in the summer of 2001.

At Clarkson Road, the Betty and Gordon Moore Library also proceeded apace, with work on site having started in February 2000. This library will be a major element in the University Library's support for science and technology and will form a focal point in the new Centre for Mathematical Sciences, which was officially opened by the Chancellor of the University, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, in July 2000. Much detailed planning is currently going into the running of two science libraries (the Moore Library and the current Scientific Periodicals Library), together with the incorporation into the Moore Library of the Departmental libraries of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics. The remit of the Science Libraries Sub-syndicate was also extended to cover University Library provision for the sciences from both libraries.

The cost of these three projects is about £20m, all of which has come from sources outside the University. The bulk of the funding was provided by two very generous private gifts, from Dr Gordon E. Moore ($12.5m) and from a private donor (£6m), and a further sum of about £2m formed part of a grant to the Library from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The remainder came from a variety of sources, both foundations and private benefactors, and the Library is grateful to the University's Development Offices, both in Cambridge and New York, for all their support and assistance in raising this magnificent sum.

Other external funding this year came from the Higher Education Funding Council for England's Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), which was a successor to the Non-Formula Funding for Specialized Research Collections in the Humanities (NFF). The Library is involved in eleven RSLP Projects. In addition to funding specific projects, the RSLP also includes an 'Access Strand', which is designed to compensate those libraries which are heavily used by postgraduates and academic staff from other institutions. This is a welcome recognition that, as other university libraries are forced to cut back in their provision for research, those libraries with major research collections are bearing an increasing burden of use. Cambridge received the second highest allocation (after Oxford) of £566,000 a year for the three years of the programme. Some of the 1999-2000 allocation was used to employ additional staff in the Reader Services and IT Services departments, but most of it went towards helping to close the funding gap for the north-west corner extension, the building of which has been largely necessitated by the increasing numbers of external readers using the Library's special collections.

For many staff in the Library the year was dominated by the procurement process for the new automation system. The burden of this process, including discussions with staff from all parts of the University Library and the other Cambridge libraries about their specific requirements, drawing up the request for proposals and tender documents, and negotiating with potential suppliers, fell almost entirely to Ms Patricia Killiard, Head of IT Services, whose contribution to this crucial development has been outstanding. The Project Team was chaired by Ms Anne Murray, the Deputy Librarian, and seven task groups were established to examine requirements for each functional area of the system; each group consisted of staff from the University Library and Faculty or Departmental libraries. Open consultation meetings were held and one-day demonstrations were given by six suppliers. Each of the three short-listed suppliers then spent about a week in the Library giving demonstrations and discussing technical issues with staff. A decision is expected in September.

During the year, the Library was offered one of the most important collections of scientific manuscripts still in private hands. This collection, containing letters and papers of Sir Isaac Newton and other distinguished scientists, is owned by the Earl of Macclesfield and was placed on sale by Sotheby's. The price, reflecting the international interest in Newton manuscripts, was very high - £6,370,000 - and much thought was given to whether the Library should even attempt to acquire it. However, the papers are closely related to those in the Portsmouth Collection, already in the Library, and it was felt that there was a serious risk that, if placed on the open market, the collection would be broken up and sold to individual collectors all over the world and would thus effectively be lost to scholarship. The Library, therefore, applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund and, at the end of July 2000, was informed that the Lottery had offered its maximum grant of 75 per cent. This left about £1,600,000 to find and, as the year ended, a major campaign was under way to secure this collection for the benefit of current and future scholars.

The Library's international standing was again recognized when it was asked to receive a visit from Jiang Zemin, President of the People's Republic of China, as part of his State Visit to the United Kingdom in October 1999. The President, who was accompanied by a large entourage, including the Vice-Premier and several government ministers, saw a display of items from the Library's collections, both oriental and western, in the East Asian Reading Room.

Last year's Report noted the acquisition of the archive of the Royal Society of Literature; during the current year the Library published, jointly with the Society, The Royal Society of Literature: a portrait, by Isabel Quigly, copies of which were distributed to members of the Friends of the Library. Volume 11 of The correspondence of Charles Darwin was published by Cambridge University Press, and Professor Reif is to be congratulated on the publication by Curzon Press of his guide to the Genizah Collection, A Jewish archive from Old Cairo.

Collections

The Library's Collection Development Policy was circulated to Faculty Boards for comment during the summer of 1999. Most comments were favourable, noting with pleasure the fact that, for the first time, the Library had set out its policy in this crucial area. In a number of cases, specific enquiries were responded to and the policy was amended where appropriate to take into account the points made by users. The General Board has asked all Faculty and Departmental libraries in the University to produce their own collection development policies and has invited Colleges to do the same; once completed, these policies should provide a comprehensive picture of library collecting across the University.

Modern books and periodicals

The Collection Development Policy sets out what the Library currently aims to collect. However, the imbalance in what is actually acquired, in the number of book recommendations in different subject areas and languages, has long been a matter of concern. To some extent this reflects the enthusiasm, or lack of it, of members of the academic staff, some of whom are committed readers of publishers' and booksellers' catalogues and reviews and regularly pass on their suggestions to the Library. It should be the role of the Library staff to ensure that gaps are filled and that a balance is maintained across collecting fields. Unfortunately, largely due to a chronic lack of staff for book selection and processing, it is impossible to maintain this balanced coverage; as a result, the combined enthusiasm of Library and academic staff in some areas leads to the development of collections in those subjects, whilst others are relatively neglected. In an attempt to redress this balance, a greater level of responsibility for co-ordinating the collection building in a number of west European languages was assigned on an experimental basis to one member of staff, whose role is to liaise with the relevant academic Departments and encourage them to recommend books in their subjects.

The size of the weekly consignments of legal deposit books from the Copyright Agency continues to increase, with the average now being 1,693 items (this excludes periodicals, official publications, maps, and printed music). The Legal Deposit Department has suffered more than most from having to move into temporary accommodation, and the backlog of unprocessed items is growing at a worrying rate. The voluntary scheme for the deposit of non-print publications got off to a slow start. By the end of the year a few hundred items, mainly CD-ROMs, had been deposited with either the British Library or the Copyright Agent, and technical discussions between the libraries were taking place on how to network those items for which the permission of the publishers had been received.

At the request of the British Library, extensive discussions took place on possible collaboration in the acquisition, retention, and cataloguing of German-language material. Although initial discussions proceeded with energy and commitment, the British Library's interests moved elsewhere and there is little evidence that useful developments will now emerge.

In the field of American studies, the new post, funded for two years through the generosity of Dr Mark Kaplanoff, has been a great success, with over 3,000 orders having been placed and, in many cases, the books already processed and on the shelves available for readers.

Transfers from other Cambridge libraries continue to arrive. Most of the final instalment of a large transfer from the Department of Anatomy has been dealt with, but the School of Education is currently providing regular lists of books that it wishes to dispose of, sometimes at the rate of a list a week. The effect of such transfers on the Library's storage space was referred to in last year's Report, and the work involved in checking the lists and processing those books which are deemed worthy of adding to the collection is considerable. Material which Departments regard as of such low value that they want to be rid of it must of necessity receive a lower priority at the University Library than newly-published books that are likely to be wanted by readers, even if this means that Departments have to retain the items longer than they would wish. The only solution to this would be to allocate more staff to dealing with transfers, but that can hardly be justified at present in view of the problems being faced in dealing with current publications.

The continuing increases in the price of journals (both in print and electronic versions) is a matter of growing concern. In the humanities and social sciences, journals are relatively cheap and an increase above the rate of inflation can usually be borne within the Library's budget. In the sciences, however, with over 100 journals now being quoted at a subscription price of more than $10,000 a year, and one, Brain Research, costing almost £10,000, a rise of even a few per cent has an enormous overall effect. A number of major publishers are now offering 'bundled' titles, whereby, for a fixed price, a library can offer access to a whole range of electronic titles, even if the paper version is not held - and, indeed, even if it is not wanted! This development has been the cause of much concern, particularly as it penalizes the large libraries whose expenditure on journals is already high. The Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) has taken a lead in seeking to break the spiral of journal price rises. Its Board has had a number of meetings with representatives of the publishers and it has also provided briefing documents to the Russell Group of Vice-Chancellors.

Locally, the University Library, with the full backing of the Science and Medical Library Sub-syndicates, decided not to accept the terms offered by Elsevier Science and Academic Press for continued access to their electronic journal packages. This is unquestionably a reduction in the level of service offered to readers but it is felt that the principles at stake are of overriding importance to the academic community's long-term interests in gaining access at reasonable cost to scholarly publishing - much of it the result of the work of that same academic community. Both the Medical Library and the Scientific Periodicals Library are suffering from this price escalation, and a significant number of scientific journals at the SPL are now being funded from the budget for the West Road building. It is intended that, once the financial arrangements for the Moore Library are in place, support for scientific and medical journals will have to be rationalized, so that the true cost is clear.

To date, some 200 volumes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings have been received by the Official Publications Department; indexes are being prepared as the volumes arrive, so that, as soon as they are bound, they are ready for readers' use. The Department is involved in two externally-funded projects: 'South Asia Through Official Eyes', a project on Indian Official Publications, which was unsuccessful as a bid to RSLP but which, in revised form, subsequently received funding from the British Library's Co-operation and Partnership Programme; and BOPCRIS (British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service), which aims to provide a web database with details of around 15,000 key British official documents from the eighteenth century to 1983, began in January 2000 under the auspices of the RSLP initiative.

A new post of Smuts Librarian for South Asian and Commonwealth Studies, referred to last year, was established, with joint funding from the Centre of South Asian Studies, the Smuts Fund, and the University Library, and an appointment was made in May 2000. The post will provide the University with a specialist to cover the whole area of Commonwealth Studies, with specific responsibility to manage the complementary collections in the Centre and the University Library.

Funding for the HEFCE NFF project on the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) collection came to an end in July 2000. When the project began, the state of the RCS collection, as it had arrived in 1993 from its former home in London, meant that it was impossible to assess how much could be achieved with the funding available. A significant part of the collection, some 30,000 items, has now been properly catalogued, with the records added to the online catalogue for the Africa, Canada, literature, and bibliography sections, and the Cobham collection on Cyprus; all the periodicals titles are in the Union List of Serials, with some also having been microfilmed for preservation purposes; and the most urgent conservation work has been completed, including the boxing and housing in inert sleeves of the photographs, which are one of the gems of the collection. However, a great deal of work remains outstanding before this very large collection is fully catalogued and processed in such a way that access to it can be accommodated within the Library's normal procedures. At present there is no obvious source of funding to continue the work.

Manuscripts

Among the more significant purchases during the current year were further letters by Charles Darwin, and a folio from the manuscript of the Origin of species; a substantial letter by Erasmus Darwin; letters from Stanley Baldwin; political correspondence and papers of Archibald George Church, MP (1886-1954); and a fifteenth-century French manuscript, 'Vie de St Josse'. Two collections related to the Royal Commonwealth Society and bought from the Commonwealth Library Fund were the mid-nineteenth-century diaries of General Sir Lynedoch Gardiner, and letters of Sir Stephen Gatty, Chief Justice of Gibraltar, from around 1900.

Donations included the papers of the naturalist, Sir Peter Scott (Lady Scott); a dispensation by the papal penitentiary for the marriage of Roderick McCleod of Lewis and Marsella, daughter of Celestine de Insulis, 1465 (Professor Martin Rudwick); and notes by N. R. Ker on Cambridge manuscripts, transferred from the Bodleian Library (Professor A. G. Watson).

Work continued on the sorting and cataloguing of the Jardine Matheson Archive and the preparation of descriptions of the Library's medieval illuminated manuscripts; the cataloguing of the Tranchell Papers was completed, as was the cataloguing of the original gift of the papers of the Barlow family of Thornby. However, a further substantial accession arrived during the course of the year and it was agreed with Mr Henry Barlow, who both donated the papers and largely funded their cataloguing, that work on these would resume in due course. Thanks to a grant of DM 84,000 from the Volkswagen Stiftung, and in collaboration with the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, work began on cataloguing the rich collection of Arthur Schnitzler's literary manuscripts and correspondence, which has been in the Library for many years.

Maps

Following last year's introduction of Saturday morning opening, the Map Room further increased its opening hours to include weekday lunch-times from May 2000, thus bringing its hours of service into line with those generally in force in the Library's reading rooms. Plans were drawn up to improve the storage and reader facilities in the reading room. The department has also begun to create online catalogue records and is investigating a number of ways in which the processing of maps can be made more efficient.

As usual, the programme to maintain current map series continued, with sets of maps being purchased this year for Australia, Belgium, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, and New Zealand. These were augmented by up-to-date town plans for the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, and Central and South America, and the acquisition of maps from the former Soviet General Staff continued. These have been particularly heavily used this year.

Among the antiquarian items acquired were Geographische Vorstellung eines Globi … Herr Martin Behaim (Nürnberg 1730), showing Behaim's 1492 globe (the earliest existing world globe) before the nineteenth-century restoration which resulted in the loss of detail; the first large-scale survey of Northamptonshire (1 inch to 1 mile) of 1779; and nine maps of the southern counties of England of 1732. A particularly interesting item, donated by Professor Sir Robert Jennings QC, was an atlas of colour reproductions of 80 maps, dated between 1669 and 1995, of the Red Sea area, submitted as part of a border dispute between Eritrea and Yemen.

Music

Among the more significant purchases were a late eighteenth-century manuscript of harpsichord music from Lyon containing a number of unique pieces; manuscripts of Jean-Baptiste Lully's 'Cadmus [et Hermione]' and 'Les festes de la Mour [= l'Amour] et de Bachus' from the first decade of the eighteenth century; Ernest Boulanger, Les sabots de la marquise: opéra comique en un acte (Paris 1854); and an eighteenth-century collection of six sets of violin sonatas, some very rare, by San Rafaele, Lolli, Stratico, Barthélemon, Ciampi, and l'Abbé le fils (Saint-Sévin). Dr Anthony Langford donated manuscript transcripts of English service music from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the Cambridge University Musical Society presented its library of historical orchestral parts.

Oriental collections

The remaining HEFCE NFF projects in the Oriental area reached the final stages. The retrospective conversion of catalogue records for books in Arabic saw the addition, over the whole project, of about 10,500 records to the online catalogue; the conservation and description of all 250 Michaelides Papyri was also completed, as was the planned work on the Genizah Collection. By the end of the year, some 6,600 records for books in Indic languages had been converted and added to the online catalogue and it was agreed that, as a small funding surplus remained from the project, the work would continue into the next year in order to complete the remaining records.

The expansion of Chinese teaching and research in Cambridge following the HEFCE review of Chinese studies has brought increased funding for new academic staff and for the purchase of books, but no increase in the Library staff required to process the books. Once the East Asia Institute is built, this situation is likely to become worse, and new sources of funding will need to be identified if the expected level of support from the University Library is to be maintained. Significant progress was made in providing electronic assistance for users of Chinese materials, with the introduction of a series of pages on the website and the development of the Library catalogue to display and search records in vernacular script. The State Visit of the President of China is reported elsewhere.

The UK Union Catalogue of Japanese publications, which is organized from the University Library, now includes almost 103,000 records. The Islamic Bibliography Unit has started publishing Index Islamicus on CD-ROM, as well as in the traditional printed format, and arranged and hosted the first in a series of lectures in memory of the late Professor James Pearson, the founder of the publication.

Rare books

The department continued to build on its strengths, in particular in the history of science and in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and philosophy, including works by Swift, Fielding, Rousseau, Diderot, Goethe, Lessing, and Herder. Of particular interest in the former category were the purchase of Johannes Schiller, Coelum stellatum christianum (Augsburg 1627), a collection of magnificent celestial maps based on the most accurate astronomical information of the time, and the revised second edition of Vincenzo Renieri, Tabulae motuum caelestium universales (Florence 1647). The most significant purchase was Enrique de Villena, Marqués de Aragón, Los trabajos de Hercules (Zamora 1483), the first edition of a major work of Spanish medieval literature, important also as the first Spanish book illustrated with original woodcuts. Among the sixteenth-century books purchased were Edward Halle, The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (London 1548), which contains 1,700 marginal annotations on the reigns of Henry IV and Henry VIII by Sir Thomas Knyvett, much of whose library is in the University Library; Jacopo Mazzocchi, Epigrammata antiquae urbis (Rome 1521), which presents a summary of all inscriptions of ancient Rome found up to that time; and Retorica in volgar Fiorentino (Rome 1546), a version with extensive commentary of the first book of Cicero's De inventione rhetorica, by Dante's teacher and friend, Brunetto Latini.

Mr Norman Waddleton's generosity continued with his donation of a further tranche from his collection of books with colour-printed illustrations, and more rare books were transferred from the Department of Anatomy.

University Archives

The most substantial accession to the Archives comprised the records of the Department of Chemical Engineering. Papers from student societies continued to be deposited, with, this year, those of the Cambridge University Music Society, the Cambridge University Music Club, the Socialist Club, the Hill-walking Club, the Role-playing Society, and the Geographical Club being added.

Cataloguing of the University Library's own archive began, as did a full-scale conservation survey of the University Archives. Advice on records management was given to a number of University Departments. The report of the University's Working Party on Data Protection included a substantial contribution from the Deputy Keeper of the Archives on the implications for records management of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Digital Library Services

The number of online databases provided by the Library and available on the University network reached 145, with major additions this year including the Oxford English Dictionary, the Grove Dictionaries of Art and Opera, the Context collection of law databases, and the Research Libraries Group's (RLG) Archival Resources. Access was also provided by the publishers to the full database of Early English Books Online in recognition of the Library's contribution to the microfilming of those works over many years. The increased willingness of Departmental libraries to share the cost of some of the databases was a welcome development: EconLit was jointly funded by the University Library and the Marshall Library of Economics, and the Philosopher's Index was funded jointly by the Faculty of Philosophy, the Whipple Library, and the University Library. The General Board has encouraged this approach and it is hoped that further joint ventures of this type will be possible in the future.

Lack of adequately trained staff to provide support to readers in the effective exploitation of the wide range of electronic services has been a matter of concern for some time. One of the new RSLP-funded staff in the main Reading Room has been given specific responsibility for both user education and staff training in IT. A series of presentations and tutorials in the use of Web of Science has taken place and a much more ambitious programme for users is being prepared for the next academical year. The Reading Room is now offering the level of support for IT-based resources that has long been needed.

The Main Catalogue

The planned extension of online cataloguing to Maps and Official Publications was completed and both departments are now producing entries for the online catalogue.

The output of the Cataloguing Division remained steady, despite the fact that the equivalent of 74 working weeks were lost through unfilled vacancies, coming about as a result of staff moves, retirements, and resignations. The problems of allocating finite resources to the related activities of book selection, acquisitions, and cataloguing is always a fine balancing act; in general the Library takes the view that it is preferable to acquire material, even if the cataloguing of it may take longer, rather than allocate more resources to cataloguing at the expense of actually acquiring the books.

The Cataloguing Department is actively involved in the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, co-ordinated jointly by the Library of Congress and participants around the world. Work such as this is an essential element in maintaining the Library's international role, and it also brings direct benefits. This year a senior member of staff from the Library of Congress spent four days in Cambridge to provide training in name- and subject-authority work; most of the cost of this visit was generously underwritten by the Library of Congress.

The Greensleeves Project has now been running for five years, and a total of 164,000 machine-readable records have been created and added to the online catalogue. Some 117 guardbook volumes of the Pre-1978 General Catalogue have been marked with green spots to indicate that the records in them have been converted, and many of the other volumes have a significant proportion of records now in the online catalogue. Two outstanding problem areas are periodicals and non-roman script entries. Periodicals have been only selectively converted because of differences in practice between the guardbook and the serials list, but work has begun to mop up outstanding records in those volumes that are almost completed. Cyrillic and Greek script entries are converted by Greensleeves Project staff, and others, such as Indic, Arabic, and Hebrew have been dealt with in the course of various NFF projects; entries in Turkish Cyrillic, Pushto, and Urdu are still outstanding.

Services and Accommodation

The provision of new staff in the main Reading Room, funded from the RSLP access strand, has transformed the level of service that this hard-pressed area has been able to offer. Combined with the upgrading and increased number of PCs, this means that the staff are able to offer a more rapid and efficient enquiry service to readers. The catalogue records for a small number of items in the quick reference section (class Ref.) are still somewhat hidden away in the guardbook catalogue by virtue of their being treated as periodicals and having started before 1978. The records for these are now being added to the online catalogue.

The number of books fetched continues to rise, this year reaching a record, at 125,391. The online book-request system (OBRS) has rapidly become popular with readers, with over two-thirds of requests now being received this way. By blocking requests for books already on loan or ordered electronically within the previous 24 hours, the system provides readers with an immediate indication of the availability of the book they want and prevents staff making wasted journeys to the stacks, thus improving the speed of service overall.

After two years of discussion, the new University Card is planned for introduction in September 2000. By the end of the current year (July 2000), there remained a number of major outstanding issues, such as the lack of any address information on the card database, which means that the Library will have to intercept all non-undergraduate readers to obtain this data; and the incompatibility of the new card with the Library's photocopying system, which means that readers with the new card will have to obtain a second card for photocopying, until adequate information can be provided from the card supplier to allow the Library - at some considerable expense - to change its system. There were also short-term problems in transferring data on existing University holders of Library Readers' Cards from the Library's database to the University Card database.

The building developments at the north-west and south-west corners will provide major improvements to the accommodation available for readers. However, the creation of these extensions serves to highlight the growing need for more space for the collections. The basement stack, completed in 1998, and the Aoi Pavilion offered a breathing space, nothing more, and the need for storage space is again becoming acute. Despite all the predictions a few years ago about the death of the book, there is still no sign of a reduction in the amount of print-on-paper being published, and until digital storage can be proven to be secure, there is little likelihood that a library of record such as this one will be able to replace any of its paper holdings. The newspaper storage area is rapidly becoming unusable, with boxes stored on the floor and sequences having to be broken in order to accommodate new issues. The recent furore over the disposal of newspapers by the British Library indicates the difficulty that is being faced: should libraries rely entirely on microfilm copies of newspapers? If not, who is going to provide the necessary storage space and how many copies of the originals will be needed?

The Estate Management and Building Service began two major long-term projects, both designed to improve the Library's fire precautions and to bring the building up to the standards of current regulations. As far as users of the Library are concerned, the most visible impact will be the installation of additional doors and partitions to control the spread of a fire, particularly between floors and around the staircases in the open stack. Every attempt is being made to reduce the inconvenience to users, both whilst the work is under way and once it has finished, but it is a regrettable fact of life that, with a building designed to 1930s' standards of fire control, the physical barriers required to meet current standards will, in places, be both visually obtrusive and inconvenient in use.

Preservation

For many years it has been apparent that the number of items being sent for binding has exceeded the capacity of the Bindery to deal with them. A Binding Task Force was, therefore, established this year, with representatives from many parts of the Library, to establish priorities and guidelines. The fundamental dilemma results from the fact that one of the aspects of this Library most appreciated by readers is the large amount of material on open access and available for borrowing. To preserve this material, it must be bound. A balance has to be struck between the finite capacity of the Bindery and the desire to place as much as possible on open shelves.

The constantly increasing use of the collections is leading to a general deterioration in the state of the books and journals, especially those on open access, and a growing backlog of items awaiting repair. A means of funding more repair work will have to be found in the near future.

NFF funding for the conservation work on the Royal Commonwealth Society Collection came to an end in July 2000. During the project a wide variety of materials were treated, including printed books, manuscripts, drawings, water colours, oils, photographs, glass-plate negatives, and artefacts. The three-year project to conserve the Ely Dean and Chapter Archives, funded by a grant to the cathedral from the Heritage Lottery Fund, is now into its second year. Although some of the material is relatively straightforward, a substantial amount is proving problematical, mainly because of the poor condition of the collection, which was deposited in the Library in 1970.

Support Services

The decision taken last year to move from the Library's in-house automation system to a commercial one dominated the work of the Automation Division. Only essential maintenance and enhancements have been carried out, though a number of smaller projects were undertaken, such as support for vernacular Chinese records and the development of musical incipits in the Online Catalogue, which, it is believed, is a unique development, in which there has already been considerable interest.

Many of the Library's administrative staff have been heavily involved in training for the University's new commitment accounting system (CAPSA). Whilst accepting the need for such a system, considerable doubt must be expressed about the planning for its implementation, the adequacy of the training provided, and the ability of the system to handle a highly decentralized organization such as this University. With difficulty, CAPSA staff were persuaded to exempt the book purchasing system (for which CAPSA is completely unsuited) and to provide an interface to the Library's own system. However, there is great concern that CAPSA, otherwise to be implemented in full, will increase workloads, especially where research grants are concerned. The system is due to go live at the beginning of August 2000.

The move of the Photography Department to a temporary structure during the construction of the north-west corner extension has had a serious effect on its ability to provide the normal high level of service. There were many problems with the building itself, which took weeks to sort out and resulted in a significant loss of income. As an essentially self-funding department, this disruption had a major impact on its ability even to end the year with any surplus at all; these problems were confounded by the amount of time involved in training sessions for CAPSA, some of them of questionable value.

Exhibitions

Exhibition Centre

'Cromwell: 'a brave bad man' ' (27 April - 9 October 1999)

'Divided and reunited: the making of modern Germany' (26 October 1999 - 16 February 2000), prepared by Mr Lowe and opened by Dr Wolfgang Drautz, Counsellor at the German Embassy.

'Keeping time: a celebration of the year 2000' (18 March - 15 September 2000), prepared by Mr Perkins and opened by Professor Alexander Boksenberg CBE, former Director of the Royal Observatories.

North Front corridor

Michaelmas Term 1999:

'Goethe: a celebration'

'Adam Mickiewicz and Alexander Pushkin: a bicentenary exhibition'

Lent Term 2000:

'Selected prints from Loggan's Cantabrigia illustrata'

Easter Term 2000:

'Writing the Middle East: Cambridge manuscripts and Cambridge scholars'

'Games from the Chapbook Collection'

All the exhibitions were co-ordinated by the Exhibitions Officer, Ms Thwaite, and the opening receptions in the Exhibition Centre were generously sponsored by Cambridge University Press.

Items from the Library's collections were loaned to the following exhibitions: 'Apocalypse 2000' at the British Museum; 'Defining features: scientific and medical portraits 1660-2000' at the National Portrait Gallery; 'The house beautiful' at the Geffrye Museum London; 'Sicherheit ist nirgends: das Tagebuch Arthur Schnitzlers' at the Palais Pallfy, Vienna; 'The impact of the word on the world', United Bible Societies' exhibition, Rome; 'English poetry 850-1850: the first thousand years', organized by the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage, Grasmere; 'Tempus' and 'The age of Wilkins' at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Medical Library

In May 2000 the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education undertook a subject review of teaching in the Clinical School. The School as a whole scored 21 out of a possible 24, but it was gratifying that 'Learning Resources', which included the Medical Library, scored 4 out of 4. The preparatory work for the review was an important exercise in helping to clarify the Library's role and integrate it further within the School.

The Wolfson Technology Resource Centre is now the most intensively used part of the Medical Library. Technical support has been provided by the Clinical School's IT Support Services and sources of funding for the continuance of this support are currently being sought. A new Information Services desk has also been installed near the reception desk in the Medical Library, so that expert advice from a librarian can be provided on a regular basis. The return to the West Road building of material that has been stored in the Medical Library 'temporarily' for many years enabled the Library to create more open-access space and to reorganize the journals into a single alphabetical sequence.

The services of the Medical Library are heavily used by NHS staff, particularly those of the Addenbrooke's Trust, with NHS readers accounting for over half the new registrations during the last year. The Medical Library is currently collecting data on the use of its services, so that a case can be made for additional funding from the Trust. There have been a number of NHS initiatives aimed at co-ordinating and improving the provision of medical information, and the Medical Library has been involved in most of these, though at present they remain at the level of consultation and recommendation; implementation is still awaited.

Scientific Periodicals Library

Detailed planning for the construction and operation of the Moore Library was a major preoccupation during the year. For some time, plans have been under consideration for the reconstruction of the Arts School, once the physical sciences materials have been moved to the Moore Library. The original scheme, costed by the Estate Management and Building Service at £2m, has been replaced by a more modest one which will, it is hoped, be realized and will provide those users of the SPL whose periodicals remain on the central site with a more user-friendly environment than is at present the case.

The present structure of science library provision in Cambridge, with central library services from the University Library complemented by significant holdings in a large number of, mostly small, Departmental libraries, is unlikely to be sustainable in an increasingly electronic environment. There is considerable duplication of titles in paper form and, at the same time, demand for electronic access to the same titles. The funding of many of the paper titles comes from Departmental library budgets, but the University Library is expected to provide the electronic access. In an attempt to bring a more rational approach to this situation and to move towards considering expenditure on scientific journals within the University as a whole, a discussion paper proposing a rationalization of holdings was submitted to the Councils of the Schools of the Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Technology. Responses from Biological Sciences were generally favourable; those from the other Schools were more cautious, but it is hoped that the scheme will go ahead and that the benefits to be gained will convince those still sceptical.

The suspension - temporary, it is hoped - of access to the electronic versions of Academic Press and Elsevier Science journals is reported elsewhere. The withdrawal of any library service is regrettable, but in the absence of either a reduction in the price rise or an increase in funding, the Library Syndicate endorsed the stance as inevitable.

Squire Law Library

The construction of the vertical glass screen during the summer of 1999 proved an instant success, and the problems of noise evaporated completely, whilst at the same time the architectural and aesthetic integrity of the building was maintained. Thanks are due for help in resolving this long-standing issue to the Faculty Board of Law, the University Treasurer, and, ultimately, the Vice-Chancellor.

Within the building, the Maitland Legal History Room was opened in February 2000 by the Lord Chancellor, the Rt Hon. The Lord Irvine of Lairg, and the Freshfields IT Centre in May 2000. The former provides a convenient and secure location for the rare and valuable legal history collections, as well as a comfortable working environment for legal historians. The latter, a new IT training facility funded by the law firm, Freshfields, will support an extensive programme for training students in legal research skills and use of the electronic resources available in the Squire. Both of these initiatives demonstrate the close relationship that has developed between the Library and the Faculty since the opening of the new building in 1995.

The collection continued to grow rapidly, with particular emphasis being given to developing the holdings on US law. Over 50 new serials were also added, the majority as a result of transfers of legal deposit material from the main University Library as part of the Syndicate's policy of making the Squire the University Library's principal law collection. The staff of the Library gave a range of courses on the various electronic legal resources available in the Squire and it is expected that this involvement will expand considerably with the start of the Freshfields course next year.

Staff

Mrs Valerie Hall retired after 38 years' service as the Library's specialist in French. Others retiring during the year were Mrs Rita Bates, Library Assistant in the Legal Deposit Department; Mr Nicholas Barraud and Mr Kenneth Byfield, both from the Squire Law Library; Mr Albert Cheeseman, Electrician; and Mr William Robinson, Binder. Though not strictly a member of the Library's staff, the Agent, who runs the Copyright Agency on behalf of five of the legal deposit libraries, is employed, like all the Agency staff, by Cambridge. Mr Tom Smail, who has been the Agent since 1977, retired at the end of July and was succeeded by Ms Carryl Allardice, former Director of the National Library of South Africa (Cape Town Division). Dr Mark Nicholls resigned from his post in the Manuscripts Department on his appointment as Fellow Librarian at St John's College.

New staff joining the Library included the Deputy Librarian, Ms Anne Murray, formerly Sub-Librarian (Collection Management) at Trinity College Dublin; Ms Jacky Cox, appointed as Assistant Keeper of the University Archives; Ms AnneMarie Robinson appointed as an Assistant Library Officer in the Rare Books Department; and Ms Rachel Rowe, appointed to a new post of Smuts Librarian for South Asian and Commonwealth Studies, which is shared between the University Library and the Centre of South Asian Studies. Mr Paul Fish was appointed as Head of Technical Maintenance. Transfers and promotions within the Library included Mr John Wells, appointed as an Assistant Under-Librarian in the Manuscripts Department, and Mr Christian Staufenbiel and Ms Sonia Morcillo-García, both of them appointed as Assistant Library Officers in Cataloguing.

The expanded staff-training programme, inaugurated last year, continued to receive enthusiastic support. In-house training, especially in areas such as information technology, was augmented by courses offered by the Personnel Division as well as external programmes on customer care, communication and interpersonal skills, and customer service skills, the latter designed to improve the level of service to users, and, in particular, the way that service is delivered. The occasional series of informal lunch-time talks, open to all but aimed particularly at staff from the University Library and the other Cambridge libraries, continued: Dr David McKitterick, Librarian of Trinity College, spoke on 'Cambridge University Library: a brief history of its buildings and collections'; Sarah Wilmot, on the Darwin Correspondence Project; and Professor Paul H. Mosher, Director of Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania, on 'The Oxford University Press-Penn digital books project and the incarnation of a digital university library at the University of Pennsylvania'. Six members of staff successfully completed the City and Guilds Library and Information Assistant's Certificate course and, one, Mrs Wendy Roberts from the Medical Library, was awarded the City and Guilds Further and Adult Education Teacher's Certificate, stage 1; and two members of staff (one from a College, the other from a Faculty library), supervised by Mr Noblett, were awarded the Associateship of the Library Association.

The deaths of three former members of staff are recorded with regret: Mr Alfred Bassett, Mr George Dunn, and Mrs Maureen Davis.

Sandars Reader in Bibliography

The Sandars Reader for 1999-2000 was Mr Nicolas Barker, Fellow of the British Academy and former Deputy Keeper at the British Library, who delivered three lectures under the title 'Type and type-founding in Britain, 1475-1720'.

Munby Fellow

The Munby Fellow for 1999-2000 was Dr I. A. Gadd, who undertook research on ecclesiastical law and the English book trade before 1641. Mr P. A. Botley was elected Fellow for the academical year 2000-01, to undertake research on 'Learning Greek in western Europe, 1471-1529'.

Major Financial Donations, Grants, and Research Grants 1999-2000

Library staff - Professional Activities

Publications, papers presented, membership of committees

R. M. Andrewes

'Music bibliographies of 1998', Brio, 37 (2000)

Committee membership

Bliss Trust (Trustee)

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, Commission Mixte (IAML Representative)

RISM (UK) Trust (Trustee and Treasurer)

William Alwyn Foundation (Trustee)

C. A. Aylmer

Committee membership

China Library Group, Periodicals Sub-committee

T. A. Barringer

'Quarterly bibliography of new publications on Africa', African Affairs

Reviews Editor: African Research and Documentation

Editor: Missionary Periodical Database

Committee membership

Standing Conference on Library Materials on Africa (Secretary)

Cambridge Commonwealth Group (Secretary)

Editorial Sub-Committee, African Research and Documentation

H. Bleaney

Paper presented

MELCom International conference, Venice

G. D. Bye

Papers presented

Henry Moore Foundation, Society of Archivists, Data Archive Association Committee

Committee membership

British Standards Institute IDT/1/2 Committee 'Micrographics and Digital Imaging'

Data Archive Association Committee

National Preservation Office, Micrographic Technical Committee

S. H. M. Cameron

Joint Editor: Cambridge University Libraries Information Bulletin

Committee membership

Copyright Libraries Shared Cataloguing Programme, Steering Committee

J. Cox

Committee membership

Cambridge Archivists' Group (Secretary)

Society for the Study of the History of the University (Secretary)

R. Dhanaraj

'Gurukul and computers: a mix of traditional and modern teaching methods', Society for International Development Journal, 43 (2000)

A. G. Farrant

Committee membership

British Standards Institute Panel for Conservation Standards

Institute of Paper Conservation Accreditation Panel

P. K. Fox

'CURL - past, present and future', New Review of Academic Librarianship, 5 (1999)

'The Librarians of Trinity College' in V. Kinane and A. Walsh (eds.), Essays on the history of Trinity College Library Dublin (Dublin 2000)

Papers presented

'Cambridge University Library', Friends of the Australian National University Library, Canberra, September 1999

'The Research Support Libraries Programme: theview from an old university', London University Librarians' Group, October 1999

Committee membership

CURL Board of Directors (Chairman)

Wellcome Trust Library Advisory Committee (Chairman)

Brotherton Collection Advisory Committee (Chairman)

National Preservation Office Management Committee

Lambeth Palace Library Committee

Research Support Libraries Programme Steering Group

Executive Board, Friends of the National Libraries

Charles Darwin Trust (Trustee)

D. J. Hall

Associate Editor: New Dictionary of National Biography

Committee membership

Friends of the National Libraries, Executive Committee

National Preservation Office, National Committee for Preservation Surrogates

National Preservation Office, Preservation Administrators Panel

Cambridge Bibliographical Society Committee

Dr Williams's Trust, adviser to Library Committee

Friends of Cambridge University Library (Treasurer)

E. Harrisson

Contributions to J. Shattock (ed.), Cambridge bibliography of English literature, vol. 4 (Cambridge 1999)

E. C. D. Hunter

'Another scroll amulet from Kurdistan' in G. Reinink and A. Klugkist (eds.), After Bardaisan: studies on continuity and change in Syriac Christianity, in honour of Professor H. J. W. Drijvers (Louvain 1999)

Papers presented

Conferences in Cambridge and Australia.

R. C. Jamieson

A study of Nagarjuna's Twenty Verses on the Great Vehicle… (New York 2000)

The perfection of wisdom (New York and London 2000)

Committee membership

National Council on Orientalist Library Resources, Automation Working Party

Union Handlist of Manuscripts in North Indian Languages (Committee member)

P. Killiard

Committee membership

CEDARS Management Group

CEDARS Content Issues Working Group (Chairman)

N. Koyama

Hatenko Meiji ryugakusei retsuden: Daiei Teikoku ni mananda hitobito (Tokyo 1999)

'James Summers (1828-91): early Sinologist and pioneer of Japanese newspapers in London and English literature in Japan' in J. E. Hoare (ed.), Britain and Japan biographical portraits, vol. 3 (Richmond 1999)

Paper presented

Annual Conference of European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists, Cracow

Committee membership

Japan Library Group (Chair)

European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists (Board member)

S. M. Lees

Committee membership

Copyright Libraries Agency Advisory Committee

Standing Committee on Legal Deposit

D. K. Lowe

Article on Cambridge's historical German collections in Handbuch deutscher historischer Buchbestände, vol. 10 (Hildesheim 2000)

P. M. Meadows

'Mrs Henry Wood' in J. Shattock (ed.), Cambridge bibliography of English literature, vol. 4 (Cambridge 1999)

Great St Mary's: Cambridge's university church (ed., with J. Binns) (Cambridge 2000)

P. B. Morgan

Book reviews in Health Libraries Review

Book Reviews Editor: Health Libraries Review

Paper presented

'The University Medical School Librarians' Group - sharing experience in the UK', 8th International Congress on Medical Librarianship, London, July 2000

Committee membership

Anglia and Oxford NHS Libraries Liaison Committee

Oxford Health Libraries & Information Network (HeLIN) IT Committee

Health Care Librarians of Anglia Group

Clinical School Information Strategy Committee

Clinical School Quality Assessment Learning Resources Group

Clinical School/Addenbrooke's Hospital SIFT Liaison Group

Fulbourn Hospital PME Library Committee

University Medical School Librarians' Group (Webmaster)

Cambridgeshire Health Librarians' Group

Eastern Region Health Care Librarians' Group

F. Niessen

Eine samaritanische Version des Buches Yehosua' und die Sobak-Erzählung (Hildesheim 2000)

W. A. Noblett

'Benjamin White: a biographical sketch', The Friends of the Wakes newsletter, No. 18

Editor: Newsletter (Cambridge Bibliographical Society)

Papers presented

'The market for second-hand books in eighteenth-century London', Society for Natural History AGM

Five lectures to different faculties on the bibliography of official publications

Committee membership

Cambridge Bibliographical Society Committee

S. C. Reif

A Jewish archive from Old Cairo: the history of Cambridge University's Genizah Collection (Richmond 2000)

'The Cambridge Genizah story: some unfamiliar aspects' (Hebrew) in M. A. Friedman (ed.), Te 'uda 15 (Tel Aviv 1999)

'The early liturgy of the synagogue' in The Cambridge history of Judaism, vol. 3 (Cambridge 1999)

'The impact on Jewish studies of a century of Genizah research' in J. T. Borrás and A. Saenz-Badillos (eds.), Jewish studies at the turn of the 20th century (Leiden 1999)

'A Jewish usurper among Christian Hebraists?' in W. Horbury (ed.), Hebrew study from Ezra to Ben-Yehudah (Edinburgh 1999)

'Cairo Genizah' in L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam (eds.), Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford 2000)

'The Damascus Document from the Cairo Genizah' in J. M. Baumgarten, etc. (eds.), The Damascus Document: a centennial of discovery (Leiden 2000)

Book reviews in Journal of Semitic Studies, Journal of Jewish Studies, SOTS Book List

Papers presented

Twenty-two papers at various conferences and seminars in England, Israel, and the USA.

Committee membership

Jewish Historical Society of England (Council member)

Friedberg Genizah Project, Academic Committee

Mekize Nirdamim Society (honorary fellow)

National Council on Orientalist Library Resources

Mrs F. W. Roberts

Advisory Editorial Board member: Expert Reviews in Molecular Medicine

Committee membership

East Anglia Online Users Group (Co-ordinator)

eLib OMNI Advisory Group

Clinical School Technical Infrastructure Management Sub-committee

G. J. Roper

European-language periodicals as sources of information on the Muslim world: their history, characteristics and bibliographical control (Riyadh 1999)

'The beginnings of Arabic printing by the ABCFM, 1822-41', Harvard Library Bulletin, 9 (1999)

Book review in Al-Masaq

Papers presented

Conferences in Riyadh, Washington DC

Committee membership

MELCOM UK, Middle East Libraries Committee

European Association of Middle Eastern Studies (Council member)

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

UK Friends of the Alexandria Library (Executive Committee member)

R. Scrivens

Reviews Editor: Solanus: International Journal for Russian and East European Bibliographic, Library and Publishing Studies

Committee membership

Council for Slavonic and East European Libraries and Information Services

A. Shivtiel

'Onomatopoeia in Arabic' in I. R. Netton (ed.), Studies in honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth (Leiden 2000)

Reviews in Journal of Semitic Studies

Papers presented

Lectures in England, Hungary, and Germany

Committee membership

British Association for Jewish Studies (President)

A. E. M. Taylor

Book review in African Research and Documentation

Committee membership

British and Irish Committee for Map Information and Catalogue Systems (BRICMICS)

International Map Trade Association, Committee to Judge the 'Best Map' (Chair)

J. R. H. Taylor

Committee membership

Copyright Libraries Shared Cataloguing Programme, Steering Committee (Chairman)

CURL Resource Discovery and Description Committee

RLIN Database Advisory Group

Book Industry Communication, Bibliographic Standards Technical Subgroup

N. Thwaite

Committee membership

Cambridge Bibliographical Society (Treasurer)

J. D. Wells

'The Prices Current series in the archive of Jardine, Matheson & Co.', Business Archives: Sources and History (1999)

Committee membership

Friends of Cambridge University Library (Secretary)

D. F. Wills

Committee membership

British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, Standing Committee on Conferences (Vice-Chair)

M. L. Wilson

Paper presented:

'Electronic journals: new technology, new relationships', East Anglia Online User Group, Cambridge, May 2000

P. N. R. Zutshi

'The Avignon papacy' in M. Jones (ed.), New Cambridge medieval history, vol. 6 (Cambridge 2000)

Papers presented

'Original documents of the papal penitentiary', German Historical Institute, Rome, February 2000

'The registration of papal letters under the Avignon popes', Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2000

Committee membership

Cambridgeshire Record Office, Advisory Panel (University of Cambridge representative)

Northamptonshire Record Office, Advisory and Technical Panel (University of Cambridge representative)

Calendar of Papal Registers, Consultative Committee

Friends of Cambridge University Library (Editor of Bulletin)

Previous page

Table of Contents

Next page

Cambridge University Reporter Special, 19 January 2001
Copyright © 2001 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.