Cambridge University Reporter


Annual Report of the Library Syndicate for the year 2003-04

Highlights

Review of the University Library

The General Board of the Faculties conducts a regular programme of reviewing academic and other departments in the University. This year it was the turn of the University Library. The Review Committee was chaired by Professor Roger Parker (Music) and consisted of Dr Christopher Howe (Biochemistry), Professor John Morrill (History), Professor Jeremy Sanders (Chemistry), and Dr Reg Carr (Director of University Library Services and Bodley's Librarian, University of Oxford).

The Committee expressed great satisfaction with the way the Library was run and with the high quality of service provided by Library staff 'under very difficult financial circumstances'. It noted the increasing demand for electronic resources (electronic journals, reference sources, databases, etc.) at a time when there was no diminution in the publication of, and need for, traditional books and journals in paper form. It also noted that there had been a 'relentless and unavoidable' growth in the volume and costs of key parts of the Library's acquisitions and services, set against a growing shortfall in funding. The Committee acknowledged that, in the present financial situation of the University, it would be unrealistic to request the major funding increase that the Library urgently requires, but recommended that, at the least, the Library should be spared further cuts, even if this resulted in a further drain on other resources. It was ironic that the Committee's report, containing these recommendations, was received in the Library in the same week as notification of a further cut in the Library's budget as part of the University-wide 'savings exercise'.

It also suggested that greater co-ordination between all the libraries of the University could lead to some savings, without a significant reduction in the quality of service provided to the University community. The positive outcome of the review was welcomed by the Library Syndicate, and the specific recommendations contained in it will be considered during the coming academical year.

Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003

The passing of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 represented a major development in the process of bringing legal deposit legislation into line with the current pattern of publishing. The Private Member's Bill, introduced by Chris Mole MP in December 2002, passed all its Parliamentary hurdles and received the Royal Assent in October 2003. For printed publications it reaffirms the previous legislation of 1911 in respect of the University Library and the other five legal-deposit libraries in the British Isles; its novel aspect is the enshrinement of the principle that electronic publications and other non-print materials will be deposited in the future under secondary legislation. This will ensure that such publications can be saved as part of the national published archive and become an important resource for future generations of researchers and scholars. The new Act builds on the strengths of a voluntary scheme introduced in January 2000 between the legal-deposit libraries and the publishers, which was designed to capture offline material before legislation was enacted. The Act will be implemented through a series of Regulations, of which the first two will probably deal with offline publications, such as CD-ROMs and microforms, and with electronic journals. Regulations will be proposed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport, following a statutory process of consultation with affected parties. This in turn will be preceded by the work of an Advisory Panel, to be established by Government as an independent public body, to advise the Secretary of State on the need for, and the shape of, specific Regulations. In advance of the establishment of the Advisory Panel, the Joint Committee on Voluntary Deposit (which includes representatives of all the legal deposit libraries) will continue its work as a forum for collaborative and voluntary endeavour between publishers and libraries. As plans for the introduction of the legislation proceed, the Library Syndicate will need to consider the implications - both the benefits and potential restrictions on access - for the Cambridge user community.

The journals crisis

The scholarly communication chain is a complex web of inter-relations, vested interests, and accepted practice and, as the library world has long known, it is virtually impossible for one element of this chain to exert sufficient leverage to challenge the status quo. The announcement in 2003 by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology of an enquiry into the problems facing academic libraries with respect to purchasing scientific journals was, therefore, a very welcome development which may be seen as a further incremental shift in the balance of public opinion. The Committee received extensive written evidence and also held four oral hearings, at one of which evidence was given by the Cambridge University Librarian, along with the Chief Executive of the British Library and representatives of JISC and the University of Hertfordshire. Its Report was published in July 2004 with the title Scientific publications: free for all?.

The report stresses that changes are needed in the way scientific research is published and accessed. The MPs rejected the publishers' view that the present publishing model is working well and that the market should be left to change itself. Despite noting some unanswered questions with proposed new models, the report strongly concluded that 'the current model for scientific publishing is unsatisfactory' and recommended the dual open-access approach of repositories and open-access journals. In particular, it recommended that public funding bodies should require authors to retain copyright in their articles, that they should require authors to deposit a copy of their final papers in suitable repositories (such as DSpace, being developed in Cambridge by the University Library and the University Computing Service) and that they should make funds available to pay publication charges in open-access journals. The academic community now has an opportunity to take control of the reporting of research and introduce change along the lines recommended in the report without leaving it to Government or to publishers either to take change forward or to slow it down.

The University Library's response to this problem at a local level has been twofold: to try to raise the consciousness of academic staff in the University that at least part of the solution is in their hands, and to try to ensure that the limited resources available are used in the most effective way.

In March 2004 the Library organized two workshops, one designed for scholars in the humanities and social sciences and the other for scientists, and each of them was opened by a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Both workshops addressed the question of whether there is indeed a crisis in the mechanisms of scholarly communication. Hardly surprisingly, it was clear that the crisis was much more widely perceived in the sciences, and, whilst there was support for the aims of the open-access movement and other initiatives to move away from the current model, many participants remained sceptical of their success in the face of the economic power of the large publishers and the pressure from universities and the funding councils for scientists to publish in high-impact-factor journals in order both to advance their own careers and to obtain funding for their research. The humanities scholars and social scientists expressed support for further investigation of better coordination of periodical collections and resources, and the involvement of the Colleges was seen to be an important element in any future strategy for Cambridge.

The scheme to co-ordinate journal subscriptions and jointly manage budgets, initially involving the University Library, the School of Biological Sciences, and the Department of Chemistry, had some limited success, in that duplicated print titles to a value of about £90,000 a year were cancelled, allowing subscriptions to be started for some new titles that were in heavy demand. However this saving was more than offset by an increase of £200,000 in the cost of the remaining titles in the subjects covered by the scheme. The demand continues to grow from scientists wanting access to a wider range of journals, especially through electronic delivery to their desktop or laboratory. Within the budget currently available to the Library, not only is there is no prospect of this demand being met, but an exercise to reduce the number of journal subscriptions will have to be undertaken in 2004-05. The price rises experienced over the last couple of decades show no signs of diminishing - around 9% overall was noted this year, against an RPI of a third of that, and an actual decrease in the University Library's budget. The figure of a 9% price rise, worrying though it is, hides some extraordinary increases: the price notified to Cambridge for the Nature group of titles, for instance, represented an increase of 50% between 2003 and 2004, to over £20,000 a year. This local situation, common to all academic libraries, reinforces the view expressed by the Parliamentary Committee that the current publishing model is not working.

DSpace@Cambridge

The DSpace@Cambridge project, to develop a digital repository for the University, is proceeding according to schedule. The project is a collaborative one, between the University Library, the University Computing Service, and MIT Libraries, and is funded by a grant from the Cambridge-MIT Institute. DSpace is designed to have the ability to capture, index, store, disseminate, and preserve digital materials created in any part of the University. The system is now operational and digital materials are being added to it from a variety of academic and other Departments in the University, including the Departments of Applied Economics, Archaeology, Chemistry, Pathology, and Social Anthropology, as well as the University Library. The Library is leading the work to develop further the digital preservation capabilities of the system, and a business plan is being prepared in order to produce some models for the long-term viability of DSpace as a service to the University and possibly beyond.

In parallel with DSpace@Cambridge, the Cambridge-MIT Institute is also funding a complementary project, LEADIRS (LEarning About Digital Institutional Repositories Seminars), to promote strategic planning for institutional repositories in the UK higher and further education sector. The aim of this project is to assist in the development of individual institutional level planning for the implementation of sustainable institutional repositories. The first series of seminars took place in 2003-04 and a further series is planned for late 2004.

Phase 5 extension

The urgent need to build the west bookstack, which comprises the final two phases of the approved extension to the main University Library building, was referred to in the last Annual Report, as was the decision of the Library Syndicate to proceed with building a partly shelved version of just one phase in order to avoid the situation in which the Library would simply run out of space. Funding for this phase has come entirely from within the University, thanks to a grant of £4 million from the Cambridge University Press Fund and accumulated resources under the control of the Syndicate. A favourable ruling on VAT during the later stages of planning means that, instead of installing shelving in only half the building, as had been planned, it will now be possible to shelve the whole phase, thus providing a reasonable breathing space for the Library whilst the development campaign attempts to raise the funding for remainder of the stack, phase 6. Construction of phase 5 started in January 2004 and it is expected to be ready for occupation in summer 2005. In the meantime, readers will become increasingly aware of the fact that many areas of the Library are already full to capacity, and overflows from the shelved sequences onto the tables in the open-access areas are becoming regrettably familiar again.

Library publications

Collections

Modern collections

A new division, Collection Development and Description, came into existence in August 2003, initially bringing together the former Cataloguing Division and Accessions Department, but with further amalgamations planned for the future. The division is responsible for processing all non-periodical materials except for those in languages covered by the Oriental Division and formats and collections that are administered by the Special Collections Division.

The principal objectives for the new division included: the exploitation of assistance from vendors in acquiring material, thereby freeing more of the time of Library staff to create catalogue records; a reduction in the amount of material awaiting ordering by reviewing the selection already made; implementation of simplified and more efficient ordering procedures; monitoring of vendor performance and a start to the process of reducing the number of vendors used; implementation of a new system of fund codes and a move towards a system in which funds were distributed in a more balanced way between both languages and subjects.

The successful achievement of many of these objectives has already led to improvements in efficiency and output, including an increase of 20% (to over 20,000) in the number of catalogue records created for books in continental European languages. Particular improvements include the development by the Library's language specialists of closer contacts with suppliers, regularly discovering new ways in which vendors can offer quicker and more effective ways of acquiring material, the abandonment wherever possible of paper-based ordering in favour of online ordering from vendors' databases or the use of e-mail, and the use of preliminary catalogue records provided by some suppliers, thus eliminating the need for staff to create purchase orders. Some of these vendor services have been available for a number of years, but the reorganization of the division and the technical capabilities of the Voyager system have facilitated their use. The passing of responsibility for budgets to the language specialists has also been appreciated by most of the staff concerned.

A similar approach has been adopted for books from the USA and Canada. The use of Library of Congress alert service cards for book selection has been abandoned. In its place a new service was established with a supplier that can provide details of some 500 new titles each week according to a specific profile; when fully exploited this will be a much more efficient selection tool than the Library of Congress cards, especially as bibliographic records can be downloaded and attached to purchase orders.

The improved availability of information about the relative levels of purchasing between languages and subjects and the greater responsibility being devolved to the Library's specialists will mean that parts of the Collection Development Policy may have to be reviewed and the guidelines for selection clarified. This is particularly important as less than 10% of recommendations for purchase come from readers, academic staff, or Faculty/Departmental librarians, thus placing a considerable burden on the Library staff to ensure that the development of the collection meets the needs of both current and future users.

Reconsideration of cataloguing procedures also took place. Attempts were made to identify suitable material and appropriate workflows to approach the transatlantic concept of 'copy cataloguing', where a minimum level of local checking and amendment is applied to derived data of a recognized standard. Many of the assumptions in this largely American model were found not to be valid in a Cambridge situation, but a form of modified 'copy cataloguing', suited to local conditions, was adopted for an appropriately identified subset of materials and, on the basis of the first three months' results, is likely to lead to an increase in throughput.

As far as periodicals were concerned, the introduction of the Voyager system meant that two separate databases, the former Union List of Serials and the main catalogue, had to be merged. Since these records had in the past been created for different purposes and according to different standards, the result was a confusing duplication of records in the Newton catalogue. A six-month project to clean up the records for titles in classes P and Q was successfully completed, but a substantial amount of other duplication remains and will have to be tackled on an incremental basis.

Special collections

In 1990, when the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) moved from Herstmonceux to Cambridge, the archives, some of them dating back to the eighteenth century, were placed on deposit in the University Library. Within a few years, it was decided that the role played by the RGO was superfluous and the national observatory was closed in 1998. This left the archival records in something of a state of limbo, but, after years of negotiation, it is gratifying to note that agreement has now been reached between the Library and the body previously responsible for the records, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), for the deposit to become permanent.

There are close connections between the RGO Archives and other collections in the University Library, particularly with material in the Portsmouth Collection of Sir Isaac Newton's papers. Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal (represented in the RGO Archives), provided Newton with observational data, and there was a celebrated and fractious dispute between Edmond Halley, Newton, and Flamsteed about the publication of observations made at Greenwich. Additionally, in the Portsmouth Collection, there is a significant body of papers relating to the finding of the longitude, the solution to this being the very raison d'être of the Observatory.

The financial settlement through which PPARC divested itself of responsibility for future support for the post of RGO Archivist, together with the anonymous donation to support work on scientific manuscripts that was reported last year, has meant that it has been possible to establish on a long-term basis the new post of Curator of Scientific Manuscripts, which includes responsibility for the RGO Archives; the former RGO Archivist, Mr Adam Perkins, has been appointed to the post.

For decades, one of the leading figures in the Footlights Dramatic Club - an organization whose members have included many of the great names of British theatre and media - was Dr Harry Porter. At his death in 2003, Dr Porter had amassed an almost complete collection of production records (everything from posters to photographs to set designs) for Footlights performances, alongside runs of newspaper reviews, committee minutes, and accounts. These were bequeathed to the Library in his will, and, because of their importance and fragile state, they have been given priority for conservation, with archival 'Melinex' sleeves being provided for the photographs and posters. The collection has already been catalogued and the records can be searched on the Library's 'Janus' archive webserver.

Records from other collections are also are being rapidly added to Janus; approximately 80% of the catalogued items in the University Archives are now accessible through this source.

Cataloguing of the Macclesfield Collection of scientific papers, acquired after an appeal in 2000, has been completed; all the Newton correspondence in both the Macclesfield and Portsmouth collections has now been catalogued and work on revising the remainder of the Portsmouth catalogue is under way. A selection of images from the collections can be viewed on the Library's Web pages. Thanks to donations from the executors of the estate of Mr Peter Tranchell and from Mr Henry Barlow, the cataloguing of the Tranchell Papers and the Barlow Papers has also been completed.

The Library received two major donations of music and related material. From the William Alwyn Foundation came the papers of the composers William Alwyn and Doreen Carwithen. There are about 80 boxes of material, and the Foundation has generously provided funds to employ an archivist to sort and document it. Dr Marion Kant presented manuscripts, photostats, and printed music and books from the Nachlaß of her father, the musicologist Dr Ernst Hermann Meyer. Meyer's researches in the 1920s took him to London, Oxford, Uppsala, and many German libraries where he transcribed over 200 works from manuscripts. Some of these were from manuscripts that were subsequently destroyed in World War II. As a committed communist he moved to East Germany and remained a firm supporter of the DDR, playing a leading role in the musical life of the country.

Thanks to a grant from the Delmas Foundation, a total of 465 archive collections from the Royal Commonwealth Society Library was catalogued and mounted on Janus. The catalogued material includes many large and important collections: the Sir Frederick Tymms collection contains papers, photographs, and cine film relating to Tymms' role in the development of the civil aviation industry throughout the world; the Queen Mary collection includes printed books, programmes, and photograph albums from the visit of the future King George V and his wife to India in 1905-06 and 1911-12; the collection of Fergus Wilson, an Agricultural Officer in Zanzibar and Kenya for twenty years from the 1930s, includes memoirs and papers describing his work in agricultural education. The increased accessibility of these collections, which can be found via search engines such as Google, has led to enquiries relating to newly catalogued collections being received the very next day after they have been catalogued, and many such communications have contributed additional useful information regarding the provenance of the collections.

The RCS Photograph Project continues apace, with 21,000 catalogue entries now accessible via Janus, and 700 digital images that can be viewed on the Library's website. The project website has now been included in the SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway), part of the UK Resource Discovery Network, which aims to provide a trusted source of high-quality Internet information for researchers in the social sciences, business and law. With financial assistance from EEMLAC (East of England Museums, Libraries, and Archives Council), an online index to photographers represented in the RCS collections has also been produced; this is fully integrated into the RCS Photographs website.

The Map Department has what is probably the best publicly-available collection of modern maps in the British Isles, and this year the more significant purchases included maps of Mozambique at a scale of 1:250,000 and Peru at 1:100,000, as well as thematic and national atlases for many countries including Iran, Botswana, and Indonesia. Superseding the large-scale printed maps that are no longer published, annual snapshots of Ordnance Survey data for the years 1998 to 2002 are now available on PCs in the department and the service is heavily used. This service is supplemented by the provision of Ordnance Survey mapping via Digimap, made available across the University by the Map Department.

Thanks to a bequest from the late John Dreyfus, the eminent typographical consultant and historian, the Library is continuing to receive a selection of books from his library. The selection concentrates on twentieth-century fine printing, especially from private presses, with many examples from American and continental presses. The resulting collection, which will run to perhaps 500 items, will complement other typographical collections in the Library, such as those of Stanley Morison, typographical adviser to the Monotype Corporation and designer of the Times New Roman font, and the typographer, publisher, and poet Sir Francis Meynell, founder of the Nonesuch Press.

The editorial work on volume 14 of The correspondence of Charles Darwin was completed, and the complete texts of a selection of Darwin's letters was made available online via the Library's website.

Oriental collections

A consortium of six European libraries, including Cambridge University Library, was formed to purchase online access for a trial period of one year, from October 2003, to the Chinese Literature in the Social Sciences database, which comprises a general index to 2.4 million article titles. This database complements the China National Knowledge Infrastructure/Chinese Academic Journals database which became available to readers last year as a result of HEFCE funding. Over 6,000 records were contributed to the United Kingdom Union Catalogue of Chinese Books; Cambridge remains the largest contributor to this important national resource.

Catalogue records for monographs and serials in Japanese and Korean began to be added to 'Newton'; at present only romanized terms may be searched in Newton, but the forthcoming upgrade of the system should allow full searching of the vernacular records as well as those in roman script.

A most welcome development was the University's approval to fill the vacant post of Near Eastern specialist; Ms Yasmin Faghihi joined the staff in April 2004 from the John Rylands University Library of Manchester and has quickly begun to make an impact on the ordering and processing of books in Arabic and Hebrew.

The Genizah Unit marked its thirtieth anniversary with a surprise party arranged by the staff for the Director, Professor Stefan Reif; this also marked the launch of a volume of essays relating to the collection and entitled The written word remains. The Unit published the second volume of Published material from the Cambridge Genizah collections and an enlarged issue of Genizah Fragments to mark the Unit's anniversary. Further digitized images were sent to the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem as part of a joint project to mount 2,000 rabbinic fragments on the websites of the Institute and the University Library.

Index Islamicus has been edited by the Islamic Bibliography Unit in the University Library since 1981 and its costs have been met by the publisher, latterly Koninklijke Brill NV. The introduction by the University of overheads on externally funded projects and the forthcoming requirement under the Resource Allocation Mechanism to charge for the space occupied by the Unit meant that difficult decisions had to be made about its future viability, given that the publisher felt unable to meet the substantially increased costs. It was eventually decided that the most secure future for the Index would be offered by the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, and the Unit moved there in February 2004.

Major Purchases

Manuscripts

Maps

Music

Rare books

Donations

Manuscripts

Music

Rare books

Science libraries

Squire Law Library

Transfers

Manuscripts

University Archives

Digital Library

Funding constraints and rapid rises in the cost of electronic resources limited the growth in new services, with the exception of electronic journals, and provided an opportunity to review the existing list of titles. The transition from CD-ROM to online access for the majority of products has had the benefit of providing improved usage statistics; a number of resources, especially full-text ones in the humanities, proved to be substantially under-used and were cancelled. Nonetheless, the number of online databases offered to users rose to 258, and over 4,600 electronic journals are now available through the University Library's portal. Information about e-resources can be found both via the Newton catalogue and through a separate Web interface which provides access at title, format, and subject levels. The Library website receives approximately 50,000 requests a day, almost twice the number of the previous year.

In its first year of operation, the Digital Resources Area proved to be extremely popular with users, and user feedback indicated a high level of satisfaction both with the facilities offered and the level of service provided. There are around 2,500 registered users, and, as unused accounts are deleted after six months, this represents a very 'live' group. A number of enhancements were made to the area, including the provision of additional foreign keyboards, as well as audio facilities and headphones on a number of PCs.

The digitized content available via the Digital Library web pages was augmented by the addition of images from the Macclesfield Collection of papers written by the circle of scientists working with Newton; and the Royal Commonwealth Society Photographs Project added 700 images, grouped into topics such as: royal tours; trade, industry, and agriculture; immigration; education and health; family life and recreation.

The reliability of access to Voyager and Newton improved during the year except for online renewals in the Faculty and departmental catalogues and several further libraries adopted Voyager for circulation and/or acquisitions. The problems in placing stack requests, recalls, holds, and renewals from the Newton Universal Catalogue which prevented the full release of this facility to search for records across all libraries in the University were largely resolved by the end of the year. The Universal Catalogue will be made public in the 2004-05 academical year. A full upgrade of the system is planned for 2005, when it should also be possible for the first time to enter and display non-roman scripts in the catalogue. The lack of complete and timely patron data from the University Card Office proved to be a source of difficulty for the circulation system which had important consequences for departmental and Faculty libraries. Most records for Cambridge MAs lack e-mail addresses, making it impossible to send out reminders and courtesy notices for books by e-mail. Efforts will be made to rectify this in 2004-05.

Last year's Report noted the problems being faced by the Greensleeves Project to convert the records in the guardbook catalogue. The quality of records being received from the suppliers proved to be unacceptable. After much pressure and several months of negotiations, the situation was eventually resolved, and there has been a considerable improvement in the quality of the records now received, with a low number of 'wrong matches' supplied. Between January and July 2004 Greensleeves staff processed 350,000 records - nearly half the final total - in seven months rather than the expected fourteen, and the record-delivery stage of the project should be completed on schedule in July 2005. Considerable editorial work on the newly created records is still needed to bring them into line with existing records in Newton, but, by providing keyword and subject searching, they offer considerable improvements over the information provided by the guardbook catalogue.

A new website, libraries@cambridge, was launched, to provide both librarians and library users with a portal to information about the wealth of libraries within the University and the services they offer.

Services

The book-fetching service from closed stacks to the reading rooms had a mixed year, with those services over which Library staff had some control showing a marked improvement and those that were dependent on other factors being less satisfactory. On the positive side, the average fetching time dropped to 31 minutes, which is a remarkable achievement given the level of demand and the growing distance that the bookfetchers have to travel to retrieve material for readers. On the negative side, there were periods during the year when books and periodicals from part of the closed stacks could not be fetched for readers because the pneumatic stacks were out of action. These stacks have been in constant use for over thirty years and are subject to frequent breakdown. When this happens it can take several weeks for the service to be resumed, as parts are now unobtainable and have to be specially manufactured. The Library has made a strong case to the University to have them replaced with the type of hand-operated cases installed in recent years, but this work will be both very expensive and extremely disruptive, as the cases in question contain over a quarter of the entire Library stock.

The user education programme is now a well-established part of the Library's services, but it is expensive in staff time, and so gradual changes are being made to the delivery of the service and the provision of supporting materials. It is generally more economic to purchase guides than to develop them in-house; similarly, it can be more cost-effective to have some user-education sessions delivered by external presenters, as happened this year, for example, with the Economic and Social Data Service awareness day, organized jointly by the Library and the UK Data Archive based at the University of Essex. It is also expected that some sessions will move more towards self-help, delivered electronically, and away from the traditional face-to-face presentation, and work is already under way to make printed support material available electronically. Readers may now access via the web the texts of most locally produced handouts and also, with the permission of the publishers, a number of external guides such as the user guide to the International bibliography of the social sciences.

Towards the beginning of the year the Inter-Library Loans Department suffered the loss of four members of staff because the number of requests received from other libraries had declined to the point where the service (which is required to be largely self-financing) was making a considerable loss. The price charged to libraries requesting loans and photocopies of articles was increased, but a further review of Inter-Library Loans will be required during the coming year.

To reflect more accurately the range of services it now provides, the Photography Department was renamed Imaging Services. Most photography is now carried out digitally, with the images frequently being supplied to the client on CD or DVD. The growth of the online availability of library resources has led to a gradual decline in demand for photocopies, which dropped by 12% this year. Other traditional services, such as microfilming, however, continue to thrive, with major projects currently under way for the Thomson Gale Group, ProQuest, the Marshall Library of Economics, King's College, and the University's Local Examinations Syndicate. Externally funded digitization projects included the Havergal Bible from Worcester Cathedral and the plans of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

Charges imposed by the University on all externally funded activities have had, and will in future have, a major impact on the financial viability of Imaging Services and Inter-Library Loans, both of which are almost entirely funded from the proceeds of their work. Overheads on staff costs were introduced in August 2003 at a rate of 10%, increasing to 20% in August 2004. Given the University's need to meet the true costs of its activities, it is hard to argue against the logic of these charges; more difficult for the departments concerned was the decision to increase the employer's share of the contribution to assistant-staff pensions from 1% to 16.5% in one fell swoop from August 2004. The current difficulties with pension schemes are well known, but such a sudden and large increase has placed departments such as Imaging Services in a serious financial situation, as it will have to find an additional £70,000 in the year 2004-05, which represents about 30% of its annual turnover. A significant price increase was approved in May 2004 but it is not expected that this will meet the additional costs in full.

Exhibitions

Exhibition Centre

'Unfolding landscapes: maps of Cambridgeshire from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II'

April - October 2003

Prepared by Ms Taylor and opened by Ms Vanessa Lawrence, Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey

'Sacred scripts: world religions in manuscripts and print'

November 2003 - April 2004

Prepared by a team of Library staff and opened by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alison Richard

'Writing poetry: manuscript verse, 250 BC to 2000 AD'

May - December 2004

Prepared by Mr Wells and opened by the Poet Laureate, Professor Andrew Motion

The receptions for the opening ceremonies were generously sponsored by Cambridge University Press.

Exhibitions in the North-Front corridor

'The Darwin Correspondence Project'
June - November 2003
Dr Pearn

'The Cambridgeshire Regiment: books and pamphlets relating to the 'Cambridgeshires''
November 2003 - March 2004
Mr James

'Four centuries of Hungarica in the University Library': part of Cambridge's contribution to the Hungarian year of culture
April - May 2004
Mr George Gömöri and Mr Penton

'Maimonides in the Genizah: autograph fragments from the Taylor-Schechter Collection': commemorating the 800th anniversary of the death of Moses Maimonides
May - June 2004
Ms Jefferson and Dr Outhwaite

'One hundred years of Bloomsday': James Joyce items
June 2004
Mr Hills

'French illustrated books from the 16th to the 20th century'
June - August 2004 (to accompany the Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies at Fitzwilliam College).
Dr Wendy Bennett and Ms Thwaite

Items from the Library's collections were loaned to the following exhibitions:

Barbican Art Gallery, London: 'Tina Medotti and Edward Weston: the Mexico years'

Royal Academy, London: 'Illuminating the Renaissance'

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich: 'Heroes or villains?'

Kettle's Yard, Cambridge: 'Immaterial: Brancusi, Gabo, Moholy-Nagi'

Preservation

Thanks to a grant from the Anstruther Literary Trust four surveys of the condition of parts of the collections have been planned and three of these have been completed. The technique used was that developed as a Preservation Assessment Survey by the National Preservation Office. Each involves the random selection of 400 items from the part of the collection to be surveyed, with reports then being written on the preservation status of each item. Using specially developed software, the results are then analysed and a report produced. The areas selected were the open-access borrowable stock, the non-borrowable printed stock, maps, and atlases. The latter two categories were chosen because the storage conditions for these materials are poorer than those in many parts of the Library, and, as part of the exercise, a separate Storage Condition Assessment was drawn up. The final reports will be available in late 2004 and will no doubt lead to some rethinking of practices and priorities.

The two-year project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to conserve the Macclesfield collection of papers by Sir Isaac Newton and his contemporaries came to an end in March 2004. Following a detailed conservation survey of the collection and the establishment of priorities, it was decided to concentrate initially on the bound guard-book volumes containing letters, as these form a significant part of the collection, containing some of the most important, as well as previously unpublished, material. The original structures, format, and binding provided no suitable support or protection for the material, and so it was necessary for the volumes to be taken down, the letters removed and each one treated according to individual needs. Each letter was then guarded onto sheets of mould-made paper and these were sewn and bound into volumes.

The Macclesfield Collection contains papers of a diverse nature. As well as the bound guard-books there are loose letters and notes, bound items and notebooks, drawings, bundles of loose paper items, as well as printed material. The papers had frequently been folded and often contained within them were lines of weakness, areas where iron-gall-ink corrosion had damaged or was in danger of damaging areas of text by burning through the underlying paper, and some of the paper had become soft and pulpy with numerous tears and fractures. This damage has now been repaired and the collection can be safely used by scholars.

A programme of work of preservation of selected areas of the Genizah Collection has been started. Many years ago, the collection was encapsulated into large binders to allow for ease of handling, but this system of housing is in some cases no longer providing sufficient support or protection for the material, and the binders and fittings are deteriorating. A different style of binder has been adopted to provide greater support and assist in the safer handling of the material. Some of the small-format items were encapsulated several decades ago into a non-archival film, which is not suitable for long-term storage. This material has been disbound and re-encapsulated into polyester sheets, using an ultrasonic welding machine.

Support Services and Accommodation

The General Board's Review Committee noted that some Library services were 'on a knife-edge', and this applies nowhere more so than in the area of support services. There has been no improvement in the recruitment situation for maintenance staff, where there have been vacancies for several years, and these posts appear to be unfillable, given the cost of living in Cambridge and the salaries offered to these categories of staff by the University.

The problems with the pneumatic mobile cases installed in the early 1970s are reported elsewhere.

Many areas of the Library are now full to capacity and the west bookstack is an urgent necessity. Additional shelving is being installed wherever possible, but it is inevitable that readers will be inconvenienced by overflows from the main sequences. Some material has been moved to the basement of the Scientific Periodicals Library and some engineering books to the Moore Library, but the option of transferring older or less-used material to closed stacks is no longer open, as those areas too are full. When the phase 5 bookstack is completed, the situation will improve only gradually, as a major reorganization of stock will be necessary, with further withdrawals from the open-access parts of the Library to allow space for new material.

On a more positive note, the completion of the south-west corner extension brought to an end the approved development plan for the Library insofar as it affects those areas used by readers. The opportunity has, therefore, been taken to remove surplus furniture from the main first-floor corridors, to relocate the remaining card-catalogue cabinets in the reading-room corridor, and to install new carpet tiles to replace the ones dating from the 1970s. As a result the fine appearance of the main areas of the Library has been restored.

Dependent Libraries

Medical Library

National Health Service funding has been made available to support additional training activities and the Medical Library has invested in carefully targeted promotional campaigns to advertise and extend its training programme. This is showing a positive effect, with a 19% increase in the number of NHS staff newly registered with the Library and a 43% increase in the number of readers attending training courses during the year. As in recent years, whilst the number of registered users increased, the number of recorded visits remained static, providing further evidence that remote access to the resources networked by the Library is central to their needs. Another earmarked grant from the NHS also enabled the Library to make further significant improvements in its coverage of non-medical health disciplines.

The EDEN inter-library document delivery scheme came into being during the year, serving NHS library users in the three Eastern confederations of Norfolk/Suffolk/Cambridgeshire, Berkshire/Herts, and Essex. So far it has proved to be an efficient service, and safeguards put in place to prevent the Medical Library - by far the largest and best stocked in the region - from being swamped by demand have worked, and so restrictions that had to be imposed under the previous scheme have been removed.

Science libraries

A number of strategic decisions were taken as part of the process of rationalizing the University Library's support for the sciences and technology. It was agreed that the Scientific Periodicals Library would be renamed the Central Science Library (CSL), to better reflect its broader collections and responsibilities. Following a feasibility study into the possible conversion of the Arts School building for library use, it was agreed that the cost was too great to achieve what would at best be a relatively short-term solution in a fundamentally unsuitable building. Immediate plans for the expansion of the Central Science Library have, therefore, been shelved, and a plan has been submitted to include a new library in the long-term plans for the redevelopment of the Downing and New Museums sites. Though this decision means that the CSL will have to operate with no additional space, it does mean that a comprehensive review of stock and space can now take place within a clear planning framework.

Since opening in October 2001 the Betty and Gordon Moore Library has become an indispensable part of the University Library's service for scholars and students in mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering. In the three years, it has expanded dramatically, both in its holdings and its use: it now holds almost 85,000 volumes of books and periodicals, as well as providing access to the thousands of journals available electronically; the circulating book stock of the library has increased by over a third, to more than 33,000 volumes; book borrowing has increased from just over 5,000 volumes in 2001-02 to over 19,000 in 2003-04. In-house use is also growing rapidly: in Easter Term 2004 there were more than 3,000 user visits per week, compared to under 2,000 in Easter Term 2003. The new library has enabled staff to provide a new range of services, with both classroom and informal orientation sessions for all subject areas covered by the library, including, for example, a specially tailored course in the use of library and information resources given to new Ph.D. students in mathematics.

Squire Law Library

The year was dominated by events connected with the Squire Law Library centenary and the related Centenary Appeal. The Library was established on the basis of a bequest from Miss Rebecca Flower Squire, who died in 1898, and was officially opened on 1 March 1904 by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. To mark the centenary, Lord Woolf, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, delivered the Squire Centenary Lecture on 3 March 2004. Taking as the title of his speech 'The rule of law and a change in the Constitution', he addressed the Constitutional Reform Bill that had been introduced in Parliament the previous week and which proposed to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor, set up a new mechanism for the appointment of judges in England and Wales and establish a Supreme Court for the United Kingdom. Lord Woolf's comments on these contentious proposals generated significant debate in the media later that evening and the following day. A number of fundraising events were held during the year, arranged with the support of the Law Faculty and the Cambridge University Development Office, including receptions at the Inner Temple and several London law firms. The aim of the Squire Centenary Appeal is to create a £2 million endowment fund to provide greater financial stability for the Squire in the future.

Staff

The impact of restructuring in two major parts of the Library was felt during the year. The merger of the Cataloguing Division and the Accessions Department into the Collection Development and Description division facilitated the introduction of much improved procedures, described elsewhere, and the review of the Automation Division led to the creation of the Electronic Services and Systems Division and a new divisional strategic plan. Change is always a cause of stress for staff, but all those involved are to be congratulated and thanked for the constructive way in which they approached and contributed to the reviews and, even more, for their positive approach to the results and to the development and adoption of new ways of working that will maintain and, it is hoped, improve the Library's service to its readers at a time when resources for both staff and materials are likely to decline.

The year marked the departure of several senior members of staff with many years of distinguished service to the Library and its users. In the Medical Library, the deputy librarian, Ms Wendy Roberts, retired after 25 years' exemplary service; her career was dedicated to the principle that the library existed to serve its users, and countless readers have reaped the benefits of this commitment. Her departure meant a loss of a wealth of experience and technical expertise that has been widely acknowledged in Cambridge and beyond. Mr Vernon King, who had worked in the Library since 1970 and been head of the Accessions Department since 1991, retired in August 2003, taking with him an enormous amount of knowledge of the booktrade, especially on the European continent and the Americas. Mr Chris Sendall, head of the Automation Division, moved in February 2004 to the University's Management Information Services Division on an initial six-month secondment, and was replaced as head of the Electronic Services and Systems division by Ms Patricia Killiard. Dr Geoffrey Roper, one of the editors of Index Islamicus, retired, and the other editor, Ms Heather Bleaney, transferred to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, from where the journal will be produced in future. Ms Nicola Thwaite resigned as head of Rare Books after thirteen years' outstanding service in the Rare Books Department. Ms Isabel Holowaty resigned as deputy head of the Reference Department to take up the post of History Subject Librarian at the Bodleian and History Faculty Library of the Oxford University Library Services.

Ms Yasmin Faghihi was appointed to the post of Hebrew and Arabic Specialist, Ms Jayne Hoare as English Language Collections and Cataloguing Specialist with particular responsibility for American studies, and Ms Anne Collins, Under-Librarian at the Medical Library, went from full-time to a part-time job-share arrangement, being joined in the other half of the job-share by Ms Jane Leary

A number of moves took place with the creation of the new division of Collection Development and Description. Mr Hugh Taylor's management team now consists of Mr Stephen Hills, head of English Cataloguing, Dr Gotthelf Wiedermann, head of English Collection Development, Mr David Lowe, head of European Collections and Cataloguing, Ms Vanessa Lacey, head of the Greensleeves Project, and Ms Joanne Farrant, who was promoted to the post of head of Materials Processing.

Many staff attended a variety of courses run by the University's Staff Development section while the Library's Staff Development and Training Steering Group also organized a number of courses specifically run for library staff. These included sessions on recruitment and selection, copyright issues, customer care, and electronic and printed reference material.

Three lunch-time presentations were held, on 'Trends in academic publishing', presented by Ms Linda Bree from Cambridge University Press, 'Learning management systems', by Mr John Norman, Director of CARET (Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology) and 'The Union Catalogue Project', presented by Ms Lesley Gray, Mr Peter Girling, and Ms Alice Hine.

The death is recorded, with regret, of Mr H. L. Merry (Entrance Hall staff) and Mr Roy Welbourn (Deputy Librarian, who retired in 2000).

Munby Fellowship in Bibliography

Munby Fellows 2003-04: Dr A. Gillespie, 'The books of John Stow (1525-1605); Ms F. C. Henderson: 'An annotated finding-list of manuscript miscellanies of Cambridge provenance, 1600-1700'.

Major Financial Donations, Grants, Research Grants, and Trust-Funds Expenditure (£5,000 and over)

Acquisitions

Sixth Earl of Enniskillen FundPurchase of books in specified subjects£309,000
Dr M. Kaplanoff bequest (part)Addition to Kaplanoff Fund$200,000
Wilson-Barkworth FundAntiquarian materials£122,000
Countess of Enniskillen bequest (part)Addition to Sixth Earl of Enniskillen Fund£106,000
Commonwealth Library FundManuscripts and books£90,000
Kaplanoff FundAmerican studies materials£30,000
City Solicitors' Educational TrustText books, periodical subscriptions, and electronic resources for the Squire Law Library £20,000
Freshfields Bruckhaus DeringerElectronic legal resources£15,000
LexisNexis Martindale-HubbellPurchases for the Squire Law Library £15,000
Gordon Duff FundRare books£13,000
Cambridge in AmericaAcquisitions£10,000
Cambridge University PressCUP books for the Moore, SPL, and Squire £10,000
Faculty of Oriental Studies (Japanese Studies Fund)Japanese materials£5,000

Special projects

Darwin Correspondence Project

Wellcome Trust£161,000
American Council of Learned Societies£23,000
British Academy£17,000
British Ecological Society£10,000
Royal Society£7,000
Natural Environment Research Council£5,000

Genizah Research Unit

Friedberg Genizah Project£62,000
University of Pennsylvania£15,000
John S. Cohen Foundation£13,000
Sansom-Eligator Foundation$20,000
Mr S. Kest$10,000
Hazel and John Alexander (bequest)£5,000
Kohn Foundation£5,000

Grants to Medical Library

NHS Eastern Deanery£125,000
NHS Addenbrooke's Hospital Trust (SIFT grant)£33,000
Medical Research Council£26,000
NHS Norfolk/Suffolk/Cambridgeshire Workforce Development Confederation£21,000

Other

HEFCEImproving access to research collections£566,000
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research CouncilRoyal Greenwich Observatory Archivist£636,000
Dr C. CookeBequest (part)£115,000
Brill Academic PublishersIslamic Bibliography Unit£51,000
Munby Memorial FundMunby Fellows in Bibliography£44,000
Faculty of Oriental Studies (Japanese Studies Fund)Part funding of staff in Japanese Department£30,000
Trinity College CambridgeContribution towards Saturday afternoon opening£30,000
British and Foreign Bible SocietyBible Society Library staff£21,000
Smuts Memorial FundPart funding of Smuts Librarian for Commonwealth Studies£16,000
Mr Gurnee F. HartBuilding development $25,000
National Manuscripts Conservation TrustConservation of records of the University Commissary's Court£9,000
Commonwealth Library FundRCS Photographs Project£7,000
Friends of Cambridge University LibraryExhibition costs£5,000
Ms E. GlosterSquire Law Library Centenary Fund£5,000

Statistics

The statistics normally refer to the main University Library building only; where indicated* they include the dependent libraries.

Additions to stock2003-042002-032001-021993-94
Books and pamphlets*117,627127,610129,195115,685
Periodicals and newspapers*153,609149,176147,846135,572
Microfilm reels*4,0633.1111,1242,112
Microfiche units*20,83219,32021,93953,884
Official publications37,07341,47837,20550,315
Maps and atlases12,4489,95512,1715,610
Printed music8,3437,4108,6076,192
Manuscripts and archives4,1333,2672,7922,630
Cambridge theses9149241,939601
 
New entries added to the Catalogue:71,00258,65865,34364,947
 
Items fetched: 
West Room bookfetching 
- Select books32,99431,34544,41150,241
- Reading Room classes51,42851,73261,20768,550
- Reserved periodicals38,25340,03743,75557,272
Manuscripts Reading Room12,61612,78511,54012,940
Map Room13,63320,21522,80512,211
Anderson Room and East Asian RR2,1011,7152,8321,900
Official Publications8,31910,25016,53223,913
Microforms14,12915,55112,57812,472
Rare Books Reading Room41,77341,08342,43254,689
Bible Society's Library7139201,195497
 



TOTAL216,229225,633259,287294,685
 
Bindery/Conservation Output  
Modern case work23,34222,34923,50218,492
Modern repair work1,3941,6961,2973,408
Rebacking and minor repairs2,1332,2751,7325,346
Lyfguarding7,5728,6768,9157,895
 
Imaging Services Department 
Prints made from negatives1,2591,4761,4682,801
Microfilm frames exposed259,969257,141189,579508,323
Microfilm duplicates (frames)480,000401,000445,0001,350,000
Photocopies
  (includes Moore, Squire, and SPL)
2,634,7962,979,4453,238,7221,104,430
 
Expenditure on purchased acquisitions 
 ££££
Main Library 
Modern Western books443,342379,897667,782555,017
Official Publications9,99416,38914,52215,712
Oriental Near Eastern24,79430,90027,4779,462
Oriental Far Eastern58,54266,19791,86465,452
Maps31,97439,88747,45670,327
Music30,09936,19131.03238,240
Rare books and manuscripts295,218229,813211,200456,640
Electronic resources, microforms475,806402,926384,613105,842
Periodicals908,937913,183959,743826,029
 



TOTAL2,278,7062,115,3832,435,6892,142,721
 
 2003-042002-032001-021993-94
 ££££
Medical Library 
Books14,64516,18316,70821,949
Periodicals189,887191,000189,247111,481
Science Libraries 
Books11,7849,05418,812412
Periodicals821,098774,340696,009363,868
Squire Law Library 
Books25,68625,83954,1026,916
Periodicals203,827220,987232,973135,890
 



TOTAL3,545,6333,352,7863,643,5402,783,237

The statistics below show the use by members of the University of some of the major online services provided by the University Library. In the case of e-journals, the figures indicate the number of full-text articles downloaded; for databases they are the number of logins. Most of the major e-journal providers are gradually adopting the COUNTER standard for compiling statistics, which will make usage figures directly comparable between different providers and across different years; figures for 2002-03 are not available in some cases.
 2003-042002-03
ScienceDirect510,753 
Nature Journals266,568 
Jstor articles viewed154,675 
Web of Science144,307152,021
Oxford English Dictionary136,166
Medline100,939134,793
Science87,603 
PsycInfo86,97370,913
SwetsWise27,634 
IngentaSelect26,126 
Annual Reviews23,463 
IngentaJournals18,841 
OCLC First Search18,42517,097
Modern Language Association17,82712,857
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy16,464 
Beilstein Crossfire14,82513,167
Geo Ref13,00612,764
Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library10,680 
Early English Books Online8,9237,147
Literature Online8,8055,585
EconLit7,3565,076
MathSci8,8055,585
ATLA Religion Database6,2824,097
Justis Law Reports6,0487,169
Justis Weekly Law Reports5,8197,095
Justis Times Law Reports5,4486,807
Justis Family Law5,2806,644

Library Staff - Professional Activities

Publications, papers presented, membership of committees

M. C. Allen
Committee membership
Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries, Management Committee
Legal Deposit Libraries Committee, Collection Development Subgroup

C. Ansorge
Committee membership
National Council on Orientalist Library Resources (Treasurer)

R. M. Andrewes
Committee membership
Bliss Trust (Trustee)
RISM (UK) Trust (Trustee and Treasurer)
William Alwyn Foundation (Trustee)

C. A. Aylmer
Papers presented
'Automatic conversion of CN-MARC to MARC-21' and 'The Chinese Literature in the Social Sciences database', 23rd Annual Conference of the European Association of Sinological Librarians, Munich, September 2003
Committee membership
China Library Group, Periodicals Sub-committee

H. Bleaney
Editor: Index Islamicus

J. P. Bloxam
Taught week-long course [with N. Hadgraft] at Montefiascone Summer School on 'Girdles, books, and prayers', August 2003
Lecture, Society of Archivists Conservation Training Conference, March 2003

I. M. Burke
Committee membership
IT Syndicate Technical Sub-Committee

G. D. Bye
Project leader for revision of British Standard BS 6313: Micrographics - 35mm microfilming of serials - specification and International Standard ISO 11906: Micrographics - microfilming of serials - operating procedures
Committee membership
British Standards Institute, Committee for Micrographics and Digitisation
National Preservation Office, Micrographics Technical Committee

S. M. Cage
Editor: University Library Staff Bulletin

C. T. Clarkson
'With reference to the department: a day in the life of the University Library's Reference Department', Bulletin of the Friends of Cambridge University Library, 24 (2003)
Committee membership
University's Disability Forum
Working Group on Blind and Visually Impaired Students

A. Collins
Committee membership
Clinical School Learning Resources Group

J. Cox
Committee membership
Janus Steering Group (Chair)
'Cantab' Developers' Group
Cambridge Archivists' Group (Secretary)
Society for the Study of the History of the University (Secretary)
CamSIS Steering Group

L. Dingle
'A guide to UK Constitutional Law', Law Library Resource Exchange (June 2004)
Book review, European Information Association Journal

P. K. Fox
Paper presented
'Garnering support: top down and bottom up', LEADIRS: LEArning about Digitial Institutional Repositories Seminars, London, November 2003
Committee membership
National Preservation Office Board (Chairman)
Wellcome Trust Library Advisory Committee (Chairman)
Wellcome Trust Research Resources in Medical History Panel (Chairman)
LIBER: Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (General Secretary)
Joint Committee on Legal Deposit
Friends of the National Libraries, Executive Committee
Lord Chancellor's Advisory Council on National Records and Archives
International Editorial Board, Journal of Library Administration

L. J. Gray
Committee membership
Endeavor User Group: Circulation Enhancements Committee

D. J. Hall
Book reviews in Journal of the Friends Historical Society and The Library
Associate Editor, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Committee membership
Dr Williams's Trust (Trustee and Library Committee member)
Cambridge Bibliographical Society
Friends of Cambridge University Library (Treasurer)

J. J. Hall
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society (Treasurer)

S. J. Hills
Editor: University Library Readers' Newsletter
Committee membership
Copyright Libraries Shared Cataloguing Programme, Steering Committee

J. E. Hoare
Committee membership
British Association for American Studies, Library and Resources Sub-Committee (Treasurer)

R. C. Jamieson
Committee membership
Faculty of Divinity, Working Group on Online Resources for Indic Studies (Chairman)
Union Handlist of Manuscripts in North Indian Languages
National Council on Orientalist Library Resources, Automation Working Party

R. J. W. Jefferson
Published material from the Cambridge Genizah Collections: a bibliography 1980-1997 (Cambridge 2004) [with E. Hunter]
'Thirty Years of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit' in The written word remains: the archive and the achievement, ed. by Shulie Reif (Cambridge 2004)
'A day in the life of a Genizah researcher', UCL Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department Newsletter (December 2003)
Book review in Journal of Jewish Studies

B. Jenkins
'The Cambridge perspective', Workshop: La coopération internationale au service de la sûreté des collections', Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, May 2004.
Committee membership
National Preservation Office, Preservation Advisory Panel
Legal Deposit Libraries Committee, Preservation Sub-group
Brotherton Collection Advisory Committee

P. Killiard
Paper presented
'The University of Cambridge Universal Catalogue project', Endeavor European EndUser Conference, Helsinki, September 2003
Committee membership
Joint Committee on Legal Deposit, E-journals Working Group
Legal Deposit Libraries Sub-Group on Digital Infrastructure
Legal Deposit Libraries Sub-Group on PreservationEndeavor European Users' Group Steering Committee

N. Koyama
'Cultural exchange at the time of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance' in The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902-1922, ed. by P. P. O'Brien (London 2004)
Paper presented
'The Guillemard Collection (early photographs of Japan) at Cambridge University Library', European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists Annual Conference, Valenciennes, September 2003
Committee membership
Japan Library Group (Chair)
European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists (board member)

S. V. Lambert
Book reviews editor, The Indexer
Committee membership
Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Format Variation Working Group
Society of Indexers Publications Committee
Joint Committee on Legal Deposit, Territoriality Working Group

E. Lev
'Work in progress: the research of medical knowledge in the Cairo Genizah - past, present, and future' in The written word remains: the archive and the achievement, ed. by Shulie Reif (Cambridge 2004)
'The end of the traditional medicine in Jerusalem according to the Swiss physician Titus Tobler (1806-1877)', Canadian Bulletin for the History of Medicine, 21 (2004)
Papers presented
Lectures in Cambridge, London, and Canterbury

D. K. Lowe
Committee membership
French Studies Library Group
German Studies Library Group

P. M. Meadows
Editor [with N. Ramsay], A history of Ely Cathedral (Woodbridge 2003)
Committee membership
Cambridgeshire County Archives Advisory Group
Degree Sub-Committee, Master of Studies in Local and Regional History

S. Morcillo-García
Committee membership
Advisory Council on Latin-American and Iberian Information Resources

P. B. Morgan
'DSpace@Cambridge: a digital institutional repository for the University of Cambridge' ASSIGNation, 21 (2004)
Papers at several workshops on institutional repositories and digital archiving
Book review editor, Health Information and Libraries Journal
Committee membership
BMJ Publishing Group Library Advisory Panel
European Association for Health Information and Libraries, UK Council representative
NHS Norfolk/Suffolk/Cambridgeshire Workforce Development Confederation Librarians Group
Addenbrooke's NHS Trust Learning and Development Strategy Group
Clinical School/Addenbrooke's Hospital SIFT Liaison Group

A. E. Murray
Planning for institutional repositories in the United Kingdom' [with M. Barton], SCONUL Newsletter, 29 (2003)
'Creating organisations to deliver institutional repositories' [with M. Barton], SCONUL Newsletter, 31 (2004)
Committee membership
SCONUL Advisory Committee on Staffing
CURL Task Force on Communications
Legal Deposit Libraries Agency Management Committee

F. Niessen
'The impact of a hole on the interpretation of a Genizah document: a second look at the teacher's notes (T-S 8J28.7)' in The written word remains: the archive and the achievement, ed. by Shulie Reif (Cambridge 2004)
Papers presented
Lectures in Spain, Cambridge, and London

W. A. Noblett
Committee membership
BOPCRIS Steering Committee
Parliamentary Texts Digitisation Steering Committee
East Anglian European Information Relay Steering Committee

B. Outhwaite
'Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit' ('L'Unità di ricerca sulla Genizah Taylor-Schechter') in Ebrei e Sicilia, ed. by N. Bucara et al. (Palermo 2002)
'In the Language of the Hagri': the Judaeo-Arabic letters of Solomon ben Judah' in The written word remains: the archive and the achievement, ed. by Shulie Reif (Cambridge 2004)

A. J. Perkins
Committee membership
International Astronomical Union, Inter-Union Commission for History of Astronomy, Working Group on Astronomical Archives
Royal Society Library Committee

S. C. Reif
'Jewish prayers and their cultural contexts in the Roman and Byzantine periods' in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine, ed. by L. I. Levine (Jerusalem 2004)
'Professor Naphtali Wieder: rabbinic scholar, teacher and liturgical researcher', Pe'amim, 96 (2003)
'The Bible in Jewish liturgy' in The Jewish reading Bible, ed. by A. Berlin and M. Z. Brettler (Oxford 2004)
Book reviews in Eagle, Journal of Theological Studies, Journal of Jewish Studies and SOTS Book List
Editor: Genizah Series, Genizah Fragments
Papers presented
Twenty-four public lectures and conference papers
Committee membership
National Council on Orientalist Library Resources (Chairman)
Cambridge Theological Society (President)
International Conference of Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature
Friedberg Genizah Project, Academic Committee

J. S. Ringrose
'An undergraduate antiquary, Pembroke College Cambridge Society Annual Gazette, 77 (2003)
Paper presented
'The University Library' Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, May 2004

F. W. Roberts
Committee membership
Advisory Editorial Board, Expert Reviews in Molecular Medicine
East Anglia Online User Group (Co-ordinator)
OMNI/BioResearch Advisory Group
NHS Norfolk/Suffolk/Cambridgeshire Workforce Development Confederation Librarians Group; Mental Health Library Services Group
Cambridgeshire Health Librarians Group (Webmaster)
Fulbourn Hospital PME Library Committee
Clinical School/Addenbrooke's Hospital SIFT Liaison Group
Clinical School Learning Resources Group
Clinical School Technical Infrastructure Management Sub-committee

G. J. Roper
Editor: Index Islamicus
Papers presented
Papers at conferences of the National Council on Orientalist Library Resources and MELCom (Middle East Libraries Committee) UK
Committee membership
European Association of Middle Eastern Studies (Council member)

R. Rowe
Committee membership
South Asia Archives and Library Group, Steering Group
Centre of South Asian Studies, Committee of Management (Secretary)

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
'The Genizah and its roots' in The written word remains: the archive and the achievement, ed. by Shulie Reif (Cambridge 2004)
Review in Everyone's War

N. A. Smith
'Bukvar 1745; a rare edition from … Pochaiv Monastery' [with O. Yurchyshyn-Smith], Solanus, NS 17 (2003)
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society (Secretary) C. Staufenbiel
Committee membership
German Studies Library Group

A. E. M. Taylor
Editor, Bulletin of the Friends of Cambridge University Library
Committee membership
British and Irish Committee for Map Information and Catalogue Systems (BRICMICS)
Charles Close Society Archive Sub-committee
Groupe des Cartothécaires de LIBER (Board member)
MapForum (Editorial Board member)

J. R. H. Taylor
Committee membership
Copyright Libraries Shared Cataloguing Programme, Steering Committee (Chairman)
Legal Deposit Libraries Committee, Metadata Group
CURL Resource Discovery and Description Committee
RLIN Database Advisory Group
Book Industry Communication, Bibliographic Standards Technical Subgroup
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules
SUNCAT Bibliographic Quality Advisory Group.

N. Thwaite
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society

E. Weinberger
'Computers and the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit' in The written word remains: the archive and the achievement, ed. by Shulie Reif (Cambridge 2004)

J. D. Wells
'Writing poetry', Cambridge University Library Readers' Newsletter, 27 (2004)
'Writing poetry: text and artefact in Cambridge University Library', P.N. Review, 157 (2004)
'Writing poetry in Cambridge University Library', ARC Newsletter, 178 (2004)
Committee membership
Secretary, Friends of Cambridge University Library

D. F. Wills
'News from the Squire', Cambridge Law Link, Faculty of Law Newsletter, 6 (2004?)

P. N. R. Zutshi
'The origins of the registration of petitions in the papal chancery', in Suppliques et requêtes, ed. by H. Millet (Rome 2003)
General Editor, The History of the University of Cambridge: Texts and Studies
Paper presented
'The English and Welsh penitentiary project', 'The Late Middle Ages and Penitentiary Texts', conference, Bergen, October 2003
Committee membership
Advisory and Technical Panel, Northamptonshire Record Office
East of England Regional Archives Council (SCONUL and RLG representative)
'Cambridge Illuminations' Steering Committee
Charles Darwin Trust (Trustee)