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SPECIALISED RESEARCH COLLECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES: IMPACT OF NON-FORMULA FUNDING ON ACCESS TO, AND USE OF COLLECTIONS

This report contains details of an interim study into the impact on specialised collections in the humanities of non-formula funding (NFF). The study was carried out in the autumn of 1997 by the CIRT team at the University of Central England on behalf of, and funded by, the Humanities NFF Committee of the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee).

The study surveyed three groups of people - referees of the collections' bids for funding, current users of the collections and staff of the collections. The survey results led to a wide range of conclusions and recommendations.

The major conclusion from this study is that funding given to projects under the Humanities NFF initiative is already leading to substantial changes in access to the special collections and archives concerned. The majority of these changes are improvements in the collections and in access to them. The improvements fall into four main areas.

  • Catalogues. These were improved by the amount of material catalogued; by the depth of information included in the catalogue; by being made available online, and by being made available over the Internet.
  • Conservation and preservation of materials. In most cases these were increasing the amount of material available to users and the conditions under which they could be handled.
  • Physical environments. New rooms or buildings, extended opening hours and the bringing together of disparate collections were all improving access to materials.
  • Staffing. In many collections the number of staff had been increased. The nature of the work was, however, changing, with an increase in fetching and reshelving materials and a reduction in catalogue searching and subject enquiry work being reported.

The impact of these changes for users was primarily in the efficiency and effectiveness of searching for items of interest or relevance to their research. A second key impact was in the increase in both numbers and type of users of the collections. Undergraduate and masters level students and independent researchers were increasingly using the collections, as access to more channels of discovering the collections became available, especially through the Internet.

Little impact on the quality of research was reported, most comments focused on improved efficiency and effectiveness of searching. However, a few comments on improved quality of research were made, such as that the changes enriched research and that more users led to more productive research for everyone.

Many staff in the collections were concerned about the impact of the cessation of project funding in a year or two's time. They were worried that they would not be able to continue to offer the same level of service, and that user expectations would be left unmet. They were also concerned about the potential of digitisation of their collections and the copyright implications of this. In particular, they felt that they did not have the necessary information on which to base decisions about digitisation.

Publications

Nankivell, C., Ashley, K., Richter, K. Specialised Research Collections in the Humanities: impact of non-formula funding on access to, and use of the collections. Final Report. Birmingham: University of Central England, 1998.

Project Team
Clare Nankivell
Karen Ashley
Karin Richter