Living Knowledge: The British Library 2015-2023, due to be launched by chief executive Roly Keating this evening with a call for renewed and sustained investment in the UK¡¯s knowledge infrastructure, describes the challenging context. Despite an ¡°increasingly digital and screen-based¡± culture, the demand for ¡°high-quality physical spaces and experiences is [also] growing, not diminishing. We have seen a 10 per cent increase in visits to our St Pancras building in the past 12 months alone.¡±

The library¡¯s ¡°first and core purpose¡± would continue to be to ¡°build, curate and preserve the UK¡¯s national collection of published, written and digital content¡± ¨C currently increasing by 0.8 kilometres of new physical material and 6.8 new terabytes of digital each month.

Now that the newspaper collection had been ¡°save[d] and transform[ed]¡±, the next great challenge was the collection of 6.5 million audio items, growing at a rate of 4,000 per month. Since these are held in 42 different formats, ¡°many will be unreadable within about 15 years through technical obsolescence, and unless action is taken, many precious recordings will be lost for ever¡±.

Equally significant is the library¡¯s commitment to ¡°support[ing] and stimulat[ing] research of all kinds: we have begun to create new generations of research spaces such as the multimedia newsroom in St Pancras.

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¡°As demand grows, we will open up more varied study environments and ensure that our on-site services meet our users¡¯ need for the widest possible range of content made easily and instantly available.¡±

Alongside this went a belief in developing the library itself as a major ¡°independent research organisation¡±, not least because ¡°the stronger we are in our own research skills, the more effective we believe we will be in supporting UK research as a whole¡±.

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Living Knowledge goes on to consider the library¡¯s wider roles in promoting learning, business and culture ¨C and in developing major international links.

A partnership with the Qatar Foundation was already ¡°deliver[ing] a vast and expanding resource of digitised primary sources relating to Gulf history and Arabic science¡±, while a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian government had ¡°set out a bold vision of collaboration¡±.

Furthermore, ¡°at a time when wars and civil emergencies have too frequently put archives and library collections at risk¡±, it was up to the library to accept the ¡°global dimension of our professional leadership role¡± and help preserve crucial scholarly resources by ¡°support[ing] fellow institutions during and after conflicts¡±.

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com