HC Deb 20 January 1970 vol 794 cc105-6W
71. Mr. Gresham Cooke

asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is the present approximate number of documents contained in the British Museum Library; what is the approximate number being added per annum; and what is the average number of documents actually inspected during the year by clients of this Library.

Miss Jennie Lee

There is no general unit of measurement available or applicable to all the Library Departments and Divisions, which contain such varied items as books, periodicals, newspapers, patents, maps, prints, sheet music, charters, letters, etc.

Taking a unit (or a "document") as any item requiring a main entry in a catalogue, then the present total is approximately 6,000,000. In this figure a periodical is counted as one unit, regardless of the number of volumes, and some 110,000 volumes of patents literature (containing 11,000,000 separate patent specifications) do not show up because they need no individual cataloguing. The Department of Printed Books alone estimate they have 7,000,000 volumes, but not everything can be measured in volumes.

The approximate number of items added per annum is nearfly 2,000,000 where an item is regarded as anything requiring registration; e.g. each periodical part is a registrable item, while an album of drawings is treated as one.

Figures for the usage of the stock of the Library Departments are as follows:

Printed Books (excluding National Reference Library of Science and Invention(Holborn)). 1,590,000 volumes per year issued to readers.
Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts. 20,000 books and 9,000 manuscripts issued.

LICENCE INCOME IN £000s
1964–65 1965–66 1966–67 1967–68 1968–69
Total … … … 56,343 67,969 75,195 79,328 86,294
Broadcast Receivers … … 56,181 67,788 74,993 79,097 85,994
Mobile Radio … … … 115 132 150 147 231

Manuscripts Department 75,000 (excluding charters) issued.
National Reference Library of Science and Invention (Holborn). 3,45,000 items consulted.

In addition, these Departments provided a total of 118,000 photocopies by post to users. There are no comparable figures for the Department of Prints and Drawings.