The Follett Report: |
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| Abstract: | This article describes a report on British University Libraries published in December 1993. Although already dated in terns of its appearance, its recommendations have implications for academic librarianship which will only be fully felt and truly appreciated by the end of the century. The report is discussed in the context of British university libraries, their funding and relationship with their parent bodies, so that its full impact can be understood. The recommendations amount to an injection of some f200 million into the system aimed at protecting traditional librarianship on the one hand and promoting the new technology on the other. The report made the radical assumption that there will be some universities which only teach and some which cany out teaching and research, supported respectively by "access" and "holdings" libraries. It foresaw no immediate change in the pattern of traditional librarianship but its discussions and recommendations on publishing, on the access, transfer and storage of infonation, on the all-embracing role of Information Technology, leave little room for the status quo in the new millennium. The committee members were representative of scholarship both from within and from outside the university system with librarians clearly in the minority. The recommendations have virtually all been accepted by the Funding Councils which commissioned the report. |
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