The British Library today launches its 2020 Vision, which sets out the UK national library’s priorities and aspirations for the next decade.
The vision highlights what are likely to be the key trends and opportunities over the next ten years, indicating how the British Library plans to take advantage of those opportunities to remain a great national library and a major hub of the global information network.
Announcing the vision during her keynote speech at the Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Dame Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, said: “Our 2020 Vision arises from a year of extensive research and consultation. We consulted widely with our stakeholders and interviewed experts from the fields of technology, information, publishing, libraries, the media, learning and research.
“2020 Vision provides us with a long-term perspective on where the information world and the Library are heading, and also the strong sense of direction we need, particularly during the next few years of financial constraint.”
The vision outlines five key themes that set out the priorities for the British Library: to guarantee access for future generations; to enable access for everyone who wants to do research; to support research communities in key areas for social and economic benefit; to enrich the cultural life of the nation; and, to lead and collaborate in growing the world’s knowledge base.
The website at www.bl.uk/2020vision features the full text of the vision, along with a video foreword by Dame Lynne Brindley and illustrative video clips for each of the key themes. It also links to the discussion documents, reports by Library specialists and detailed methodologies that underpin the 2020 Vision.
The experts consulted by the Library provided a range of views on what the world of 2020 would look like. These predictions included:
Technology will be in a constant state of beta – rapidly changing and, by 2020, resulting in a very different environment from today;
The new generation of ‘digital natives’ will enjoy wider access than ever to a huge range of online content in all formats; they will assume that ‘everything’ is available on the web – an incorrect assumption, as even by 2020 a huge amount of legacy content will remain undigitised;
The online landscape will increasingly resemble the ‘semantic web’ – in which computers become capable of extracting, classifying and analysing data to create context from content;
The business models underpinning scholarly publishing will change dramatically – more teaching, learning and research will take place virtually and multi- and inter-disciplinary research will continue to grow in importance;
Knowledge institutions will need to reposition themselves, demonstrating the distinct value they add to the knowledge economy.
Dame Lynne said: “By the year 2020 we estimate that only 25% of all titles worldwide will be published in print form alone. Seventy-five per cent will only be published digitally, or in both digital and print form. Our research suggests that as use of mobile devices become ubiquitous, users will expect seamless access to information and services, and will assume that everything is available on the web.
“If we in the UK are going to safeguard our intellectual heritage and ensure it can be used by future generations of researchers, it is essential that we make a step-change in the amount of digital content that we collect, store and make accessible for the long term.
“We also aim to significantly increase our digitisation activity and therefore our visibility in the Web environment, through a range of partnerships with private and public providers. We wish to continue to play our part in enriching the cultural life of the nation and in our leadership role in the library and information services sector.” she added.
The 2020 Vision website encourages visitors to offer their feedback on the Library’s plans, and also to join the debate via Twitter (hashtag: #BL2020vision).
“The 2020 Vision provides a long-term perspective but will also have an immediate impact on our strategy and planning – it will offer a framework for our 2011-15 strategy, currently in preparation, which will set out in detail how we intend to work towards our vision over the next four years,” Dame Lynne concluded.
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive research collection. The British Library’s collections include 150 million items from every era of written human history beginning with Chinese oracle bones dating from 300 BC, right up to the latest e-journals. Further information can be found at www.bl.uk