Sir, The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has just announced funding for the UK Research Reserve, described as “allowing universities to reclaim the space from journal storage and repurpose it for new opportunities, for example research and learning”. These are weasel words for getting rid of what was on those shelves.

“Researchers can choose to access journal articles in printed or electronic format,” says the Hefce press release. But Hefce is to stop paying for universities to use the Athens system of access to electronic journals from the end of July, further restricting access for researchers to the resources to which their institutions happen to subscribe, just when the paper copies are to be disposed of.

Published records of the discussions leading up to the creation of this “research reserve” indicate that books are to be next on the list for destruction. The idea seems to be that one copy of each is to be kept for the nation. Risky? Surely this project should be the subject of public debate? Commercial enterprises do not destroy irreplaceable stock; they acquire additional warehouses. Nor does the argument that parts of historic collections can be “surplus” or “disposable” sit well with the premises on which the British Library or the National Archives operate.

“Book-burning at the Bodleian” will make quite a headline when the destruction begins in earnest.

G. R. Evans
Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History University of Cambridge

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