Funding arrangements for UK Universities and their libraries

Abstract

‘University library financing in Britain has all the precision of a coven of witches. No one knows how precisely it is worked out’ (R.J. Bates, 1973)

This quote could equally have been applied to the financing of U.K. universities at the time. It provides a suitable introduction to the first of the two themes of this paper. This is the shift from a funding system of great opaqueness and possibly little rationality to one of considerable ‘transparency’. The second theme is the development of a close relationship between the funding mechanisms adopted by the funding councils and those subsequently used by institutions in funding their constituent parts. That thread carries on to a degree into the funding of libraries, but there are a number of particular circumstances in relation to libraries and other central services which mean that they do not necessarily exhibit all the characteristics of the pattern thus established. The extent to which this is actually done varies, and in this respect such services tend to differ from academic departments. The culture of individual institutions and libraries continues to play an important role.’