Developing services in an evolving technological and political era

The National Library of Scotland (NLS), like national libraries throughout the world, at present, faces quite major challenges in fulfilling its key functions of acquisition, retention, preservation and access as traditional forms of publication are paralleled by publication in electronic form. In addition, the Scotland Act of 1998, whilst not altering the role that NLS plays, has focussed attention on that role within the changed political context of the United Kingdom. This paper will consider the response to the challenges looking not only at the development of technical solutions but also at the organisational changes identified and currently underway. This paper is a revised and updated version of a paper presented at Internet Librarian International 2002, London, UK, 18‐20 March 2002.