Promoting the past Available to Purchase

LOCAL STUDIES LIBRARIANS, museum curators and archivists are, to state the obvious, jointly in the business of making available sources of evidence on earlier times to the public. This may not be our only business: an archivist working in central or local government is responsible primarily for the management of the records of his authority, a local studies librarian may well have a wider reference or information services responsbility, and such factors as these will condition our ability to concentrate on promoting the past. But that aside, if we feel committed to the work we are doing, then we are committed not just to servicing the demand for local studies material but to stimulating this demand: that is, to increasing the availability of the material, and deepening the level on which it is used. In the case of all three of our services, however, resources are strictly limited; every penny, almost literally, has to count, The question then must be to what extent total independence, cooperation or mergers between our services obtain best value for money from what we might term the ‘global local studies resource’.