Expenditure in British Public and Academic Libraries on Online Services

Future historians, using the documentary evidence remaining, might well be excused for believing that online searching was a major activity in libraries and information services in the 1970s and 80s. The publication of several professional journals and the proceedings of regular, well‐attended conferences entirely devoted to the topic would suggest such a conclusion. In reality, the growth of online use in the publicly‐funded sector has been small, as can be judged by the relatively low levels of expenditure involved. For public libraries it has been estimated that spending on online services has been of the order of 0.1% of the total budgets. The average online expenditure of British universities has been about what it costs to employ one member of secretarial staff each.