40 years of Boston Spa – reminiscences and change

Citation

Leadley, I. (2002), "40 years of Boston Spa – reminiscences and change", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 30 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2002.12230daf.003

40 years of Boston Spa – reminiscences and change

Keywords: British Library, History

Not that it matters, but most of what follows is true.

The title to this piece was "suggested" to me by the Editor, in a manner that was difficult to refuse. He said the whole point would be to provide a light-hearted contrast with the more academic papers published in the journal.

That being the brief, it seems entirely logical to start and end with a couple of quotations from Westerns. The opening quote is from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I cannot quite go back the full 40 years of the title, having arrived on the Boston Spa scene in August 1964. My version of events prior to that date was created and honed during a period in the early 1970s when we were sent out, by then-director Maurice Line, to address meetings across the length and breadth of the UK. Internally we were known as "apostles" because we were spreading the BLLD gospel.

Strangely, the British Library Document Supply Centre owes its creation to two other nations: Germany and Russia.

First, Germany and the Second World War.

The UK needed bombs and bullets to fight the war. Ordnance factories were built in remote rural areas – like Yorkshire. The Government took over 4.5 square miles in the parish of Boston Spa and built an ordnance factory. They said they would tear it down after they had won the war – but conveniently forgot to do so.

Second, Russia.

In 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik into space, the first satellite. In the same year 200 Soviet technical journals were in publication, but only 20 were available in the UK. The UK Government had decided that "Russian" technical journals should be available to the UK scientific and technical community in the UK. They then expanded the concept to create a world-wide literature collection.

The collection grew rapidly and a search was made for suitable premises with room for expansion. The redundant ordnance factory in Yorkshire was identified and chosen to be the site of the new National Lending Library for Science and Technology.

It was situated in the Boston Spa postal area, which became the official address. The library became known worldwide as Boston Spa. However, the Christmas post became too much for the small Boston Spa village Post Office. In the end all the mail was delivered to the library, we then took out our mail and gave the village back their Christmas cards and presents. The Royal Mail later had a large depot built at the nearby town, and informed us that the new address was "Wetherby". Our Director asked the Postmaster General for special permission to keep Boston Spa in the address.

The then Postmaster General, John Stonehouse, made two decisions, the first was a good one because he decided that Boston Spa could remain in our address, the second was not so good. He decided to fake his own suicide, leave his clothes on a Miami beach and disappear to live with his mistress in Australia!

If, in the 1960s, when I arrived on the scene, you had asked one of the many visitors to Boston Spa what they remembered about the National Lending Library for Science and Technology they would probably have replied "The punched card machines and the clanking overhead conveyors". This was the pre-computer age and visitors marvelled at the automated records kept on punched cards.

It was also the days when, as its name suggests, lending was the only way to get information to customers – hence the clanking conveyors to move the material around the site. Indeed it was not until reliable copying machines were available that the Overseas Photocopy Service was launched in 1967.

Here are another couple of snippets from the 1960s, which never appeared in the "official" histories, to illustrate how things have changed.

There was a dress code. All the women had to wear skirts, no trousers were permitted; the men were permitted trousers but had to wear a shirt and tie. There was uproar when one of the female students, employed during the summer to shift stock, appeared wearing denim jeans.

All the men were referred to by surname and the women by Christian name. So even in 1972, when I got married, the director, Donald Urquhart, when asked to present the gift to which our colleagues had contributed, said: "You all know why we are here. Leadley is marrying Pauline".

A whole book could probably be devoted to the role the library has played in people's lives. A large number of couples are now married after meeting their partner at Boston Spa – some more than once!

The British Library came into being in the early 1970s and Boston Spa became its Lending Division, reflecting the importance that the loan of material still played. Expansion continued and the massive concrete structure of the Urquhart Building (named after Dr D.J. Urquhart, the first director) was built in three stages to house the ever-growing collection and staff.

Around this time, in 1972, I discovered what became my favourite article.

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  The Veterinary Record, 1972, Vol. 90,No 8, pp. 382-5, Blackmore, D.K., BSc, PhD, FRCVS, Owen, D.G., BSc, Young, C.M., MA, VETMB, MRCVS. "Some observations on the diseases of Brunus edwardii (Species nova).

I was very impressed, and still am, that a learned academic journal like the Veterinary Record had an editor and a readership with a sense of humour. To devote several pages in the 1 April issue to a spoof article on teddy bears was, I thought, wonderful.

Maybe that is what inspired me to try to visualise some of our own statistics. A bit of research in the Guinness Book of Records enabled me to tell audiences that the average daily input of requests, if put into a single pile, would be the height of the largest African elephant ever shot. Hopefully this provided a better mental picture than just quoting a number of thousands of orders.

There was a steady change over the following decade to supplying copies of articles and this was reflected in another name change in 1985, when Boston Spa became the Document Supply Centre. As the shift to copying gradually increased the conveyor systems were removed and scrapped. The Telelift system, which transported request forms internally, was finally shut down in May 2002, as spare parts are no longer available.

Through the 1990s, technology marched remorselessly on. The Internet replaced the telex machine, which had itself speeded up requesting so much in the late 1960s. Every desk now has its own PC connected to the network. E-mails replaced faxes, allowing communications on a global scale with ease.

Not all the technology transition went through smoothly. The Technifax, which reproduced microfiche, was a huge expensive machine, and was the only one outside of the USA. One day it jammed and as John tried to free it his hand got stuck inside the machine. The fire brigade was called to free him, and prepared to cut him out. The manager begged the firemen to be careful with the machine (not John!) as it was the only one in the Europe. Fortunately John was freed unharmed.

While technology may have changed dramatically over the last 40 years, a recent look at what was being requested showed that we still get an enormous variety of requests. There are those that you would expect to be requested from a world wide collection and supplied to a global audience.

Some articles seem very appropriate for the customer.

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  a university in Ireland needed the book Student Motivation, Cognition, and Learning – Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie.

Others are perhaps less so, but certainly illustrate the wide range covered by the literature collection:

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  a Scottish university was sent an article from Colliers, Vol. 124, 1949. The article by Lee Rogow is entitled "Tooth fairy".

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  a university in the UK asked to borrow the whole of All the year Round – a Weekly Journal, Vol. 19, 1868, conducted by Charles Dickens, with which is incorporated Household Words.

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  from European Journal of Biochemistry, a UK university learned about "Interactions between active-site serine -lactamases and so-called -lactamase-stable antbiotics.

The journal collection goes back to 1664, which frequently enables us to "sell ice to Eskimos".

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  A French industrial company received an article from Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Vol. 18, 1879.

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  The oldest article supplied in this "sample" was from Annals of Agriculture and Other Useful Arts, Vol. 13, 1790 and went to a public library in the UK.

In addition to journals, books and conferences, technical reports were supplied on microfiche from the millions held in stock.

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  A university in Iran was interested in AIAA, Paper 79-1463, "Numerical methods for co-ordinate generation based on Schwarz-Christoffel transformations".

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  Report AD-A317054, "Implementation of instructional strategies for decision-making training" went to an Australian research laboratory

Not all requests can be satisfied immediately. These are returned to customers, because the details that were quoted have not enabled us to trace the document requested, despite extensive bibliographic searching by our experienced staff.

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  A UK university asked for "FT mastering management", 8 January, Wilmott, which is probably for an article by Wilmott in the Financial Times. The customer was asked to provide the year of publication. Such apparently small details are often vital in identifying and supplying the document required.

Finally, sadly, despite our best efforts, some requests will have to be returned to the customer where the document cannot be provided.

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  A university in France was disappointed to learn that we could not trace the journal Wyzsza Szkola Wychowania Fizycznego w Gdansku.

I suspect that a sampling of the requests at any time over the last 40 years would have thrown up a similar spread. I am not so sure, however, that modern excuses for non-return of loans will match some of the gems we got in the past.

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  "I regret the book cannot be returned to you. It has been eaten by the dog belonging to the veterinary surgeon who borrowed it." The book was Behaviour Problems in Dogs, by W.B. Campbell.

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  "We regret the book is irretrievably lost. It was in a car sent to a scrap metal merchant and crushed."

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  "Our reader borrowed the book for his wife who has died under rather unfortunate circumstances". The book was Total Orgasm, by J.L. Rosenburg.

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  "The member of staff for whom the book was borrowed was assaulted on a train in England while reading it and inadvertently left it behind."

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  "The book cannot be returned as there is no money in petty cash to pay for the postage."

It goes without saying that it was the staff, thousands of them over the years, who kept the operation going. We have had a fair few eccentrics among us.

Starting with our first director, Dr Donald Urquhart:

"Django" was one of the few members of staff and certainly the only director to be given a nickname that was universally used. Although a very senior member of staff he was definitely not noted for his sartorial elegance. He once had an ingrowing toenail removed and cut a large hole in the toe of his shoe so the bandages could protrude. Trouble was he did not tell anyone, perhaps he thought it normal to walk about with only half a shoe.

He also fiddled the first millionth request. As we got closer to processing 1 million requests in a year he decided he would personally process it and get the PR organised. The actual millionth request was a grotty Science Museum photocopy request form for an item we did not hold. "Django" quickly changed it for a NLLST request for an item just outside his door. In fact he did this the day before and the preselected item spent the night in his office safe until he issued it from the shelf at the appointed time.

There were also folk who occupied a more lowly rung in the ladder.

Arthur worked for a time in the packing bay on Floor 1 of the Urquhart Building. Part of his job was to send parcels and sacks of mail down the chutes to the loading bay below. One day Arthur went missing and a search found him down on the loading bay sitting on top of a pile of mail sacks. He explained that he had swung a sack of mail like a pendulum to throw it down the chute – then forgot to let go.

The new millennium saw the celebrations when we processed our 100 millionth request, fittingly perhaps from a European customer, and also 40 years of document supply from Boston Spa. As longest serving member of staff on site, I was asked to cut the celebratory cake, and say a few words. I chose to emphasise the financial change over the years.

A little more research showed that my starting salary in 1964 had been £440 per annum, currently staff starting on the equivalent grade get £11,900 per annum, which means that in another 40 years, given the same inflation rate, junior grade starting salaries will be a mere £321,000 per annum.

These have been just a few of my recollections but they lead quite neatly into my closing Western quote. It is from The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance. The newspaper editor famously says "When the legend becomes fact – print the legend".

Ian Leadley