More On Funding Cuts at the Senate House Library

Here's the response I got from Christine Muller at the Senate House Library about the possibility of funding cuts at the Library. She tells me that "there are no plans at present either to remove the Harry Price Library from Senate House Library or to sell it," but that "a recent HEFCE review has decided that the special funding stream for SHL will be cut from £1103K p.a. to £397K p.a. - this represents 16% of SHL's current operational expenditure. A further review by the Colleges of the University of London is now taking place to determine the future mission and funding of SHL." More information about the funding cuts is available at the Senate House Library at http://www.shl.lon.ac.uk and in the latest issue of the Senate House Library e-Newsletter at http://www.shl.lon.ac.uk/newsletter/newsletter_current.pdf. The Library is not asking for donations right now but if people want to make donations they should send them to

David Pearson

Director of ULRLS

Senate House Library

Gower Street

London, England

WC1E 7HU

The Library will use them for the conservation of materials in the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature.

Ms. Muller can be reached at University of London Research Library Services University of London House Malet Street London, WC1E 7HU Tel: 020 7862 8412 email: [email protected]

Harry Price was the psychical researcher active during the early part of the twentieth century who investigated such sites as Borley Rectory and such people as Stella C, Eileen Garrett, the Schneider Brothers, and Helen Duncan. He gave a large collection of literature on magic and psychic phenomena for safekeeping to the Senate House Library in 1937.

Library donors and users often don't realize that while giving materials to a library is a wonderful thing, that's just the first step in making them available. Such materials have to be cataloged and otherwise prepared, and then they have to be maintained so that users can continue to consult them and enjoy them in future. The maintenance of a collection is one of the hidden, and unglamorous, costs that libraries bear. All of you who aren't spending money at that Starbucks which closed! Spare a thought--and at least four bucks--if not for the Senate House Library, for some magical library, somewhere. It's worthwhile, and it's tax-deductible.