2008/9/11 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>:
Presumably they have photocopiers (the stuff
you're talking about will
be public domain, yes?). Uni libraries are good for books, they're not
so great for old records - they'll have some, but the British Library
will be guaranteed to have anything you want (assuming it exists
somewhere).
A quick digression.
There are five legal deposit libraries in the United Kingdom, plus
Trinity in Dublin. Each of these is entitled to recieve a copy of each
book published in the country, and has been for a varying period of
time.
They do not all acquire everything; there is plenty of material which
is only in one or two of them. The BL is the largest, but certainly
isn't guaranteed to be comprehensive - I mean, *I* possess books the
BL doesn't. As for "old records", well, you'd be amazed at the archive
material held by your average major university.
We're looking at repositories here which are - from a digitisation
purpose - 90% untouched. Once you're at that scale, the fine details
of comparative size becomes less critical...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk