IWM sales policy

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Given the parlous state of museum funding these days I'm at a loss to understand what the thinking is at the IWM with regard to flogging off its book collection. Rather than perhaps going into partnership with a recognised dealer and getting somewhere close to a reasonable return they seem to be content to offload their stock as quickly and cheaply as possible. So far the stock has either been consigned to a minor auction house in bulk lots or is being sold at knock down prices through online sellers who deal in ex-library books.

In recent months several ex IWM books have come my way at silly prices through these non-specialists - The Occupation of the Rhineland for £30 (the last one on the market sold within a couple of days for £1350) & this morning all 25 issues of the Ministry of Munitions Journal for £18 ( the only set online is £2000). Great for collectors like me but hardly of much benefit to the museum I'd have thought. I suppose they think no one will notice - it's only a library after all! One can imagine the public outcry if you walked into the National Gallery and were told you could help yourself for £50 a picture.

[Ian Riley]

Quite astonishing. Interesting that the custodians should apparently have no sense of financial value. Reminds me of a lady from the Local Education Authority who came into the school library once when I was teaching and ordered that any book over ten years old should be skipped. As fast as they were going in on one side of the skip, the staff were pulling them out on the other. Are they flogging off surplus training publications?

 

Ian

Edited 1 January , 2017 by Ian Riley

[Dust Jacket Collector]

As far as I can see it's all manner of material. I'm hoping that what they're selling off are duplicate copies but it still seems to be a very cavalier attitude to public property.

[paulgranger]

A cavalier attitude to public property might sum up the current IWM itself 

[steve fuller]

They used to 'weed' duplicates from time to time courtesy of space issues. Although I dont keep up anymore, if the archives section have recently lost some storage space, it's probably driven by that.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

The recent renovations seem to have resulted in the bulk of the library stock being moved off site. This must result in much of the material being no longer accessed as most researchers aren't likely to want to wait days for a particular book to be brought in from the country. This of course means they'll have even better excuses to offload their stock.

[David Filsell]

It seems to me that someone somewhere needs to take a serious look at ever ongoing mismanagement of the  IWM and its arrogance.

[kallag]

Well then, when read with the following message I posted elsewhere on the Forum earlier, we should be very worried.

 

Quote

During a visit to the IWM in August, I walked over to the Photograph Visitors Room in Austral Street to arrange for a copy of a WW1 photograph I've been meaning to get for some time.

 

To my horror, the room was in the process of being emptied out.....all the files of photographs gone and not accessible to the public any more. Some files evidently destined for Duxford.

 

I was told that anything you want now will have to be sourced and ordered via their Website. Funding of staff and keeping the place going appears to have become a financial problem.

 

My visits to the Visitors Room over the years always yielded fantastic results when searching the files and Index cards. The photo captions, when given were not always dead accurate with  the photographs giving some valuable information upon examination. 

 

Not all photographs have been scanned for viewing online, neither do the captions always match items searched.

 

Now to my question.  Would any of the members here perhaps know who I should be contacting to inquire about the future and information on the photo files, specifically where the files could be accessed in future.

 

Looking forward to your assistance.

 

Kallag

 

[Dust Jacket Collector]

I agree, Kallag, the situation is indeed worrying. Did you get any response to your query?

There have been questions here in the past about the goings on at the museum but as far as I can recall no one connected with it has responded. This in itself strikes me as remarkable. Surely people working at the country's most important WW1 museum should have some representation on the World's leading site for discussing the conflict? They can hardly be unaware of our existence.

[David Filsell]

That, clearly, no one from the IWM is monitoring and more to the point responding to  relevant complaints about its apparent appalling lack of commitment to what should be its key objectives says everything about its fitness for purpose. An effective evaluation of its true role and its inability to communicate alone shows that the place is a disaster.

Edited 3 January , 2017 by David Filsell

[Loader]

My local library some yrs ago got rid of a book lisitng service men records for WW1. When I recovered from the  shock I asked WHY was such a valuable book removed & sold for pennies literally. The head librarian told me the book was not being checked out. I then told her  it was a REFERENCE section book & could not be checked out or removed from the library. She looked at the records & just  said mistakes are made & she was sorry. I  sent a detailed  letter of complaint to the library board but    all I got back was a form if I wished to make a monetary donation to the  library fund!! Incompetence coupled with "Don't care" seems to be more the norm these days. So sad & frustrating.
 

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Perusal of the IWM annual reports shows a consistent fall in holdings in recent years. In 2011/12 there were 254,000 books, periodicals & pamphlets in the collection. By 2015/16 this had fallen to 215,000. Holdings in the film archive has fallen in a similar manner.

[johntaylor]

This very scary, but not so long ago they were talking about closing the IWM library altogether.  Maybe this is just a gradual way of doing the same thing.

 

John

[kallag]

Dust Jacket, I have not had a response to my query and will, given what is stated above, probably never receive a response. 

 

Must say, it is quite sad to think that all that valuable information will probably now be collecting dust somewhere out of sight. 

 

[David Filsell]

Possibly there will be  an article inspired by this thread in Sunday Times this weekend. Possible but as always with any story being researched not certain.

[Guest]

     The disposal of books is quite worrying.  In a rational world, surplus titles of a specialist nature would usually be first offered to other libraries. This was previously done by the British LIbrary Booknet system ,designed to build up a duplicate lending collection at Boston Spa. (Mostly Inter-Library Loans).However, the system became overloaded and was shut down in c.2002-2003 So if stuff is not in BL at Boston Spa,so that we can ALL have access to it, then IWM have some explaining to do.

    There are several large companies that take away surplus library stock, most notably (or infamously,depending on your view) Better World Books, UK branch in Dunfermline(or Liverpool-hard to tell) an Anybook,Lincoln. Worthy enough as it recirculates large amount of university and college books that are unwanted. Most public libraries get rid of ordinary lending stock to a number of other less choosy internet listers-eg Revival Books. They undertake to give a (small) portion of the retail price back to the library when sold. One of them gradually comes to own the books (Bookbarn, Bristol- my personal opinion is they are best avoided, especially for selling).

   What is happening to IWM is a quite common apparatchik way of "rationalising"- withdraw the books from easy use and put up obstacles. Stage 2 is to have a "review" and decide the materials were being underused and that the "rational" solution is to downsize or shut down. When this occurs the tell-tale signs are increasing library closure, indeterminate answers to enquiries and- the key to it all- the furtive way in which it was done. It was no surprise that IWM stock turned up at Peacocks in Bedford- at a London auction there would have been too much publicity (In defence of Peacocks,they are an old-established honest firm of auctioneers who will have a go- their cataloguing wasn't great but better than many). They key is-out of area- eg,as DJC will know too many people asked questions when Brighton got rid of its old time Reference Library stock to a local bookseller (Colin Page)-so that the next tranche was deliberately sold off to booksellers in Wales to avoid adverse publicity.

    Of further worry, -I speak as a semi-retired bookseller- is that roughly every time you see an ex-lib book of good quality pop up somewhere, then something equally good has gone into the skip,the landfill or the furnace.

    The depletion of IWM bookstock by c.40,000 is no mere exercise in culling duplicates.

IWM is not fit for purpose- Its current management want it to be a theme park - it generates "bums on seats" statistics,which is how the funding bends the system nowadays. Library users such as  us(I apologise if anyone is offended) generate small numbers, are time consuming and generate no extra "sales"- just boring old ***** (synonym here for "breakers of wind")who are expensive to service.

    Moving the Library out under guise of refurbishment is only plausible if there are cast-iron on-the-record commitments as to when it will re-open and in what format- any form of prevarication means there is a closure agenda at work..

So,dear colleagues, the real question is where should the Library go? 3 obvious candidates- KIngs College (War Studies), National Army Museum (though their disposal of surplus Ogilby Trust "regimentals" years ago wasnt that well handled) and U.Birmingham.Sitting in crates and boxes in Duxford aint a solution (unless the stuff might end up at Cambridge Universoty Library-in the manner of what happened with the Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society) The situation being,of course, all the worse given the extra demand for materials during the centennial years. Gross mismanagement- But as they say in "Private Eye" -triples all round and perfomance bonuses galore.

   

Edited 6 January , 2017 by Guest
clarity

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Well said, GUEST. If you look in the IWM policy documents you'll find the rules laid down which deal with the disposal of assets. It quite clearly states that their first commitment is to ensure the material to be disposed of remain in the public domain. This means to give first refusal to other museums, libraries or universities. It seems most unlikely that this path has been followed. Much of the material is of such high quality that most institutions would have given their eye teeth to get their hands on it.

[Guest]

DJC- Time for some Freedom of Info. requests, methinks- the thing the Nomenklatura hate most

 

Oh, and the IWM Acquisitions and Disposals Policy(online) is quite amusing:

 

18.1 The Board of Trustees will ensure that the disposal process is carried out openly and with transparency.

Edited 6 January , 2017 by Guest
Extra info.

[David Filsell]

Delighted to tell you that the Sunday Times ran the piece about the Great IWM Disposal Programme to day - and guess what?

Because it was a national paper the IWM actually responded and its lame reaction is quoted.

The piece was inspired by this thread and quotes the views expressed by a couple of users.

Not a bad result I feel - it's at least put the spotlight on possible mismanagement by officials and trustees.

[Kath]

Link to ST headline:

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/war-museum-takes-flak-over-bargain-sell-off-6hqjf9f90

 

Kath.

[trajan]

WELL done, all of you here! I have been looking into this thread with increasing astonishment... Yes, it does look as if the IWM has not followed its brief and/or charter in disposing of these items, but even more worrying is the attitude of: "Its a duplicate, so we don't need it". Yes, well... On the matter of books, the French Academy Library in Cairo went up in flames, as did the Mackintosh Library in Glasgow, albeit the two went that way for different reasons... BUT, neither had duplicates stored somewhere else... I know we have to avoid any politicising here on GWF but shades of H.McM on privatisation and the 'efficiency' policies that came to the fore in the 1980's, leading ever since to the matter that: "First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go." And in the end?

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Gratifying to think someone has taken notice of the views expressed here. It probably means they'll be even more secretive about disposal in the future. Further ex-library books are on their way to me at the moment, so I'll report back if they're from the same source.

[healdav]

1 hour ago, trajan said:

WELL done, all of you here! I have been looking into this thread with increasing astonishment... Yes, it does look as if the IWM has not followed its brief and/or charter in disposing of these items, but even more worrying is the attitude of: "Its a duplicate, so we don't need it". Yes, well... On the matter of books, the French Academy Library in Cairo went up in flames, as did the Mackintosh Library in Glasgow, albeit the two went that way for different reasons... BUT, neither had duplicates stored somewhere else... I know we have to avoid any politicising here on GWF but shades of H.McM on privatisation and the 'efficiency' policies that came to the fore in the 1980's, leading ever since to the matter that: "First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go." And in the end?

Don't I vaguely remember that the University Library in Louvain was burnt. In World War One, I seem to remember. Lucky some other libraries had duplicates of many of the books.

Have the IWM heard of Louvian or World War One, do you think?

 

[Guest]

DJC- Just as an example, I ran the Journal of the Ministry of Munitions. Not that scarce in terms of holdings- all the copyright deposits,save Bodley (?). I suspect the print-run was quite large. BL does have one set in General Ref at St.Pancras, and another 2 runs (holdings not fully detailed) at Boston Spa:This is one of them:

 

Item Holdings

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MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS JOURNAL..

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Collection;Shelfmk	Lending Collection ; 5809.700000

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For serials, the holdings data below may not be complete. If the issue you require was published before serial holdings were individually recorded it may still be held. The extent of the Library's holdings may be summarised in a holdings note above.

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Select year

All

Select volume

All

Select Collection

All        Lending Collection

 

Description	Item status	Collection	Sub-coll.	Shelfmark	Note
	Available	Lending Collection		5809.700000

 

     I flag this up to highlight that BL has a very substantial collection available for lending- Anyone who has a public library ticket can get stuff from BL at Boston Spa in return for paying an Inter-Library Loan fee in your local library (In addition,some libraries insist the material must be kept on library premises and consulted there). The popular image of BL as the hard-to-get-into wholly reference collection  in London is wholly wrong- the BL at Boston Spa is HUGE. (For those folk who live up north, it also has a walk-in reading room at Boston Spa which is under-used and a treasure)

    If there is a book anyone wants to read, then check the BL catalogue- Always click on "Details" and see if there is a lending copy available- key words are (Doh!!) "Lending Collection" and also DSC-(Document Supply Centre)

    I think that with problems with IWM likely to continue, then the use of Inter-Library Loans from Boston Spa should be better publicised  In addition, the Inter-Library Loans system can draw on stocks from other libraries, albeit usually to be used in the library at your end.(Last book I had came from the University of Glasgow)

    Costs vary per library in what they charge to get a book-but it beats the travel costs to go to far-off library, let alone paying for copying at a distance

 

 

[trajan]

Of topic somewhat, but yes, good old InterLibraryLoans system! I get some stuff from the BL now and again (often from KC London), but I am always amazed with the origins of other things that come my way sometimes - last one was a 1901 journal from the K..liche Pr..Ak.. etc. via the Berlin Main Library, previous one from the Bay.Staat.Bibl..., a younger one, published in 1969...