A History of SWRLS

1937-1960

The first regional library systems (RLSes) were set up in 1931 to promote inter-library lending and co-operation within the regions. On 1st April, 1937, the network of RLSes across England and Wales was completed with the arrival of SWRLS.

SWRLS was established with funding from the Carnegie UK Trust to create and maintain a union catalogue for all the libraries in the South West of England. A bureau was set up in the former Patent Library Store on the top floor of Bristol Central Library, staffed by the Editor of the Union Catalogue, Nancy Osborne, two assistant librarians and two typists. The main task for the Bureau was to compile a Union sheaf catalogue from the card and sheaf catalogues of the member libraries. Initially this was accomplished by sending round alphabetic sections of the catalogue to all the members, who would mark their holdings on the slips provided or add temporary slips for items not already included. Once a section had completed its rounds, it was installed in the Union catalogue and updated through additions and deletions notifications from the member libraries. The remainder of the Bureau's time was spent using the catalogue to find locations for requested books, and arranging loans.

In 1940, the typists were replaced by junior assistants, but difficulties during the war years and immediately afterwards, particularly a rapid turnover of staff, meant that extra help was needed to clear the backlog. Temporary typists were drafted in occasionally, and over the winter of 1953-4, member libraries generously donated a member of staff on a weekly rota to help get the Union Catalogue in order. Nevertheless, even by 1961, the cataloguing arrears had only been reduced to 202,000 additions and 80,500 withdrawals.

1961-1973

1961 was a year of great changes for SWRLS. Following the retirement of the long-standing Editor of the Union Catalogue, Nancy Osborne, it was decided that SWRLS would no longer employ its Bureau staff directly, but would instead second staff from Bristol City Libraries. Corresponding changes in the Constitution were made, and Doris Brinkler took over as the Librarian-in-Charge of the newly appointed Regional Office staff in January 1961. She made her mark immediately, introducing triplicate forms that allowed a single request to be passed around three libraries (instead of just one) before returning to the Office. Later, in October that year, a Telex machine was introduced to deal with urgent requests.

The first SWRLS Handbook appeared in 1966, bringing together the decisions and recommendations made by the SWRLS Executive Committee since 1961. The hope was that it would result in "a uniformity of method among Member Libraries and a better understanding of the scope and work of all the departments concerned with inter-library co-operation." (29th Annual Report, p. 9)

In 1967, there was a flurry of interest in computerising library records, made all the more tantalising by the imminent introduction of Standard Book Numbers. Excited by these developments, the Regional Office decided to start a new Union Catalogue sequence based on BNB number instead of Author, in the hope that this would make it easier if and when it came to digitising the records. (Books without BNB numbers were listed in the original sequence). As it turned out, this sequence was never digitised, but it did have the advantage of being more or less chronological. This meant that the records could be bought in en bloc and packed tightly into sheaf binders, without any fear of having to interleave later records, saving space, time and money.

Around the same time, large increases in the number of requests received by the Regional Office meant that staffing grew to three librarians, four full-time library assistants and three part-time library assistants. To relieve the pressure, libraries were also given permission to apply to each other directly for inter-library loans, using tools such as the BNB and the Subject Specialisation Scheme. This meant that annual number of requests dealt with by the Regional Office peaked at 45,179 in 1968-1969, and thereafter went into a slow decline.

1974-1989

The next period of great change at SWRLS was in 1974. Vast local government re-organisation meant that over half the Executive Committee were forced to leave, and Doris Brinkler was succeeded in the post of Librarian-in-Charge by former Sub-Librarian, Jean Rowles. The consolidation of public libraries into county-wide services meant that the subscription charging scheme had to be radically altered and the specialisation schemes needed a complete overhaul. Technological advances meant that the BNB number sequence in the sheaf catalogue was closed, and in its place was a microform catalogue, produced from a computerised database and consisting of ISBNs and locations. Updates to this catalogue were printed on microform and sent to subscribing libraries every two months.

Since the advent of direct applications between libraries, the Regional Office had started receiving requests for just locational information. It was not until the microform catalogue arrived, though, that direct applications really took off, leaving the Regional Office with few loans to arrange but many locations to find from the sheaf catalogue. Bibliographic research also became an important part of the Office's work, as the requests received became increasingly obscure.

With the main business of the Office becoming less intense, there was more time for other things. 1976-7 saw the start of a SWRLS Newsletter, and a revised Handbook containing just about everything an inter-library loans assistant needed to know. A new catalogue was opened, this time on card, to record additions (and in time deletions) of sheet music in member libraries; this time, mirror catalogues were maintained by all contributing libraries. A couple of years later, a separate card catalogue was opened for conferences, and in 1980, the backlog of additions to the sheaf catalogue was converted into a card catalogue in its own right. Thereafter, no new titles were added to the sheaf binders, although the locational information they held was kept up to date.

In the wider System, 1976-7 saw the start of the Regional Transport Scheme, a co-operative indexing project (for journals), a co-operative scheme for acquiring play sets (complementing the Plymouth Music Scheme set up in 1969), and the formation of a music librarians' working group. The Newsplan project had its genesis a couple of years later, growing out of the interest of county reference librarians in microfilming technology. Some full and frank discussions with the Inland Revenue in the early 1980s lead to SWRLS officially registering as a charity in 1982.

1984-6 saw the first tentative foray into fully computerised union catalogues, with SWRLS and NWRLS joining LASER's VISCOUNT research project. SWRLS also became interested in LASER's CILLA project (Co-operative of Indic Languages in Library Authorities) and took part as soon as LASER opened CILLA to other regions in April 1986. The SWRLS Catalogue of Vocal Sets was published in the same year, and a further card catalogue dedicated to serials holdings was opened. The last major development of the decade was probably the 50th Anniversary in 1987, for which a celebratory exhibition and introductory booklet were produced. It is from these that the current branding of the System hails.

1989-2005

Jean Rowles left SWRLS to become Avon's Principal County Librarian in 1989, and was replaced as Librarian-in-Charge by Bridget Powell. VISCOUNT was proving its worth both within SWRLS and inter-regionally. Declining expenditure on play sets meant the co-operative acquisition scheme came to an end in 1989, and the co-operative indexing service was discontinued from 1990 due to comprehensive indices being available for purchase from elsewhere. The Regional Transport Scheme, having fizzled out some time previously, was re-born in 1991 under a contract with the Consortium for Purchasing and Distribution. This scheme continued successfully for many years, until the British Library withrew its subsidy and thereby forced the scheme to close in 1999. Since that time, libraries have taken out individual contracts with DX to provide a transport service.

Despite the success of the VISCOUNT system, disagreements with LASER on the terms of service provision led to SWRLS and NWRLS developing their own computerised union catalogue. The new catalogue, Unity, was tested through 1994, and was formally launched in May 1995. Before long, all but two of the Regions in the British Isles had loaded their holdings on to Unity. One of the advantages of the new system was its ability to cope with items without an ISBN, which meant that additions to the main card catalogue slowed to a trickle within a few years, and the catalogue was closed in 1999.

As more and more libraries installed their own Unity workstations, the microform catalogue updates were superseded and ceased in 1996. Updates to Unity were originally circulated on tape, but from 1998, these were replaced by CD-ROM; even this technology was quickly superseded when in May 2001, Unity made the transition to the Internet to become UnityWeb.

Further local government reorganisation in 1997 caused another sudden reconstitution of SWRLS committees, and once more brought confusion to the specialisation schemes. This was compounded only a few years later by a Central Government recommendation that Regional Library Systems should be organised along Regional Government Office boundaries; this meant that SWRLS had to shrink its boundaries to exclude Oxfordshire, the Isle of Wight, and Hampshire with its unitary authorities. Unfortunately, at the same time LASER ceased to operate as a Regional Library System, so the excluded libraries rejoined SWRLS as associate members. A further effect of LASER's withdrawal was the transfer of the CILLA project to OCLC, after which it was decided to discontinue the SW/CILLA group.

The slow decline in requests received at the Regional Office since the introduction of the microform catalogue sped up considerably with the introduction of Unity, with each year bringing in roughly three quarters as many requests as the previous year. The Regional Office was therefore closed down in August 2002, and replaced with an Operational Interlending Business Unit provided by Bristol City Library Service on a three-year contract. The new Unit had a slimmed down staff consisting of one librarian and two library assistants. Bridget Powell stayed on in her own right as Librarian-in-Charge until the end of 2002 in order to transfer the strategic aspects of the Regional Office's work to the Regional Council and Management Board.

The work of the Unit consisted mainly of the core work of the old Regional Office: finding locations, arranging urgent loans, performing bibliographic research and maintaining the union card catalogue of sheet music. It also assisted members in uploading their catalogue holdings on to UnityWeb. However, the level of requests received by the Unit reached a nadir of 2,865 requests in 2003-4, and so the decision was made not to renew the Unit's contract when it expired at the end of August 2005. As a consequence, the Unit engaged in a course of work to make sure members were not left stranded when it closed, and contributed new online resources and a revised, digital Handbook.

SWRLS itself continues to be active. Its current major project is WISDOM, a Z39.50 virtual catalogue that simultaneously searches the catalogues of member libraries. As of February 2005, nine public library services can be searched through the WISDOM interface. In future, it is hoped that WISDOM will have greater functionality and wider coverage.