Thirty Years of Change in the UK and in Europe After 1989: A Personal Perspective

1 Introduction

Few of us who were alive on 9 November 1989 will ever forget the evening of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the extraordinary sight of the checkpoint from East Germany to West Germany opening and the immediate surge of people through it, and when the gate was overwhelmed, seeing the young man, who leapt upon the Wall with a pick and began to breach it. In the UK the news was announced on the BBC by its Moscow correspondent Brian Hanrahan (1949–2010)^[2]. By the end of the following year, the USSR had fragmented, the Baltic States had regained their independence and a large number of independent republics had emerged.

Yet every country in Europe has its own context for these political events and differing memories and experiences of these years. For many of us associated with research libraries in Europe, these recollections denote an incredibly optimistic time in history, which reconnected people, libraries, and collections, opened up new horizons for researchers and scholarship, and taught us much more about the intertwining of our European histories, cultures, and languages. This article gives a personal impression of the UK context leading up to 1989, and how the thirty years from 1989 to 2024 evolved, with some emphasis on Scotland.^[3]

2 The 1960s and 1970s: Consensus and Progress

In the second half of the 20^th century, there was broad consensus in the UK on the need for a better society. The creation of the National Health Service in 1948 was one of the strongest symbols of these aspirations. There was a drive to peace particularly among young people.^[4] The 1960s were characterised by a freeing of conventions, a decade in which norms in theatre, art, literature, and popular music were all challenged. By then the Empire had diminished and many countries had sought their independence. The UK population grew, rising to 56m, through more children being born, and from migration from former UK colonies.

In libraries, people began to use computer systems to assist with some library processes such as cataloguing, and talk began about the ‘information age’. By the end of the 1970s the UK had over 4 000 full-time public libraries, a hundred university and college libraries and three national libraries (London), Scotland (Edinburgh) and Wales (Aberystwyth). The 1963 Robbins Report recommended the expansion of universities to accommodate all “who were qualified by ability and attainment”.^[5] Students numbered c. 239 000 in the 1970s,^[6] still a small percentage. In 1967, the Parry Report of the Committee on Libraries issued by the University Grants Committee^[7] addressed the state of UK libraries and made recommendations for their improvement and expansion, including a call for a coordinated national system, specialized collections to avoid duplication, and increased collaboration between university libraries and national libraries, setting the foundation for future library policy. The British Library Act 1972 brought the British Library into being in 1973, with a remit to be the national library of the UK, although the separate identities of Scotland and Wales were recognized by the continuance of their existing national libraries. At an international level though, the British Library was responsible for representing the interests of all three.

The formal concept of ‘library co-operation’ was a child of the 1970s, fuelled by the exponential growth of publications, users’ needs, libraries’ recognition that individual libraries could not meet these needs, and the fortunate coincidence of automation as a new tool for libraries. A raft of ‘co-operative systems’ involving university, public libraries, and national libraries, emerged.^[8] These early endeavours helped to initiate libraries into the ‘hard knocks’ of the school of library co-operation: the need to prepare to give up as well as to receive in the interests of better results for users, the fundamental importance of building trust as a foundation for library co-operation, and the dynamics of individuals in the process.

The UK joined the European Communities on 1 January 1973 and in the 1975 referendum, 67 % of the UK population voted to remain. But the winds of change had begun to blow: a sterling crisis required borrowing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), industrial action brought a ‘Winter of Discontent’, and referenda on devolution of power to Scotland and Wales failed.^[9] Amid the general sense of national malaise, a new and unexpected threshold was already beckoning: a turning point that would mark a watershed in the UK and influence it to the present day.

3 The Watershed of the 1980s – “The Thatcher Revolution”

The 1980s was defined by the premiership of Margaret Thatcher and her government (1979–1990), and the political phenomenon of “Thatcherism”. In the wider political background, the Cold War between the US, supported by the UK, and the USSR, which had led to the arms race, and the fear of nuclear war that had dominated the 1960s and 1970s, had begun to recede, assisted from mid-decade by relations thawing between the US and the USSR.^[10] The UK’s closest political relationship has always been with the US, the so-called “Special Relationship”, and the political bond between Mrs Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan was very much in play during the period leading up to 1989.^[11] However, Mrs Thatcher was very impressed by Mikhail Gorbachev, whom she first met in London in 1984, confirming in an interview with John Cole of the BBC that: “I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together”.^[12]

In the UK the 1980s was a period of ideological change and a formal break with the post-war consensus. At the start of the decade, problems abounded: economic recession with unemployment above 3 million, hunger strikes in Ireland, and the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. After the Thatcher Government was re-elected by a landslide in 1983, the pace of change accelerated, and the face of the country began to change. The government embarked on a radical programme of deregulation and privatisation, trade union reform and tax cuts: the “economic revolution”. In 1984, a long ‘Miners’ Strike’ took place, signalling the end of coal mining; and in 1986 many industries were de-nationalised, removing the need for state subsidies. This was influenced by the government’s strong belief in a ‘smaller state’, which drew its inspiration from the conviction that ‘Socialism’, as it had been practised in the UK in the 1970s, had lost control and caused ruination.^[13] The Thatcher government’s alternative was a Monetarist^[14] approach and free market economics. This included tightening fiscal policy to reduce budget deficits, increasing taxes and restricting government spending. These measures had deep-seated implications for many areas of society.

In 1982, James Thompson, University of Reading, published his book, The End of Libraries, in which he argued that libraries needed to adapt to technological change or face obsolescence. Politically, the drive to expand library co-operation was accelerated by government’s wish to curb public spending, and to encourage the public sector to be more business-like and emulate the private sector. Until then, the public and private sectors had had broadly different ethea and different conditions.^[15] Mid-decade brought the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which was intended to align government funding support to research outcomes, spurred by government’s belief that universities were flagrant with public funding.^[16] There was a new paradigm for public service reform aimed at what the government saw as inefficiency, with the introduction of performance measures to evaluate user satisfaction. Professor Chris Painter saw the transition thus: “So began the fixation with performance indicators and league tables, with all their attendant dangers – data manipulation and a tick-box mentality. Gone was the idea of professional trust and self-regulation”.^[17]

National libraries functioned under the same conditions as the Civil Service and were, therefore, immediately subject to the public service reforms. Generally, libraries believed that they were already using taxpayers’ money prudently, so it was quite a surprise when they began to see the reality of government’s new approach. It was as if all the former orthodoxies had been withdrawn. Every aspect of library activity had to be assessed against three criteria: economy, effectiveness and efficiency, and libraries had to prepare annual plans which included setting specific targets under these criteria. The term “performance measures” began to echo in libraries. The extension from quantitative measures, which libraries had always used, to qualitative measures, which until then had been taken as part of civil society, was challenging for many. Priorities were now focused on short-term visible results. In retrospect, the reaction from libraries, while going through the motions, was quite sceptical, but there were some who did show enthusiasm for the new realities. A considerable amount of staff time had to be spent trying to measure the immeasurable though. The language of US business management was introduced into libraries: readers became customers, targets began to drive internal library processes and numbers became the determinant of success.^[18]

Government’s thrust towards public expenditure reductions and measures of performance also affected the previous ‘arm’s length’ approach of government to cultural institutions, which until then had been run by Bagehot rules.^[19] Government began to maintain that if it provided the funding, it stood to reason that it should have a say in policy. In 1987, the then Cabinet Secretary for Education suggested that the UK legal deposit libraries should retain the books that were being used and sell the remainder to raise funds. On first hearing, this appeared something of an amusing joke, but no joke was intended, and so the libraries had to organise themselves in defence of their policies for their users. This quickly led to increased co-operation among the five UK legal deposit libraries.^[20] A Working Group on Legal Deposit was set up in 1988 with the aim of identifying areas for co-operation on the acquisition of serials and some types of monographs; and this was followed by a Shared Cataloguing Programme in 1993. In retrospect though, this was useful experience for the 1990s, when library co-operation would be possible and desirable on a much larger landscape.

In much of Scotland, the Thatcher government was unpopular as some of its policies cut across the majority of Scottish opinion. An iconic moment was when the Prime Minister addressed the Annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1987 in its Assembly Hall on the Mound in Edinburgh. Heralded on her way into the Assembly Hall by a statue of John Knox, the Calvinist Protestant Reformer, the Prime Minister addressed the serried ranks of clergy from across Scotland. In her address, which came to be known as the “Sermon on the Mound”,^[21] she sought to explain her ideas on the market economy and espouse the cause of individualism, summing up in the words: “We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’, wrote St Paul to the Thessalonians”.^[22] This did not go down well. The historian, Professor Tom Devine, encapsulated the view at the time: “The main criticism of the Thatcher government was that its policies damaged the fabric of civil society and […] their [the Scots’] desire to protect their civic society.”^[23]

As the 1980s wound to their end, they brought epoch-changing events: in March 1989, the Web was invented by the English computer scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN in Switzerland; and in November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, paving the way for the reunification of Europe, the end of the Cold War, and the opening up of a new era.

4 The Year 1989 and its Aftermath: A Turning Point

The political events of ’89 and the subsequent reordering of Europe – as families once divided were reunited, and people who did not know one another began to connect through professional links – created renewed energy and optimism and the sense of a threshold to a new era. In his 1992 book, The End of History,^[24] which created something of a sensation in the West (although some opinion was sceptical even then), Francis Fukuyama, the US political scientist, declaimed that “the triumph of liberal democracy over communism represented ‘the end of history’”, and, consequently, liberal democracy would henceforth be the final form of human government for all nations. On 1 November 1993, the Maastricht Treaty paved the way for the founding of the European Union.

It is fair to say that the speed of the political events in Europe surprised many in the West, and this was true for those of us working in research libraries. Suddenly, the whole landscape for research libraries seemed transformed, new parameters for researchers appeared, and as Jan Palmowski, Professor of Modern History, University of Warwick, observed “at that moment, everything seemed possible.”^[25] The new situation demanded action and initiative, and existing library organisations had to reflect on how they should respond to this reshaped landscape. This section deals with my experiences of this time, through the eyes of a new initiative in Europe that sprang from 1989, on the one hand, and, on the other, how an established European research library organisation responded to new circumstances.

5 The 1990s: ‘Cool Britannia’: Contradictions of Nostalgia and Progress

The opening up of borders after 1989 was widely welcomed in the UK and certainly among libraries. In November 1990, Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister, brought down by her government largely over her attitude to the European Union, following on from her 1988 Bruges speech and her resistance to what she saw as moves towards a “European superstate”. She was succeeded by John Major in 1992, elected with a reduced majority of 21. The government carried on, but it was clear that the winds of change were blowing once more. In 1997, a Labour government, which renamed itself “New Labour”, was elected with a large majority of 179 seats, and Tony Blair became Prime Minister.^[40] In a way, this was a decade of contradictions. Many people in the UK will recall the change of government in 1997 with enthusiasm: the Blair government’s “Cool Britannia” and its adoption of the “Third Way” political philosophy^[41] created its own allure. Yet, the 1990s saw the rise of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) in 1993 and early indications of Euroscepticism, and the re-emergence of discussion about multiculturalism and immigration.

The 1990s brought further significant change to the UK university sector. In 1992, the binary division between universities and polytechnics (in Scotland known as central institutions) was removed and the latter became universities, increasing the number to 93. In 1997, the UK National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, chaired by Sir Ron Dearing, recommended the ending of universal free higher education and tuition fees for UK students were introduced in 1998.^[42] Already at the start of the 1990s, universities had begun to set up dedicated fundraising departments: the University of Kent in 1990, followed by the University of Oxford in 1994: in Scotland, the first was established by the University of Edinburgh in 1992.

For university libraries, a key milestone in 1993 was the Follett Report^[43] led by Professor Sir Brian Follett, a biologist by discipline, and at that time Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick. The report had been commissioned the previous year by the UK Joint Funding Councils, in response to increasing student numbers and overcrowded libraries. The Follett Report put university libraries high on the political agenda: its recommendations paved the way for information strategies, networking, and new technologies, and provided a major injection of finance (£200m). Universities would henceforth either be ‘teaching’ or ‘research’ institutions and their libraries would be ‘access’ or ‘holdings’ libraries. At the time in libraries and universities, the word ‘Follett’ seemed to be on everyone’s lips. After Follett came the Anderson Report^[44] on researchers’ access to library collections, and the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), a £30m initiative for strategic library projects funded by the four UK higher education bodies.

As elsewhere, technology was a main driver of change in the 1990s. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) was set up in April 1993 to support the use of digital technologies in UK education and research. The development of digitisation of materials for access, preservation, and security, coupled with the introduction of the Web and then the ability to mount large collections online and access them over networks, accelerated progress considerably. This accorded well with the watchword of the Blair government “Education, Education, Education”, and its corollary, “Access, Access, Access”, increasing access to learning resources for all.

As the decade neared its end, constitutional change introduced further major change to the UK. The Labour government implemented its manifesto commitment to hold referenda in Wales and Scotland. The referendum in Wales on 18 September 1997 confirmed 50.30 % support for a National Assembly for Wales (now the Senedd), that in Scotland on 11 September 1997 showed 74.29 % for yes to a Scottish Parliament and 63.48 % for yes to tax-varying powers. The New Northern Ireland Assembly was established in 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

In the 1990s, many UK libraries and individuals wished to help libraries in Central and Eastern Europe. Three stories from Scotland are given here, but similar stories could be replicated in many parts of the UK, as also in other European countries and in the United States. With roots in the Cowal Peninsula in Argyll, Sally Wood-Lamont was a senior librarian in Edinburgh University Library in the 1990s, in charge of Donations and Exchanges. In 1989, when a large part of the collections of Bucharest University Library in Romania were destroyed by fire, she took on the task of heading the Scottish Books for Romania Appeal. In 1994, she moved to Cluj-Napoca in Romania to assist with automating the medical library there. She then moved permanently to Romania and has since become involved with support for Paralympic athletes, opening up the Lamont Centre for athletes in Cluj-Napoca in 1999.

Ian Mowat, Librarian of Edinburgh University Library (1997–2002), was a committed advocate of stronger ties between librarians in the UK and Central and Eastern Europe. In 1991, he led a Library Association delegation to Romania to promote contacts between the two countries’ library associations; he developed strong links with the International Center for Information Management of Systems and Services (ICIMSS), the library school at Toruń in Poland, and later he acted as a consultant for UNESCO, contributing to the rebuilding of the National and University library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.^[45] We all remember the poignant image of Vedran Smailović, the “Cellist of Sarajevo”, playing his cello sitting in the ruins of the National Library (Vijećnica) destroyed by fire during the Siege of Sarajevo in 1992.

In the 1990s, the British Council initiated a Library Twinning Programme between libraries in the UK and Central and East European libraries. Many UK libraries were involved in co-operative projects sometimes funded by the Open Society Institute (OSI) in the early years and then by the European Commission. The following section describes a co-operative project to create an information system for the Russian State Library in 1995, in which the National Library of Scotland was involved.^[46]

* * *

This project was a very good example of co-operation leading to the development of a modern service in a very large, long-standing library, where earlier attempts to introduce automation had not succeeded in preparing the way ahead. The Russian State Library (RSL) was founded in 1862 and from the outset received a copy of all publications. It currently holds more than 42 million items and is one of the largest libraries in the world. In the early 1969s, automation was investigated but it was not until a feasibility study, funded by the European Union, commenced in 1995 that progress was made. As a result of the feasibility study, funding of Euro 1 000 000 over an 18-month period was provided, with Euro 300 000 for an extension period of six months. A comprehensive account of the project has been provided by Segbert and Vislyi.^[47] Funding was provided under TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States). The project work for the design and installation of a Local Area Network (LAN) and the procurement and installation of a modern library management system began in December 1998.

The British Council won the TACIS contract. The project consortium included the National Library of Scotland (UK), Jouve SA (France) and EDS (Germany). Sub-contracts for specific components were with the International Procurement Agency (Netherlands), the Institute of Public Finance (UK) and the retroconversion firm ProSoft-M (Russia and Germany). Russian experts were from the Library of Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University, National Library (St Petersburg), as well as staff from the RSL. The project was managed by Monika Segbert, who had worked for the EC DG X111 Telematics for Libraries Programme prior to TACIS, and Alexander Vislyi, Deputy Director at RSL and Moscow State University. The British Council was very keen to have an active UK partner and approached Ian McGowan, Librarian of the National Library of Scotland, who expressed interest in the Library’s involvement, and so Fred Guy, Director of Information and Communications Technology, and Iain Anderson, Operations Manager, joined the project. The Library had been involved for 14 years in procuring, implementing, and managing library computer systems. Visits were made to RSL to advise on the specification of requirements and evaluation of the seven tenders received: the Ex Libris Aleph 500 library management system was selected. Iain Anderson visited RSL to provide advice on the installation of the software and training for library staff. A study tour in Scotland was arranged for senior members of RSL staff, allowing them to see automation in a wide range of Scottish academic libraries, a cataloguer was hosted at NLS for more in-depth analysis of the use of a library software system, and a seminar on planning strategy was held.

This was a complicated project and the reporting TACIS procedures were challenging, but in the end, the objectives were successfully met: a new LAN with improved electrical wiring was installed: 45 new PCs for staff and users were installed, the implementation of Aleph 500 adapted to Russian needs was carried out, and an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) with 500 000 bibliographical records was provided. What cannot be understated is that the success of the project involved very close co-operation between the Russian and European experts and the staff of RSL, and the role of the project managers in establishing the teamwork was critical.

6 After the Millenium: Turbulent Decades: 2000–2020

We have now lived through almost a quarter of the 21^st century. In many ways it has been a turbulent and unsettling period. The world has endured a number of major economic and political shocks: 9/11 (11 September 2001), war in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) and Syria (2011), the global banking crash of 2007–2008, the Covid pandemic (2020–), the “Cost of Living Crisis” (2021–), war in Ukraine (2022–), and in Israel and Gaza (2023–). There have been two further major factors in the UK: a ‘Decade of Austerity’ from 2010 to 2019, and, most significant, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union following a referendum on 23 June 2016 (referred to as “Brexit”, and finally ratified in 2020).^[48] Many people across the UK still remember the shock of the BBC announcement by the broadcaster David Dimbleby just before 5am on the morning of 24 June, “That’s it – We’re out!” The LIBER Annual Conference took place in Helsinki the following week, and I remember very clearly the collective surprise, indeed shock, among our European neighbours at the UK result, and the talk about whether this would signal other withdrawals elsewhere, which it did not.

The majority of people in UK libraries were opposed to leaving the EU for many reasons. One of these was funding: as state funding to libraries declined from the 1980s, with short-lived injections of additional funds for specific purposes, libraries had to become adept at seeking support from other sources, lottery funds, charities, and foundations, but European Union funding, and the resulting networking it engendered, was of enormous benefit to UK libraries and universities. The loss of this vital connection has been a self-inflicted blow.

Libraries generally have made significant progress on being more public-facing with expanded events programmes for the general public. University libraries have adapted to the new ways in which students learn by consulting them about what they would like from their library. In 2013, Edinburgh University Library went through such a process and modelled an upgrade to the Library on a combination of quiet spaces, discussion spaces and social spaces. I recall asking a group of students after the Library had reopened whether they liked it, to which their response was, “Oh, yes. It’s really cool”. New university libraries have also been modelled on this principle. Another structural development in university libraries has been merging library special collections and university collections for better access and management. In 2012, the University of Edinburgh followed by the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester were the first to take this step.

7 Quo Vadis? The View from 2024

In 2024, the number of students in higher education in the UK is 2 million, of whom 80 % are undergraduate students, and the number of academic staff is 240 000. Over 600 000 international students study in the UK. Currently, the main income sources of the higher education sector are tuition fees (53 %), research grants and contracts (14 %), and direct government funding (12 %). The number of librarian and related professions is 48 300.^[49] The figures for international students are falling, in part as a result of government-imposed restrictions on student visas, which has caused a 15 % fall in applications.

Public libraries in the UK are funded by local authorities and are therefore subject to economic fluctuations in funding from central government, which has declined in recent decades, and the number of users of public libraries has also fallen, so libraries have had to close, and currently there are 3 363 UK public libraries, although much effort is being addressed towards improving the situation. Local libraries also have strong lobbying support from the public and from writers whose love of literature has often been first kindled as a child in their local public library. In 2024, CILIP (The Library and Information Association) has published Come Rain or Shine: Preparing Public Libraries for the Future in an Age of Uncertainty, in which four scenarios in 2040 are imagined. Testing the scenarios with library professionals, the report identifies the priorities for a strong public library network in 2040, addressing: digital access and social isolation, governance and leadership, and futures literacy.^[50]

The one forecast about the view from 2024 unlikely to face challenge is that change will continue, and there will be new issues for libraries to confront. The view may well be uncertain too. There will be artificial intelligence (AI) to measure up to and to find its potential for good in libraries. In her newly published book on AI, Shannon Vallor, Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh, posits a new dream for AI: “Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world”.^[51] Over the last few decades libraries have inevitably been preoccupied with the technical processes of technology in providing new services to their societies and citizens, but in a world likely to be facing a new geopolitical era, libraries should also use every opportunity, including the “new futures” of technology, to renew their essential role in reflecting and upholding human values of trust, integrity and cultural understanding – and that spirit of optimism that we admired so much in 1989 and the years after.

Perhaps we should return to that period and remember the words of Václav Havel when he addressed the Council of Europe on 9 May 1990: “Everything seems to indicate that we must not be afraid to dream of the seemingly impossible if we want to see the seemingly impossible to become a reality.”^[52]