Resource Board Minutes - Meeting 4 (17 November 2000)

1. At the fourth meeting of the Resource Board in November 2000, Neville Mackay highlighted two specific issues in his Chief Executive's report: firstly, that Resource's budget for 2001-2004 was now known; and secondly, that DCMS propose to use the forthcoming Culture Bill to change Resource's legal status to enable it to take on some of the DCMS's current statutory responsibilities for English public libraries. This would place Resource at the heart of public library developments. Neville Mackay announced forthcoming changes in the senior staff early in 2001 with the departures of the Directors of the Sector and Professional, and Communications teams respectively.

2. The Board members then took stock of the progress which Resource had made to date since its creation. It was noted that creating a new organisation from two pre-existing ones inevitably throws up a number of issues. The possibility of going for Investors in People (IIP) or some other appropriate scheme was raised; Neville Mackay confirmed that he intended that this would become a formal objective in year 2. In response to a question about the progress of the Pay & Grading Review, he replied that the business case had been submitted to the Treasury and their decision was awaited.

3. Stuart Davies introduced a paper on the state of health of Regional Collections, placing it in the context of Resource's work. He explained that the paper covered management issues and resources for that part of the domain. It set out the basic case for increases in resources, suggesting what differences might such increases make and where such increases might come from. It was agreed that a small group of Board members would work with Stuart Davies to turn the paper into a discussion document which would be published before the Royal Academy seminar on 1st December.

4. Stuart Davies then presented a paper on the relationship between National and Non-national institutions to the Board. It was an introduction to one of the new concepts which Resource proposed to pursue, that of the Distributed National Collection. It suggested how funding might be improved, looked at investigating national loans schemes and suggested that there may be a need to revisit the legal status of some collections. Matthew Evans confirmed that the status of the present paper is that of a draft discussion paper and a small group of Board members was charged with fine-tuning the paper with a view to future publication.