The letter below was published in the October issue of the Aerospace Professional. It had been submitted originally to the September issue, at a time when all attempts to delay the moves had failed, but was withheld by the authors in order to avoid its publication ahead of the Council meeting on 7 September.  The version published in October reflects the outcome of the September Council meeting and sets out the reasons behind the call for a General Meeting.

Removal of Library and Careers Centre from 4 Hamilton Place

This issue of The Aerospace Professional contains an announcement of a General Meeting of the Society to consider the recent removal of the Library and Careers Centre from our headquarters in Hamilton Place to the Hub building at Farnborough. The Council has convened the meeting in response to a requisition signed by 206 Members and Fellows and delivered to the Society on 3 September 2009. The requisition was generated on the initiative of the 12 Past Presidents of the Society who are signatories to this letter.  We explain here why we took this action.

In August the third floor Library at Hamilton Place and the Careers Centre were transferred to Farnborough.  These moves were made without prior consultation of the membership and without a Council resolution. We are strongly opposed to them. The space on the third floor vacated by the moves has been rented out to office staff from the casino next door. Despite letters from some of us asking for the moves to be delayed to allow time to seek the views of the membership, the transfer went ahead.

As regards the Library, we take it as axiomatic that:

• A body based in the UK that is a major learned society and professional institution must, if it is to meet the needs and aspirations of its members, have its Headquarters in central London.
• To meet the needs and aspirations of its members, its Headquarters must house a library of some standing, holding a substantial collection of books, recent journals and technical publications, together with the means of accessing a range of technical and scientific literature held in other locations.
• To maintain such a library and provide a responsive service to members requires full-time, knowledgeable staff on the premises, able to attend to the direct needs of members, assist with searches and arrange for rapid information retrieval.

For a society such as ours, with members distributed around the country, the case for its Headquarters being in London is self evident. It is the most suitable location for meetings of its Council, its many committees, for conferences, main lectures and for its library.  Shifting the venue for any of these activities from London to, say, Farnborough, would undoubtedly have an adverse impact on participation in them.

The case for the Society having a substantial library at its headquarters is also, we believe, self evident. The other major engineering institutions have libraries at their headquarters, larger and with more staff than we had, until recently, at Hamilton Place.  They clearly understand, as should we, the important role of a central library as a service to members and as an essential mark of the standing and seriousness of the Society.

We have heard the suggestion that the Society could free up space in Hamilton Place by moving all the books to Farnborough but retaining an electronic information service for visitors to Hamilton Place, supplemented by an un-staffed reading room – the Merlin Room has been suggested – with some duplicate copies of bound magazines, etc. That simply will not do.  A library user, whether interested in historical material or current scientific/technical literature, will typically need to dig into and explore the relevant area of the stock, looking perhaps at several journals or textbooks, discarding some and then often making use of more than one of the relevant items.  The catalogue is helpful as a guide to what to consult but the user then invariably needs to see the material. 

As regards the Careers Centre, we believe it is of key importance, crucial to the Society’s endeavours to provide guidance to young people making their way in aerospace and with the side benefit of helping to attract new young recruits to the Society. We are aware than many of the students who have gained valuable advice from the Centre have done so by visiting Hamilton Place while in London for other reasons.  It is also the fact that there are more engineering students at the various colleges in and around London than anywhere else in the UK.  In comparison, Farnborough is a highly unsuitable place for a careers department, much more difficult of access for most young people at our universities and aerospace companies and increasing the difficulty for Careers staff to have meetings in London with other organisations.        

Not only are the moves contrary, in our view, to the best interests of the Society and its members, the move of the Library is also contrary to previous and current statements by the Society:

“I can assure members that the library on the third floor here at Hamilton Place will remain.  Those who have visited the library recently will have noticed that we are carrying out extensive modifications to it to ensure that it is a better facility for everyone.”  

Chief Executive’s report, The Aerospace Professional, April 2005

“I think it is important to emphasise that the Library on the third floor here at Hamilton Place will remain fully operational, to allow members to borrow books and to carry out research. The facilities at Farnborough will focus on public access and provide us with a much needed expanded storage facility for our own collection and other collections that may be given to us in the future.”

Chief Executive’s Message, The Aerospace Professional, September 2007

“The National Aerospace Library, officially launched on 15 January 2008, is a new archive established to complement the existing Library collections and service at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s headquarters in London.”

Extract from an appeal for donations, The Aerospace Professional p21,  August 2009

Faced with a refusal to delay the moves, we sought support from members to requisition a General Meeting of the Society to consider the matter.  The requisition called for the meeting to vote on two resolutions, to return the displaced services to Hamilton Place and to consult the entire membership on its expectations and requirements of the Library and Careers Centre.  The By-Laws require 50 signatures for a requisition to be valid.  Some 260 potential signatures were solicited in August and, despite it being the peak holiday season, on 3 Sept we served a requisition on the Society signed by 206 voting members,  of whom 128 are Fellows, 5 are Honorary Fellows, 26 are also Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering and one is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Only four negative responses were received. 

We submitted a paper to the Council which three of us presented at the Council meeting on 7 September. We hoped to persuade the Council to agree to the two resolutions on the requisition, thereby enabling us to withdraw it. We were not present at the discussion of our paper but were informed at the end of the meeting that the Council had voted to set up three committees to consider some of the issues we had raised. It did not, however, agree to the return of the displaced services to Hamilton Place until the committees reported. 

This fell far short of the outcome sought by the signatories of the requisition. Given the level of support that we had received for it, and the strength of the opposition to the moves expressed by many correspondents, we considered that putting the questions to three committees was not a sufficiently positive response to justify withdrawing of the requisition.

We firmly believe that the Library and Careers Centre must return to Hamilton Place. We urge concerned voting members to attend the General Meeting to express their opinions on these matters.

Sir Charles Pringle  President 1975-76

Peter Hearne     President 1980-81

Captain Eric Brown   President 1982-83

Professor John Stollery  President 1987-88

Geoff Howell   President 1990-91

Gordon McCoombe  President 1991-92

Sir Frank Holroyd  President 1992-93

Sir Charles Masefield  President 1994-95         

Dr John Green  President 1996-97

Stewart John   President 1997-98

Tony Edwards   President 1999-2000

Roland Fairfield   President 2004-05