Merit Goods of British Library - Essay Example

British Library as Merit Goods Introduction to Merit Goods and Public Goods Merit Goods are the products in the market that are usually underprovidedto the public due to various reasons. The supply of the products lags far behind the demand that requires the governments to take action and equalize the demands of products with the supply. These products must be provided at subsidized rates or even free by the government as they tend to under-consume. It is not necessary that government carries all the responsibilities to provide merit goods. Private sector could also contribute to an extent in this regard. In fact, state and private sector govern the whole system of merit goods. People can opt for public as well as private health care insurance. They have their rights for education also. Public Goods on the other hand, Public Goods are those products were consumption by a single customer hinder its ability to be consumed by other customers also. For example, air is available for all, but its consumption by a single person doesn’t reduce its quantity for others. Others have equal chances of consuming air also. Hence, air is not a public product. Now take the case of a bowl of water that can be drunk by one person only. The other person wouldn’t be able to drink it if it is already consumed. Hence it is public good. Another example is the purchasing of a land for farming that makes it unavailable for local farmers. British Library This essay is dedicated to the merit goods related to British library. This is the major source of research in UK. It contains the huge pool of books, both in digital as well as printed form. It also has bulk storage of manuscripts, newspapers, journals, magazines, sound and music recordings, databases, maps, stamps and much more. It has around 14 million books, along with the plethora of historical pieces of items. This is by far the largest library in the world in terms of number of items catalogue. However, these figures may vary due to the differences in the way the institutions catalogue their data. British Library as Merit Goods Indeed British Library should be considered as the primary merit good that must be provided by the country. This facility is such that it may not be desired by some people to have libraries, but on the whole, many people would be benefitted with such source. The demand for the books and other sources of knowledge is quite huge, and it is not possible for an individual market or business venture to maintain such a huge catalogue of items in the library. Therefore, UK government had to step up to this huge task to quench the thirst of millions of students and other people carrying literary taste. Initial Buds for Funding Once, government Of UK had the directive that the British Library must cover some of the operational costs by itself. For this purpose, some fee was charged to the users for using the services of the library. This policy wasn’t that successful though, and the market of British Library suffered some losses. The problem then led to the series of restructures in an attempt to prevent further losses. With the start of the project of Google Books, UK government tried to initiate the Live books search project by signing an agreement with the Microsoft. However, the material wasn’t made available to the readers in UK, and the students only use the scanned copies available via Amazon or British Library catalogue. Digitalization Efforts of UK Government With the continued efforts of the UK government, the digitalization of the library sources is under progress. According to the latest House of Commons Committee report, it should be the basic aim for the UK government to build the British library as the hub for UK, and make it part of the international library network. This step will enable the library to become the universal source of knowledge and research instead of a preserve of the relatively small number of users on the site. This simply implies that, library as the merit good is suitable for large number of people, and not when only a few people are interested in it. Moreover, the performance of the library shouldn’t be affected in the attempt for digitalizing it. Investment for Digitization of Library The British Library is currently having two major bids for digitization for the lottery funding of nationally significant heritage material. These biddings are carried out for funding of nationally significant heritage material. According to the British Library funding agreement 2006-07 (British Library Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13 n.d.), the efforts of the library personnel are aligned towards getting financial aid for accomplishment of resources from UK government. They are also working hard to raise funds from public for meeting the financial requirements of the library. The personnel are striving quite hard to free up some resources by increasing the efficiency of performing tasks. The speed with which the strategic agenda is to be delivered depends on the available set of sources in this challenging marketing environment. The library has taken grants of £1 million from London Development Agency in order to move forward in its attempt to develop Business and Intellectual Property Centre that would be targeted at entrepreneurs, SMEs, and innovators. The role of the library is quite crucial in the digitization of the resources, modernization, and accomplishment of the modern program (British Library Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13 n.d.). The British Library is also working on some funded projects related to the digitization or resources, among which two are sponsored by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee). The co-sponsorship and hosting of Research Information Network is also performed by British Library that was purely setup to coordinate and lead the provision of research information in UK. The British Library has now setup a proper arrangement for cost allocation as well as charging requirements set out in Office of Public Sector Information. The total income for the library for the last year was £103.9 million issued from Department of Media, Culture, and Support. Out of this amount, £86.2 million was reserved for Grant-In-Aid, while the balance of £17. million is reserved for the capital programs. The income during the previous year from unrestricted sources was brought down to £14.6 million from the previous year’s stats of £16.7 million. The principal source of commercial revenue was Document Supply Income, but it suffered from a decline in demand and sales through continuing difficult marketing conditions (British Library Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13 n.d.). The financial considerations for UK Library are quite streamlined as obvious from the statistics of previous year. Various agencies are funding library, and government is playing its positive part also in this regard. Complexity of Externalities British Library is one of the most positive projects in UK that generates merit goods for people. The consumption of the merit goods by the consumers is said to generate positive externalities due to the fact that social benefits completely outweigh private benefits. The graph below shows the trend of output of the market as compared to the cost. The curves have been drawn for private and social benefits. Market Stabilization The performance indicators of the British Library during the previous year are presented below. The target of British Library is to further reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the number of business domestic flights, and cutting business rail journeys. In addition to the greenhouse emissions, the library also targets to reduce the carbon emissions. Overall, waste management policies will be refined and the amount of waste will be reduced by 25% by 2015 as compared to that in 2009-10. Reduction of the waste will also be helpful for the library in cutting short the requirements for finance for third parties that manage waste on the behalf of the library (Olson 2009). In order to achieve stability in the market, the British Library has to focus on many areas. First of all, waste management policies should be strictly implemented very soon. Secondly, the resources should be used optimally such as papers, electronic media, stamps, cards etc. These resources may be available in scarce amounts from the source, and therefore, its availability would be an issue (Towse 2011). The British Library has also set the target to lower its water consumption by as much as 10% as compared to that in 2009-10. The consumption was slightly raised in 2012-13 due to some problem in the fire hydrant. British Market in Private Sector If we consider British Library to be controlled by the private sector then it wouldn’t have achieved the same level of marketing success, and it would not be that rich in resources as it is now. Now doubt, declaring the library resources as merit goods is useful for the customers that would get low cost advantage from library provided managed by UK government (Ver Eecke 2007). Conclusion British Library is a vast source of research and information for the public in UK. It is one of the most important reservoirs of IT, business, and news in UK. Their products are plenty in the form of books, journals, stamps etc that fall in the category of merit goods. These services could be provided due to the efforts of the UK government only as individual businesses would not be able to handle it with care. Bibliography Bergmann, BR 2006, Reducing inequality: merit goods vs. income grants, Dissent, vol 53, no. 1, pp. 67--72. British Library Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13, London: The Stationery Office. DeMarzo, PMAKRAKI 2004, Diversification as a public good: Community effects in portfolio choice, The Journal of Finance, vol 59, no. 4, pp. 1677--1716. Fiorito, RAKT 2004, Public goods, merit goods, and the relation between private and government consumption, European Economic Review, vol 48, no. 6, pp. 1367--1398. Ni, S 1995, An empirical analysis on the substitutability between private consumption and government purchases, ournal of Monetary Economics, vol 36, no. 3, pp. 593--605. Olson, MAOM 2009, The logic of collective action: public goods and the theory of groups., Harvard University Press. Towse, R 2011, A handbook of cultural economics, Edward Elgar Publishing. Ver Eecke, W 2007, An Anthology Regarding Merit Goods: The Unfinished Ethical Revolution in Economic Theory, Purdue University Press. Read More