You won’t believe this! Unless you are one of the Heythrop Library Crew, a member of the Heythrop Library Committee, or a Trustee of the Jesuits in Britain, you will not know how much it costs to run the Heythrop Library. Most people might assume that we get some kind of funding, but a lot of people do not appreciate that we are only funded by the Jesuits in Britain. A lot of our ca. 460 members currently benefit from “free membership”. When in March 2025 we introduced a one-off admin charge for new “free” member, some people reacted like this was an outrageous request to make. I think the psychology goes along the lines that other libraries are “free” to use. Of course, a) this does not mean that there are no costs to running a library, and b) a lot of libraries are funded by the tax payer (whether your local public library, or – say – the British Library), or a university library, which is partially funded by the student fees, the tax payer or external, other philanthropy.
In contrast, we are solely funded by the Jesuits in Britain. Even the current membership fees of £50 (half membership) or £100 (full membership) do not even cover the “direct” costs incurred by most of those members. It would be more correct to call these “extremely subsidized” and “very subsidized” membership contributions. We would need to have over 5000 paying members to cut even! For example: every book delivered from one the two off-site stores to our reading room costs about £5; most academic books are in the region of £50 to £150. And: the cost of commercial storage is very high – the Library pays for storage, whether a library user requests a book from the off-site store, or not.
So if you are reading this, and you could afford paying for your membership when it comes to the renewal of your “free” membership, please consider paying for your membership.
CG
What are your thoughts about the above?