Allocating Seats at the British Library

An interesting story by Sarah Lyall appearing in the NYT discusses the predictable response that followed the relaxation of the admissions policy into the British Museum's library section. It appears that following the expansion and relocation of the facility, the number of readers exploded and this has let in a number of students who are not as studious as the traditional and older readers.

To my mind, this relaxation of policy should have been predictable because it is the direct price cut for entry into the library. Any facility with a seating capacity of 1480 against an active membership of 127,000 should understand this as a pricing problem. the demand for seats is much higher than the supply and therein lies the possibility of useful trades through appropriate pricing of the seats.The older and more studious users of the library ought to pay for the privilege of keeping the flirtatious students from the facility.

One of the brilliant economists from London should help to sort this out and prevent the library from this severe rationing. It may even get the less serious undergraduate students realize that answering calls in the reading rooms is an inefficient way to spend money spent to secure seats. From the chief librarian's perspective, this should be a nice problem to have as it is evdience of the value of those spaces.