This report presents a comparative overview of the museums, libraries and archives sector in six OECD countries - Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the United Sates - within a broader socio-economic and cultural context. It also contains an in-focus study of the public libraries sector in Singapore, singled-out because of the transformational change it has undergone in the last 10-15 years as part of a broader economic development agenda for the city-state. The purpose of the research was to provide MLA with a deeper understanding of the level and distribution of investment in museums, galleries and archives within a broader cultural context for a representative group of industrial democracies - to feed into its thinking for the 2006/07 Spending Review as well as wider discussions about the future development of the three domains.

http://www.mla.gov.uk/resources/assets/O/overseas_infrastructure_report_9742.pdf