Dick, most people wishing to use the library will be coming from somewhere in England, or at least mainland Britain, and will not be travelling by air. Ease of access to an airport is not a priority. C# House is easily accessible by Tube from all the main London railway stations, and is outside the congestion charging zone. It's hard to think of anywhere else which would be as easily accessible from any part of the country.

I live "up North", by the way, so I don't have a London bias in this. I happen to think that the EFDSS is still too London-centric in its activities, but this is no doubt a question of resources. As a location for the VWML, and for keeping in touch with the arts establishment (essential for funding), C# House is hard to beat.

To answer your original question, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of material performed by the folk revival will have come directly or indirectly from the Library. By this I mean that professional performers are continually disseminating material from the Library to a wider audience, many of whom then adopt that material into their own repertoires. It's hard to understate the Library's importance.

As for contemporary material, if it's any good it will probably have been published somewhere, in some form, so I can see little point in devoting the VWML's scarce resources to it.