| The Bodleian Library |
| The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in | Párr. 1 |
| size only to the British Library with over 12 million printed items. First opened to scholars |
| in 1602, it incorporates an earlier library built by the University in the 15th century to |
| house books donated by Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester. Since 1602 it has expanded, slowly |
| 5 | at first but with increasing momentum over the last 150 years, to keep pace with the ever- |
| growing accumulation of books, papers and other materials, but the core of the old |
| buildings has remained intact. Known to many Oxford scholars simply as ‘the Bod’, these |
| buildings are still used by students and scholars from all over the world, and they attract an |
| ever-increasing number of visitors. |
| 10 | The University’s first purpose built library was begun in approximately 1320 in the | Párr. 2 |
| University Church of St Mary the Virgin, in a room which still exists as a vestry and a |
| meeting room for the church. The building stood at the heart of Oxford’s “academic |
| quarter”, close to the schools in which lectures were given. By 1488, the room was |
| superseded by the library known as Duke Humfrey’s, which constitutes the oldest part of |
| 15 | the Bodleian. Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester and younger brother of King Henry V, gave the |
| University his priceless collection of more than 281 manuscripts, including several |
| important classical texts. The University decided to build a new library for them over the |
| new Divinity School; it was begun in 1478 and finally opened in 1488. The library lasted |
| only 60 years; in 1550, the Dean of Christ Church, hoping to purge the English church of |
| 20 | all traces of Catholicism including ‘superstitious books and images’, removed all the |
| library’s books – some to be burnt. The University was not a wealthy institution and did not |
| have the resources to build up a new collection. In 1556, the room was taken over by the |
| Faculty of Medicine. |
| The library was rescued by Sir Thomas Bodley (1545–1613), a Fellow of Merton | Párr. 3 |
| 25 | College and a diplomat in Queen Elizabeth I’s court. He married a rich widow (whose |
| husband had made his fortune trading in pilchards) and, in his retirement, decided to ‘set up |
| my staff at the library door in Oxon; being thoroughly persuaded, that in my solitude, and |
| surcease from the Commonwealth affairs, I could not busy myself to better purpose, than |
| by reducing that place (which then in every part lay ruined and waste) to the public use of |
| 30 | students’. In 1598, the old library was refurnished to house a new collection of some 2,500 |
| books, some of them given by Bodley himself. A librarian, Thomas James, was appointed, |
| and the library finally opened on 8 November 1602. |
| Bodley’s work didn’t stop there. In 1610 he entered into an agreement with the | Párr. 4 |
| Stationers’ Company of London under which a copy of every book published in England |
| 35 | and registered at Stationers’ Hall would be deposited in the new library. This agreement |
| pointed to the future of the library as a legal deposit library, and also as an ever-expanding |
| collection which needed space. In 1610–12 Bodley planned and financed the first extension |
| to the medieval building, known as Arts End. Bodley died in 1613, but shortly after work |
| started on his planned Schools Quadrangle. The buildings were designed to house lecture |
| 40 | and examination rooms (‘schools’ in Oxford parlance) to replace what Bodley called ‘those |
| ruinous little rooms’ on the site in which generations of undergraduates had been taught. In |
| his will Bodley left money to add a third floor designed to serve as ‘a very large |
| supplement for storage of books’, which also became a public museum and picture gallery, |
| the first in England. The quadrangle was structurally complete by 1619, though work |
| 45 | continued until at least 1624. The last addition to Bodley’s buildings came in 1634–7, when |
| another extension to Duke Humfrey’s Library was built; it is still known as Selden End, |
| after the lawyer John Selden (1584–1654) who made a gift of 8,000 books. The library was |
| now able to receive and house numerous gifts of books and, especially, manuscripts. It was |
| these collections which attracted scholars from all over Europe, and the library still opens |
| 50 | its doors to scholars from around the world. |
| Another tradition, still zealously guarded, is that no books were to be lent to readers; | Párr. 5 |
| even King Charles I was refused permission to borrow a book in 1645. But with no heating |
| until 1845 and no artificial lighting until 1929, the number of users should not be |
| overestimated; in 1831 there was an average of only 3–4 readers a day and the Library only |
| 55 | opened from 10am–3pm in the winter and 9am–4pm in the summer. |
| The growth of the collection slowed down in the early 18th century, but the late | Párr. 6 |
| 17th and early 18th centuries saw a spate of library-building in Oxford. The finest of all the |
| new libraries was the brainchild of John Radcliffe (1650–1714). He left his trustees a large |
| sum of money with which to purchase both the land for the new building and an |
| 60 | endowment to pay a librarian and purchase books. The monumental circular domed |
| building – Oxford’s most impressive piece of classical architecture – was built between |
| 1737 and 1748 based on the designs of James Gibbs, and it was finally opened in 1749. For |
| many years the Radcliffe Library, as it was called until 1860, was completely independent |
| of the Bodleian.
|
| 65 | Meanwhile the Bodleian’s collections had begun to grow again; more effective | Párr. 7 |
| agreements with the Stationers’ Company, purchases and gifts meant that by 1849, there |
| were estimated to be 220,000 books and some 21,000 manuscripts in the library’s |
| collection. The Bodleian also housed pictures, sculptures, coins and medals, and |
| ‘curiosities’ (including a stuffed crocodile from Jamaica). By 1788, the rooms on the first |
| 70 | floor were given over to library use, and by 1859 the whole of the Schools Quadrangle was |
| in library hands. This left more space for storing books, which was further increased in |
| 1860, when the Radcliffe Library was taken over by the Bodleian and renamed the |
| Radcliffe Camera (the word camera means room in Latin). |
| By the beginning of the 20th century an average of a hundred people a day were | Párr. 8 |
| 75 | using the library; the number of books had reached the million mark by 1914. To provide |
| extra storage space an underground book store was excavated beneath Radcliffe Square in |
| 1909–12; it was the largest such store in the world at the time. But with both readers and |
| books increasing, the pressure on space once more became critical. In 1931 the decision |
| was taken to build a new library, with space for five million books, library departments and |
| 80 | reading rooms, on a site occupied by a row of old timber houses on the north side of Broad |
| Street. The New Bodleian, as it was known then, was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott |
| and went up in 1937–40. |
| In 1975 new office space was acquired in the Clarendon Building, built for the | Párr. 9 |
| University Press in 1712–13, and occupying the crucial site between the Old and New |
| 85 | Libraries. Thus the whole area between the Radcliffe Camera and the New Library – the |
| historic core of the University – came into the hands of the Bodleian. Most recently, the |
| New Bodleian building was completely renovated and reopened with large public and new |
| academic spaces as the Weston Library. |