College and Research Libraries


By H. H. E. CRASTER 

The Bodleian and Its Founder 

In this brief paper Bodley's present librarian 

brings to date the account of the storied 

Oxford institution over which he has pre­

side~ for many years. 

F OUR HUNDRED YEARS AGo-on March 2, I 545, according . to the . Greg~lf. ian 
calendar-Thomas Bodley 'was borri - in the 
city of Exeter, England. Like Raleigh and 
Drake and other great figures of Eliza­
bethan England he was a Qev~~ ·.man . .. His 
father was a zealous Prote-stant who found 
refuge from religious persecution at Geneva, 
and he.re he received his early education. 
But the accession of Queen Elizabeth al­
lowed his return to England and his en~ry 
as a student into the University of O~ford, 
the place with which his name will be for­
ever associated. 

After taking h.is degree, he 'Yas elected a · 
fellow of Merton College, gave lec:.tvres 
both in . Greek and in natural philoso­
phy (the sixteenth-century ~q~{valent of 
science), and acted as deputy for the public 
orator of the university. When he was 
past thirty years he decided to . enter the 
diplomatic service and, with this in view, 
traveled for some years in Italy, France, 
and Germany in order to acquire . a knowl­
edge of modern languages. 

At the age of forty he . ~egan to be em­
ployed on missions to foreign courts, and 
in I 588-the year of the Spanish Armada:­
he was sent to The Hague ~s English Min­
ister Plenipotentiary to the Netherlands, 
which had recently revolted from Spain. 
During the five years of his continuo,us 
residence at The Hague-a period of 

constant warfare between the Spaniards 
and the Dutch-he was a principal mem­
ber of the Council of State of the Dutch 
Republic, taking part in all its deliberations. 
On two subsequent occasions he was ~ent 
back to The . Hague ~n special missions. 

His political capacity was such that he 
was twice pressed to . accept the office of 
Secretary of State in the . English govern­
ment. Nevertheless he - had no liking for 
party politics. His tastes were those of a 
scholar, and so, at the age of fifty-three, 
as he tells us in his autobiography, "I re­
solved to possess my soul in peace all the 
residue of my days, to take ·.my farewell 
of state employments, and to retire from 
the court." His decision to direct his 
talents to another sphere was destined to 
win for . his name an undying renown. 

From the · beginning of the fourteenth 
century the University of Oxford had 
housed its library in a room adjoining the 
university church. Large gifts from an 
English prince, Humfrey, Duke of Glouces­
ter, brought about the erection of a new 
library building in the second half of the 
fifteenth century. It formed an upper story 
tq the divinity school. It remains today the 
main . Bodleian. reading room and is still 
known as Duke I-Iumfrey's Library. . 

But its contents had been dispersed at 
the Engli~h Reformation, and all that was 
left was a great desolate room, stripped of 
both books and bookcases. Surveying it, 
Bodley came to the conclusion that "I could 
no~ busy rpyself to better purpose than by 
redu<;iQg that place, which then lay ruined 
and was.t~, to th~ . public u~e . of the students." 

. : . ... . ' · · . .... 

COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 206 

.I 



Consequently, in I 59"8 he ?lade an offer to 
the university that he would restore the 
room at his own cost to its former use, re­
furnish it, procure books for it, and provide 
an endo~ment. He had means of his own 
to carry out the work and what he called a 
"great store of honorable friends" to assist 
him in the undertaking. 

His offer was a~cepted with the gratitude 
which its munificence ·deserved. For four 
years the work proceeded. The still­
existing bookcases were installed, the beau­
tiful painted roo£" which still adorns the 
room was erected, and some two thousand 
printed books and manus~~ipts w~re col­
lected to form the nucleus o'f the library. 
It was formally opened _on Nov. 8, I602. 

Library~s Early Years · 

Sir Thomas Bodley survi~ed the opening 
of his library by ten years. · His co~re­
spondence with his first libr~rian is ~till 
extant and reveals the interest and zeal with 
which he attended to every detail of library 
management. The greatest service ~hich 
he rendered to the library was the ~~king 
of an agreement with the Stationers' Com­
pany (the trade union of English pub­
lishers) whereby the company u~dertook to . 
present a copy ~f every book which it 
printed. This privilege has. been confi~m~d 
by successive copyright acts ·and is rio:W 
shared by the British Museum,· the Na­
tiona! Library of Scotland, and the li­
brari~s of Cambridge and Trinity College, 
Dublin. 

Bodley also extended the library building 
by the addition of an eastern wing _and -left 
money for the erection of a top story to 
the university schools which were built, 
shortly after his death, round a quadningl~ 
adjoining the original library. Dying on 
Jan. 28, I6I3, he was buried in the chapel 
of his college of Merton, where a monu­
ment by a well-known English sculpt~r, 
Nicholas Stone, records his memory. 

JUNEJ 1945 

The Bodleian Library, as it is called in 
memory of its founder, is the largest of 
British university libraries. All members 
of the University of Oxford have the privi­
lege of reading in it. Down to the middle 
of the nineteenth century its readers were 
in practice limited to university graduates_ 
and other learned men. U ndergradu;:t.te. 

st~dents did their reading in the libra~i\~s 
attached to their respective colleges. 

But in I 86I a neighboring library build­
ing, the Radcliffe Camera, was taken over 
and converted into a reading room for 
undergraduates. The camera is a circular 
building in Palladian style, completed . in 
I 74 7 by the archi teet James Gibbs. Its 
lofty dome forms one of the most con­
spicuous features of the center of Oxford. 
The ·accommodation which it gives has been 
more than doubled in recent years, partly ·as 
the result of fitting up its lower story as an 
additional reading room. 

Science Library 

_Further library provision was made in 
I 92 7, when a library of scientific books, 
na~ed the Radcliffe Science Libra_r)r, was 
handed over to the .university. This build­
ing, to w~i-ch a _large new wing was added 
seven years later, lies within the area occu­
~ied by the university's science .departments, 
and its use is supplemented by the specialist 
libraries .belonging to those departments. 

. _The Bodleian is more, however, than a 
university library. Ever since its founda­
tion _by_ sir Tho~as Bodley it has been a 
p~blic library, and in consequence it ranks 
as one of the oldest public libraries existing 
in Europe. _Scholars frqm · all parts of the 
world are 'admit_ted to read within its walls, 
on production of evidence t~at they are 
engaged in the pursuit of learning. . 

U ritil the British Museum was estab­
lished in the middle of the eighteenth cen­
tury, __'the Bodleian . filled .the role of a 
national library, for no other library in 

207 



Britain was so rich in collections of manu­
scripts and of early printed books. The 
bulk of its collections are naturally of Eng­
lish origin. Nowhere else will one find so 
many manuscripts intact in their medieval 
English bindings. The most important 
manuscript material for the history of Eng­
la~d in the seventeenth century is here. · 
The Malone collection is the finest of its 
kind for Shakespeare and early English 
drama. 

But equally important collections have 
come to Bodley from abroad. Among them 
are the Greek manuscripts of the Genoese 
collector Barocci; a large library of manu­
scripts, mainly of I tal ian origin, formed by 
the V ~netian Jesuit Canonici ; the libraries 
of classical literature formed by the Dutch 
scholars Meerman and Dorville ; and be­
sides these one may mention a collection of 
Icelandic literature and a series of Polish 
books-some of which are of extreme rarity 
-purchased in 1 850. 

Oriental Collections 

The Bodleian is equally famous for its 
0 rien tal collections. It is particular 1 y rich 
in Arabic manuscripts; possesses a remark- · 
ably fine series of Persian illuminated manu­
scripts; owns the unrivaled library of 
Hebraica formed by Rabbi Oppenheimer, 
of Prague; has a very large number of 
Sanskrit manuscripts; and has formed a 
good collection of Chinese printed books. 

The Bodleian is the second largest li­
brary in Britain and the British dominions. 
Only the British Museum surpasses it in its 
contents. The number of volumes on its 
shelves exceeds a million and a half. It 
is not surprising that the finding of space 
for its accessions has in the past been a 
constant, difficult problem. 

In 1933 the University of Oxford started 
upon a scheme of library extension then 
estimated to cost nearly a million pounds 
sterling, of which sum the Rockefeller 

Foundation most generously offered to con­
tribute three-fifths. The remainder of the 
sum needed was found . by the university 
from its · own resources and from the sub­
scriptions of its members and other . bene­
factors. 

The New Library 

The main feature in the program of ex­
tension wa~ the erection of a large annex, 
named the New Library, the core of which 
is a vast bookstack capable of containing 
four million books. This new building is 
the work of the foremost of living English 
architects, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and is in 
neoclassical style. It was commenced in 
1937 and completed in · 1940. All library 
books, other than those kept on the open 
shelves of the reading rooms, have been 
transferred to it. 

After the present war is ended qualified 
readers will have limited access to its 
shelves-a radical departure from the cur­
rent practice of English libraries, which doe? 
not allow readers access to the stack but 
requires them to order books for use in 
reading rooms. The stack is heated by the 
method of thermal storage-that is to say, 
by water circulated from cylinders heated 
by electric power-and is air conditioned. 
The building, though stone-faced, is other­
wise entirely ·constructed of concrete and 
steel, all shelving and fittings being of steel 
and consequently fire-resistant. 

The greater part of the stack is below 
ground level, and the whole is lit by electric 
light, though the top stories which rise 
above the surrounding building, have natu­
ral li_ghting. Small carrels, or studies for 
readers, have been provided on these upper 
floors. The outer rooms of the building, 
which surround the stack, have been 
planned as exhibition rooms; working rooms 
and rest rooms, with a can teen for the staff ; 
a bindery; photographic rooms, including a . 
room for reading microphotographic films ; 

COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 208 



semmars and rooms for cooperative re­
search ; and a large reading room for eco­
nomics and social science. 

But no library use has yet been made of 
them, for, as soon as they were completed, 
they were taken over for war purposes. 
Among the uses to which they have been 
put one may mention blood transfusion. 

No furth~r building has been possible 
since the autumn of I 940. The war has 
halted the library extension scheme, which 
would otherwise have been completed in 
I942. When building again becomes 
feasible, the old university schools surround­
ing the Bodleian quadrangle, which have 
now been cleared of books formerly stored 
in them, will be converted into a ~range of 
reading rooms for the humanities and legal 
studies, containing on open shelves upwards 
of one hundred thousand select works of 
reference. 

But, although war has stopped further 
library development, service to readers has 

THE FOLLOWING announcement comes 
from the International Relations Office of 
the American Library Association : 

The Washington office of the American 
Library Association's International Relations 
Board has received from the Division of 
Cultural Cooperation of the Department of 
State a list of sixty-eight Swiss institutions 
receiving periodicals on exchange from the 
United States, some six hundred in number. 

The first title listed is A bridged Scientific 
Publications, Research Laboratory, Eastman 
Kodak Company, Rochester, N.Y. The last 
is Zoological Scientific Contributions of the 
New York Zoological Society. 
· The record comes from M. Marcel Godet, 

director of the Swiss National Library, 
through Leland Harrison, American minister 
to Switzerland. 

Switzerland hopes that exchange relations 
may be resumed as soon as postal relations 
become normal once more. 

This note is sent to let the issuing offices 

hardly· been reduced; in fact, in the science 
library, where much research is c~rried out 
for the government, it has been increased. 
This is despite the fact that, out of the 
hundred members of the library staff, al­
most all those of military age have left to 
join the fightihg forces or to take ,up other 
forms of national service, their places being 
taken for the most part by women and by 
boys and girls below the age of eighteen. 

Sir Thomas Bodley's original endow­
ment of £I30 ($520) a year has been in­
creased to a total income of about £35,000 
($I40,000). Of this sum £1 I,OOO 
($44,000) is derived from a government 
grant made t~ the university; about £8,500 
($34,000) is contributed by the university 
out of its own resources or by colleges; and 
the library's own endowment is a little over 
£7,500 ($30,000). His library staff of 
two has increased to a hundred, and his 
library of two thousand books will soon 
number two million. 

in this country know of this hope and to 
assure retention of back numbers and provi­
sion of future current issues to complete Swiss 
files when conditions permit. 

The university library at Basle and the 
central library at Zurich were unable to list 
their exchanges. So too the library · of the 
League of Nations at Geneva made no report. 

THE American Library Association has 
received from the Faculty of Medicine at 
Montevideo a collection of recent U ru­
g~ayan medical books and periodicals, com­
prising some I 40 pieces, in exchange for 
books sent to the faculty as part of the 
Books for Latin America program. The 
director of the library of the faculty, Dr. 
Alejandro F. Sarachaga, is anxious to 
establish exchanges of the A nales de !a 
Facultad de Medicina with medical publi­
cations of the U pi ted States and will_ wel­
come correspondence to that effect. 

JUNE~ 1945 209