In the Beginning

The first library at Oxford University began in 1320, but this was superseded in 1488 by Duke Humfrey’s library, so called because Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester (Henry V’s younger brother), gave a collection of more than 280 manuscripts to them. This library survived until 1550, when King Edward VI passed anti-Catholic legislation, seeing the library purged of what was deemed “necessarily Popish” material (Granniss 1906), or “superstitious books and images” (University of Oxford n.d.).

They could not afford to replace the offending material, so the university basically did without until Sir Thomas Bodley came along in 1598. He started the library with 2500 books, some of which were given by himself and some by other donors. The Bodleian library as it is now was opened in November 1602. I will write more about how Bodley came to be in this position in my next post.

It was first called the Public Library at Oxford on the foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, but by 1605 had been printed as Bibliotheca Bodleiana and was known just as “Bodley” in the 1660s (Vaisey 2000).

Although it was classed as a “public” library, it was only open to members of the University of Oxford community, Lords of Parliament and their sons, those that had donated to the library, with “any other person, for the furtherance of his studie in whatsoever science … may at any time obteine … freedome of recourse” (Vaisey 2000). They have also never lent out their material. Even King Charles I was refused this privilege in 1645 (University of Oxford n.d.).

A quick note on the spelling of quotes on this blog – these are direct quotes from the 17^th century, so the spelling is different to today. I did double check spelling.

My first stop when starting my research was the catalogue at Monash University, Clayton. Just from here, I found a number of extremely relevant books. Some of these were at the offsite store but, being a staff member, I just ordered them to be delivered to that branch I work at. They arrived within a week.

My best find was that the Matheson library holds paper copies of the Bodleian library’s journal. It was called the Bodleian Quarterly Record from the start in 1914 to 1938, then the Bodleian Library Record from then on. Monash holds all the issues from 1994 to 2003. I spent a very relaxing Saturday afternoon hidden away, flipping through these.

My search through these journals was so successful that most of the information for my first couple of posts is garnered from there. Later, especially when I’m looking at the collection of the Bodleian, I will be concentrating more on books.

REFERENCES

History of the Bodleian n.d., University of Oxford, viewed September 4 2010, <http:www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/docs/historybodleian.pdf>

Granniss, RS, ‘Preface’, in Bodley, T, c1906, The Life of Sir Thomas Bodley: written by himself together with the first draft of the statutes of the Public Library at Oxon, Boston, Merrymount Press, pp. 9-29.

Vaisey D 2000, ‘The Legacy of Sir Thomas Bodley’, Bodleian Library Record, vol. 17, pp. 419-429.