Shelf life
Volume 18 Number 1, Michaelmas 2005
The collections of the Oxford University libraries are among the world's greatest in size and quality. They now face serious practical and financial problems. Some are these are faced by all major libraries: for example, maintenance and storage of acquisitions, and providing for many more readers, who expect longer opening hours, automated services and access to electronic journals and databases. Difficulties specific to Oxford arise from the University's history of growth on many sites in the centre of the city over more than 400 years.
Until relatively recently, we managed well. When the New Bodleian and Radcliffe Science Library were built in the 1930s, they were expected to meet the needs of the University for 100 or so years. But, as it turns out, it has proved more than difficult to keep pace with the ever-growing demands of the enlarged institution. Although the libraries budget is generous by the standards of British universities, it is inadequate. We spend far too much on maintaining and on staffing buildings at about 45 sites and not enough on acquisitions and services to readers. We have run out of storage space for the three miles of new material that we acquire each year, both in the libraries themselves and at our depot outside Oxford at Nuneham Courtenay. Readers have been unhappy about delays in obtaining books and journals, and about opening hours and inadequate electronic resources.
In the five years that I have been a member (Curator) of the libraries committee, I have seen a considerable move towards modernisation and change. In 2000 we replaced our fragmented, separate University libraries with a single Oxford University Library Services. This is led by Reg Carr, with the new title of Director of University Library Services and Bodley's Librarian. There has been an integration of management and services. Several impressive new libraries have been opened, most recently a very successful large Social Sciences library in Norman Foster's handsome building at Manor Road (see OT 17.2, p. 17). Great progress has been made in automation, and there have been significant improvements in conservation.
There have also been many changes in the way students and researchers use the libraries. Increasingly, especially in the sciences, they are employing electronic library resources from their own rooms. Digitisation of collections has been proceeding: a deal with Google, which will digitise our entire nineteenth-century collections, will be a major next step in making outstanding holdings much more accessible. We have also completed the restoration (and concealed modernisation) of Duke Humfrey and the Upper and Lower Bodleian reading rooms, and work is under way at the Clarendon Building. A £40 million capital campaign was launched in 2002 to coincide with the Bodleian's 400th anniversary.
Despite all this activity, many problems remain and our budget is in deficit. The past year has seen hectic planning to achieve the twin aims of ensuring that we stay at the forefront of library and IT developments and that we at last deal with the historic inefficiencies. Reg Carr is concentrating on the demanding task of fundraising, while the Acting Director Ronald Milne and Acting Deputy Director David Perrow are coordinating the business planning and collaboration with readers. A recent very major decision commits us to an ambitious further strategy for electronic resources, which, if funded, will ensure that we (in the words of our advisers) 'assume a position of leadership among world-class research institutions, offering a richness of print and electronic resources unrivalled elsewhere'. This should meet most of the needs of science and medicine, which now depend largely on electronic access to information, and should also be of increasing importance to other disciplines.
The main obstacle to rationalising our 45 sites has been the lack of land close to the centre of the city. Two recent major purchases have transformed our thinking. The University has bought substantial parts of the former industrial estate on Osney Island (just beyond the railway station), including a large modern office block formerly owned by Blackwell's. This has enabled plans to be made for a key development: an automated depository of a type used by retail warehouses and several libraries worldwide. The depot will be able to hold more than 8 million volumes, including material currently stored at Nuneham and further away, and from central stacks. It should take only a few minutes to retrieve a book or journal and there will then be a frequent shuttle service to major libraries.
The University also takes possession of the Radcliffe Infirmary site in 2007. This will provide the opportunity to build a large new Humanities and Area Studies library for undergraduate and taught graduate study and some research. It would bring together dispersed collections and allow a much higher proportion of them to be on open access.
These two large projects have allowed radical new thinking on the redevelopment of the central Bodleian buildings. Work is starting on transforming the Radcliffe Science Library, which, when 500,000 little-used volumes have been transferred to Osney, will become a reading room and lending library for undergraduates and a base for electronic resources and specialist support. The most complex and potentially controversial plans are those for the Humanities collections presently housed in numerous overcrowded and unsatisfactory buildings, some of great historic importance. It is now proposed that the New Bodleian will be redeveloped for use as a Special Collections library and the Bodleian will remain a Humanities research library.
Much detailed planning remains to be done, but rumours and some highly inaccurate press coverage have aroused considerable concern. Some readers have been worried that the proposal to abandon the New Bodleian underground stacks is unnecessary and that delivery delays from Osney will be unacceptable. However, conditions in the stacks are deteriorating. A recent inspection by the National Archives, the public body that checks the conditions of collections held on behalf of the nation, resulted in only temporary approval on condition that rapid progress with modernisation is made. There have also been worries that much-loved reading rooms will be replaced by more efficient but less satisfactory new buildings. In particular, there have been fears that the Radcliffe Camera will be lost to academic use. It is clear that there are problems in its present use as a reading room, as there is no adequate book delivery system. However, it will remain in academic use in a manner yet to be decided.
The proposals will mean significant changes for library staff. Modern reading rooms and better storage will require fewer people, but it is expected that a combination of retirement, movement of staff to other posts and retraining should make the changes manageable over the next few years. There will be considerable savings, but the highly valued support of expert librarians will be preserved and become even more focused on collections and readers. The strategy also involves reducing the unnecessary duplication of holdings across the library system.
It is easy to be impatient with the small number of particularly vociferous and intemperate critics, but the response to them, and to wider concern and uncertainty, must lie in the greater involvement of readers in planning. This has proved particularly successful in the social sciences and is also working well in science and medicine. Collaboration with the Humanities Division and other interested parties will help to convince the sceptical that the changes are not just concerned with much-needed cost-cutting, but are also more fundamentally to do with improving library services that have failed to keep up with academic needs.
In contrast to some fears that the historic buildings will be neglected or 'dumbed down' to 'theme park' status, the expectation is that it will be possible to take advantage of very exciting plans by the leading landscape architect Kim Wilkie, on behalf of the Oxford Preservation Trust, to make huge improvements to the whole Broad Street area. The partnership between University, colleges and the local authorities would transform what is at present a scruffy, noisy disgrace to outstanding architecture, and would enable much better management of tourism to the benefit of colleges as well as the library. The Bodleian and other university buildings will look the same, but will be calmer and better equipped as places to work and to visit.
All these plans are evolving in the context of the University's wider academic and financial planning and will be discussed intensively over the coming months. Inevitably, the Capital Campaign will need modification and expansion, especially for the new Humanities library at the Radcliffe Infirmary site. Relationships with college libraries will continue to be important and should be closer. They have a major role in supporting teaching and in housing their very important historic collections.
Our hope and our expectation is that by 2010 the library services will have achieved both large new developments and rationalisation, and will have done so in a way that will restore a secure financial base. It is vital for those of us in Oxford, and for all those who use our libraries as a national resource, that we are successful.
Richard Mayou, Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Curator of University Libraries 2000-5
For more information, see www.admin.ox.ac.uk/lib/vision2010.pdf