New broom at the Bod
Volume 19 Number 3, Trinity 2007
Sarah Thomas (Photo: Rob Judges)
Sarah thomas has yet to decide whether she'd rather have someone other than Alexander Pope frowning down on her from above her fireplace: it is an unadvertised perk of the job that Bodley's Librarian is allowed to choose any of the portraits in the Bodleian's collection to adorn her walls. But decorating her large, panelled office overlooking Broad Street in the Clarendon Building is hardly a priority for its new incumbent: she has much bigger fish to fry. Speaking at the annual Bodleian Founder's Lunch within weeks of her arrival in Oxford, she told the assembled donors, staff and friends of the library that doing something about the 'drab, leaky fire-trap' she could see every day from her window would be one of her most urgent tasks.
She was talking about the New Bod. If Bodley's latest Librarian does not have the physical stature of some of her predecessors, she makes up for it with a refreshingly straight-talking, no-nonsense style. 'When I came here I was shocked that it even had the Bodleian's name associated with it,' she says. 'I thought "What an awful building!"' While such bluntness may raise a few eyebrows, she is not alone in her assessment: inspectors from the National Archives gave notice some time ago that the New Bodleian's overflowing stacks and reading rooms simply do not provide a safe and secure environment for a nationally important collection of books and manuscripts. Long before Thomas's appointment, plans were afoot to remove the books either to new, special-purpose libraries such as the Social Science Library or the projected Humanities Library on the RI site, or to an automated depository to be built on Osney Island near the railway station. Meanwhile, a new role for the New Bod is taking shape that Thomas may be the perfect choice to see through.
Her warmth and approachability, combined with a distinguished career in academic and government libraries in the US, seem to have won the confidence of Oxford's library staff from the outset. Having previously risen to be director of both cataloguing and public service collections at the US Library of Congress in Washington DC, in 1996 she went to Cornell University in upstate New York as the Carl A Kroch University Librarian. 'Going there was appealing', she says, 'because I wanted to be in a university environment after ten years in the federal government. I liked the idea that students would skate by your office on a skateboard.' There she worked to integrate a library system that, because of the vagaries of public and private funding, included 20 autonomous units that prized their independence. 'They had a strong feeling that creativity resided in their capacity to act independently', she says. 'One of my jobs was to create a sense of the Cornell Library as a whole. In an age that is interdisciplinary, where people are highly mobile, and with the advent of the electronic age, it was important for people to have a sense that although they had their local specialist library that they prized, they also had that enormous resource available to them.'
After ten years at Cornell, Thomas wasn't looking to move - she had already turned down offers from other US institutions. She had had a glimpse of Oxford when, in the early 1990s, she was invited to speak in the Sheldonian about the work she was doing with the catalogues of the Library of Congress. 'I remember thinking "Here I am speaking in this Christopher Wren building"', she says, 'and I thought I could just die then and be happy.' So when a search firm contacted her about applying for the post of Bodley's Librarian, she thought 'maybe I should look at this'. When she read the job description, 'it was love at first sight. It was everything I wanted to do, but bigger. Integration, the digital library, the estates programme, the opportunity to be inside a truly magnificent institution and have a role at a pivotal moment in its history - that was just too enticing for me.'
She enthusiastically supports the vision that is emerging of what the New Bodleian could be: a special collections library, with a Centre for the Study of the Book at its heart and exhibitions to bring in the public. 'Not just a storehouse for collections, but a community hub, a place that we want to invite people into to celebrate the antecedents of the digital world', she says. She is committed to the idea that 'the artefact remains precious not as a museum piece, but for the clues it can give us about the way thoughts were transcribed and disseminated'. She also sees the New Bodleian development as an opportunity to address the tensions between the Bodleian's very different constituencies. 'One of the things I'm discovering about moving from a small town to one with a bustling tourist business', she says, 'is the need to manage the traffic between the general public who are coming to learn about the Bodleian and the people who are going to delve deeper into the collections.' The plans for the New Bodleian drawn up by consulting architects envisage a welcoming, open frontage - a far cry from its current forbidding mien.
In 2002 a previous attempt by the Bodleian to improve public access ran into a storm of protest over a proposal to knock a new door through the seventeenth-century wall inside the Great Gate in Catte Street, while (unfounded) rumours flew about even worse fates that might befall the Radcliffe Camera. Thomas is well aware that every step she and her colleagues take will come under intense scrutiny, both from the guardians of the Bodleian's historic buildings and from its highly demanding readers. She believes in taking criticism seriously. 'Every time I hear criticism there's always a grain of truth', she says. 'If people are saying they need access to books more quickly, longer hours, access to more material electronically, it should be my job to give them that. Beyond listening to what people say, and addressing truthfully the areas that are weaknesses, is the need to spend more time communicating. If people have a more balanced picture of what the library is, they won't be so quick to criticise.'
She is anxious to dispel the idea that she might apply a 'cookie-cutter American approach' to the library, but at the same time is not afraid to think some radical thoughts. 'One of Thomas Bodley's admonitions to his first librarian was that he should not allow the books to circulate. But he also said the librarian should not be married, and had to concede that! I'm wondering what the possibilities are for us to consider a more generous policy with regard to lending books.' The same generosity of spirit makes her think more broadly about why people come to libraries. 'For a lot of people there is a social aspect to libraries', she argues. 'At Cornell I had comfortable chairs and coffee, and the possibility to listen to music through headphones. I think returning alumni coming to the library would rather see it actively used, even if that active use isn't a clone of the way they used it 50 years ago. They'd rather see it full of people than empty and declining, which was the story for some American libraries before some of these changes were introduced.'
The first step in the plans for the future of the library system - which could take ten years and cost upwards of £100 million in total - is the Osney depository, which, as we went to press, was awaiting local planning approval for a revised design. The hope is that it will be complete in 2009, opening the way for the books to be decanted from the New Bodleian, whose refurbishment can then begin, as well as the building of the new Humanities Library. But first the money will have to be raised, and that will be a big part of Thomas's job, as it was at Cornell. 'We are trying to be disciplined enough not to start something until we have the funding', she says. 'We are very fortunate that there is support at the highest levels in the University for libraries.'
With so much to do, it is no surprise that Thomas's post carries two titles: Bodley's Librarian and Director of University Library Services. Which does she prefer? Her answer - 'I love the way grown and distinguished men get weak-kneed when they get introduced to Bodley's Librarian!' - reflects her transparent joy at taking on what must surely be the biggest challenge in her field.