The Camera.
The Camera Reading Room holds comparatively few books, not being a store-room, but the volumes kept in it are the most-used modern works to the number of about 27,000. But the Camera Basement, and the Underground Bookstore which adjoins it, hold the great bulk of the books of the last forty years. These are arranged by an elaborate system of subject division, the more important sections being in the Basement, while the less-used subjects (Minor Theology, Minor Prose and Verse, Scientific handbooks now superseded for ordinary use, and the like) are kept in the Underground Bookstore, with gigantic series such as the earlier editions of the Ordnance Survey, the Times from 1806, the London Gazette and some others. But certain entire sections, though modern books, are still retained in the older part of the Bodleian (“Bodley”) as being specially related to the studies pursued there: such are Bibliography, Palæography, British topography, Family history and Numismatics.
Outlying Store Rooms.
Lastly, some outlying buildings have been lent as storerooms. Half of the Sheldonian Theatre Basement keeps the Parliamentary Blue Books, and such newspapers and journals as the Bodleian takes in. The Basement of the Old Ashmolean holds the “Year-books” (so called from the accessions between 1824 and 1850 being arranged, not by subject but in order of acquisition) and in general the octavo books received between 1824 and 1883. Finally, beneath the New Examination Schools are preserved directories, some old magazines and all novels.
In 1915 the numbers of volumes in these three main divisions were found to be:—
| In “Bodley” | 422,000 |
| (Old Reading Room 61,000) | |
| In the “Camera” and Underground Store | 321,000 |
| In outlying buildings | 279,000 |
| Total | 1,022,000 |
B. Organization
Curators.
The whole Library is subject ultimately to the authority of the Board of Curators, fifteen in number. Of these, eight are official (the Vice-Chancellor and two Proctors, and the five Regius Professors of Divinity, Civil Law, Medicine, Hebrew and Greek); and seven are chosen for ten years by Congregation from its resident members. The Curators meet at least twice a term, and hold an Annual Visitation of the Library on November 8, the anniversary of the opening of the Bodleian in 1602. The income and expenditure and even the regulations of the Library are under their control.
Officers.