The Bodleian Library at Oxford

by Falconer Madan

Library Fittings.

The earliest fittings for the convenience of readers which still exist suggest that at any rate in collegiate institutions the first kind of desk was on what Mr. J. Willis Clark termed the Lectern system. One has to imagine a double lectern (that is, two plain lecterns placed back to back) so prolonged as to hold say five to fifteen volumes on each side, every volume lying on its side and being chained to the desk. The reader stood or sat, and the open book lay before him at a convenient angle, as in church lecterns. The system was obviously very wasteful of space, and was evolved from the time when one or two books only were brought out of the cupboard (armarium) for a reader’s use on a desk resembling a lectern, near a window. In the fifteenth century the normal type of library was a narrow room of considerable length, lighted by narrow windows at short intervals. From the wall-spaces between the windows there projected into the room at right angles to the wall the lectern desks described above, the desks by this time being probably fitted beneath with shelves on which the (chained) books could stand upright, and be pulled out on to the lectern for purposes of reading.

Next came the “Stall system.” In this, the cases projecting from the wall are just book-cases, of three or four or even more shelves on each side of the case, and the lectern part is superseded by a flat desk in front of, and attached to, the shelves at which a reader sits, and on which he places the (chained) book he takes down from a shelf above him. The earliest example of these is at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1517), and they are still in use in the Old Reading Room (“Duke Humphrey”) of the Bodleian; and in the Chapter library at Hereford, the very chains of the books are still preserved.

The modern practice of lining the walls of our rooms with book-shelves, though in one sense a reversion to an ancient type, in another is a definite change of system, of which examples are found in the sixteenth century abroad, but the first in England is in the Bodleian. In the Old Reading Room Sir Thomas Bodley reproduced the stall system. But when in his last days he erected an additional room (the Arts End) his choice fell on the newer idea that a wide space should be left in the middle of the room, and the books be all placed against the walls (1613). The lower books (folios) were still chained, and could only be used at the desks attached; such was the case, for instance, with the First Folio of Shakespeare, marked S. 2.17 Art. (see p. [46]). The Gallery books were quartos and octavos, not chained, and given out to readers below by one of the officers of the Library. This arrangement was imitated in the Selden End, which was completed in 1640.

Kinds of Libraries.

So far an attempt has been made to sketch briefly the evolution of a library in ancient and mediæval times. The plan of the present chapter of generalities now requires that we should consider the kinds of modern library, and the position which the Bodleian holds among them.

There are libraries and libraries. There are libraries of Reference or, as they are sometimes termed, Deposit; and there are libraries of the second rank, adapted for local and popular use. These two kinds are typical, and fall apart, as will be seen, by the application of a simple test.

The first public literary need of a district is a library of the latter type, one in which it is more important that the books should be in general use by lending and by free access to the shelves, than that they should be invested with a fictitious importance and too jealously guarded. This is the way to fan the faint sparks of literary instinct, and is still the common condition of most villages and even towns. But wherever literature has taken a long and firm hold there is a desire for a public library of another kind. By this time private libraries abound, and every serious student surrounds himself with the ordinary books on his special subject. And the public library shares in this general elevation of the personal standard; it becomes a necessary complement to individual effort. It supplies not only the ordinary works on every subject, but also the extraordinary and special books, and owing to the value of its contents has to restrict or abolish the custom of lending, in order that there may be continuous accessibility to its volumes. This division into two kinds is deep and real. The two fall apart according to their answer to the question, Do you in any real sense aim at being complete? All libraries of the second order confess that, in cases where they aim at any completeness, it is in a special subdivision or set of subdivisions of literature—incunabula, local books, and so on, or a working series of general reference volumes, or a departmental library rich in books on a particular science. But every library of the first class must have universality and completeness (within human limitations) as its theoretical aim, and must have made substantial progress towards its goal. In countries like Great Britain and the United States there are almost numberless libraries, many of them really large ones; but above them there tower the few, the very few, Libraries of Deposit. These are the super-Dreadnoughts of the literary world, and the Bodleian claims to be among them. It is an especial glory of Sir Thomas Bodley that he, a man of the world as well as a genuine scholar, planned from the first a library of the highest order.

Of this highest class it may be said that a really great library should have Universal scope, Independence, Size, Permanence, Wealth, and multiform Utility. Its Catalogue is not a mere book-finder, but a scientific work. Open access and lending are given up, but the Reference library is large. The aim of the British Museum to possess the largest French library outside France, and so with other foreign departments, and to store all local newspapers, is beyond praise.

Within the second class of libraries the manifold and various needs of modern students have resulted in a large number of kinds, which have been so seldom and so incompletely methodized that the following first attempt at their classification may be allowed, though cross-divisions cannot be entirely avoided.