The very thought of transforming Oxford's golden heart into a visitor theme park was enough to send tremors across the country. The Radcliffe Camera, James Gibbs's masterpiece, proudly stands as the first round library in the world and Oxford's most recognisable monument to learning.
Some newspaper readers no doubt dismissed the Radclffe Camera theme park story as a particularly effective April Fool. Wiser heads in Oxford believed it all too readily, having followed Oxford University's ill-fated efforts to create a visitor centre at the Bodleian Library, which would have involved cutting a doorway through the library's 400-year-old Great Gate. That controversial proposal was only abandoned when the likes of Prof Martin Biddle, Oxford's leading medieval archaeologist, warned the "pay-as-you-enter plan" would become "Oxford's Millennium Dome". [Click for Observer article, 18th March 2001 (plus links).]
Only this time, as it turned out, the university was able to deny the existence of any plan to create a visitor centre within a historic library. The reality was that it had something altogether bigger and more controversial in mind, in what amounts to perhaps the biggest overhaul of Oxford libraries since the Bodleian opened 400 years ago.
Over more than a decade, the university has been grappling with a library service increasingly beset by problems. With libraries spread across 45 different sites, and with many of the much-loved buildings never designed to house the range of information services expected by today's students and researchers, Oxford is simply running out of space for collections growing at a rate of about three miles of shelf space a year. Its response has been to produce a strategy to integrate its libraries, with the promise of heavy investment in electronic resources and improved access to one of the world's biggest and most used book collections.
But only now are the implications for the 600 library staff and some of Oxford's most historic buildings beginning to emerge in a plan that is seeking to make substantial savings. A a href="bodley01.pdf">newly published review of services reveals that libraries are to move, merge or close, with new, but still unspecified, uses found for many buildings. The university admits that it wants to close as many as ten of its humanities and departmental libraries, with the New Bodleian substantially redeveloped.
At the heart of the plan is the creation of a major new library on the newly acquired Radcliffe Infirmary site, which, in six or seven years, will become the university's new multi-million pound campus. There are also proposals to create a depository on the Osney Mead industrial estate, capable of housing up to nine million less-used volumes.
But it is the review's proposals for £562,000 in savings that is most concerning employees, with a series of briefings already under way. Members of the library service staff who have spoken to The Oxford Times tell of emails requesting them not to speak to the press. One librarian insisted: "There is no need for all this secrecy. Staff can no longer trust senior management and feel less and less loyalty towards this old institution."
Corpus Christi history don James Howard-Johnston has expressed outrage at the treatment of staff, who face unpalatable choices. He said: "Bodleian staff feel menaced. They have been deterred from speaking out or contacting academic staff, for fear of the consequences - being reassigned to a job so unattractive that they will be forced to resign. Several senior librarians with specialist knowledge have been told that their posts are scheduled to go in the medium term; at least one has already been declared redundant. So it falls to dons to speak out and take the flak."
In his view, the future of great library buildings such as the New Bodleian, the Old Bodleian and the Radelffe Camera, are all uncertain under the proposed reorganisation. "Except for whatever part of the Old Bodleian is allocated to the new department of Western Manuscripts and Special Collections, these large buildings will be emptied of books and reading rooms. Since no indication is given in the papers so far circulated to Bodleian and other library staff of the future uses to which they will be put, guesses are being made and rumours are starting to circulate about a visitors' centre or the relocation of university offices."
The prospect of precious books being moved to Osney Mead brings its own risks, insists Mr Howard-Johnston: "The new depository, designed to receive several million books and to conserve them for future generations, should not be placed on the edge of the Thames floodplain, on land which lies a mere two metres or so above normal river level. Osney Mead has been affected by flooding in the recent past. It is all too likely to be worse affected in the future, as a result of climate change. Even if the plan succeeds in placing more books on open shelves, there will still be a large demand for books from the stacks. They will have to be delivered from Osney Mead to the Radcliffe Infirmary site in vans, adding to congestion at the city's principal traffic bottlenecks."
The size of the library services annual deficit now stands at £1m and the recovery plan requires savings equivalent to four per cent of staff costs. The review recommends a voluntary severance programme and carries the warning: "Historical gradings and conditions of service in some libraries have produced expensive and top-heavy staff structures."
But Ronald Milne, acting director of the University Library Services, says he continues to hope that compulsory redundancies can be avoided in what he sees as "a sensible modern solution to a long-standing and recurrent problem". He said: "The purpose of the review is to have the right number of people in the right places to provide an optimum service. We have also been encouraged by senior officers of the university to think about our estates strategy over the next six to seven years."
Far from being broken up, he says the Bodleian's facilities will be enhanced, with its pivotal role as the principal research library secure. He said: "The Old Bodleian reading rooms will continue with their present role strengthened, and the New Bodleian building will provide enhanced access to materials for which the Bodleian is world famous. "The 'outhousing' of millions of the Bodleian's lesser-used printed books is in fact, nothing new, since the Old Library buildings have long been incapable of containing the hundreds of thousands of new printed items which come to the library each year. The construction of a major new depository in Oxford city, capable of housing up to nine million low-use volumes, will greatly reduce waiting times in the central Bodleian reading rooms."
While dismissing suggestions that the Radclffe Camera was to become the gateway to an Oxford theme park, he said consultation has in fact begun on whether the iconic circular library, which holds a relatively small number of volumes "might have a different function". The university is also promising "many millions of pounds" of investment for plans such as the creation of a much-needed Humanities Lending Library on the Radelffe Infirmary site. But staff are far from reassured.
A librarian said: "As tasks become more centralised, smaller libraries begin to feel pinched and threatened. For instance, books may no longer be catalogued by staff in small libraries but centrally instead. As smaller subject-specific libraries are threatened with closure, librarians are beginning to wonder how safe their jobs really are now. For many, it is like waiting for the other shoe to drop and it is very difficult to work efficiently with that sort of concern."
The librarian said some colleagues had already received letters asking them to decide whether they want to be downgraded or to leave their jobs. Others are said to have been asked to take early retirement. Faced with the problems of finding room for 5,000 new books every week and the pressure for major staffing economies, reorganisation was likely to be difficult and painful. One way or another, the impact of shaking up Oxford University's libraries was always going to be felt far beyond the Radcliffe Camera.
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