Sir,
The Radcliffe Camera, a fine and inspiring library, in which it is often difficult to find a seat in term time, is chiefly used by undergraduates browsing its open-shelf holdings in history, English, theology and Latin American studies. Relatively few of them seem to order books from the main Bodleian stack. It would be a simple enough matter to stop library users ordering stack books to the Camera, rather than allowing the excuse of health and safety to wreck this building and place still further pressure on other Bodleian reading rooms.
The Oxford University Library Services Establishment Review, released a few days ago, has already condemned the nearby history faculty library as "too small to be viable". Plans to close the Camera to readers can only be part of a hidden plan for decommissioning much of the Old Bodleian and removing its readers to other locations altogether.
Brigid Allen,
Charlbury,
Oxon
Sir,
Scholars both in and outside Oxford have been shocked at recent initiatives by Oxford University Library Services, the managerial body for the Bodleian and dependent libraries. An Establishment Review, circulated in late March, announced the imminent closure or merger of many small, specialist libraries and the rationalization of their stock. This will lead to losses of valuable open-shelf holdings and an effective end to scholarly browsing (for example, through long runs of periodicals which it is impractical to order entire from a library store). Senior librarians are being urged to retire early in the management interest.
Meanwhile, as yet unrevealed plans for a consolidated humanities library, to be built on a new site by 2010, raise questions about the whole future of the Old Bodleian and Radcliffe Camera, which survived proposals to relocate the library in the 1870s and 1920s, and which, to many, represent the heart and soul of Oxford. Will they become a tourist museum and conference centre, perhaps with a successive phasing-out of reading rooms? In a letter to the Daily Telegraph on 4 April, the acting Director of Library Services admitted that the university was discussing long-term alternative uses for the Radcliffe Camera, a much-loved undergraduate library. Concerned readers would like to know more.
Brigid Allen
35 Woodfield Drive
Charlbury
Oxon. OX7 3SE
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