The Bodleian Library
STCE the middle of last century the older Universities have been trying to meet the needs of a new learning.
The resources of Oxford and Cambridge, supplemented by wise benefactions and, in these latter days, a large grant from the State, have been strained to their narrow limit to provide the buildings and technical equipment for those sciences which have changed the form and content of all our knowledge. During this time there has been little money to spare for the development of the humane studies ; yet these studies have shared in the quickened intellectual life of our time, and are now cramped and hampered in their growth by the machinery and apparatus of an earlier age.
It is from this point of view that educated Englishmen must consider the future of the great English libraries. They will see at once that where the buildings and the traditions of a library are most venerable, the need for adaptation is most pressing, and the work of adaptation most difficult. The problem of the Bodleian, therefore, can be stated in the simplest form. The library is nearly full ; its buildings, the most beautiful of their kind in Europe, are not suited for the development of a library upon the lines laid down by the technique of modern scholarship ; its income is not large enough for it to buy enough foreign books.
There is one solution, and only one solution of this problem. A new library must be built and endowed with those facilities which are regarded as essential for the practice of the new " humane letters " ; there must be adequate access to the bookshelves for qualified readers ; rooms for the library staff ; opportunities for making the library one of the centres of advanced teaching and of collaboration in the production of books.
This solution may not be accepted at once. But the longer it is delayed, the greater the disorganization of the library, and limitation of its usefulness, and the heavier the cost, since money spent on half-measures will give but a poor return. Limitation of intake is no solution at all. Expert opinion has thought it scarcely possible for the Bodleian to cut down its present limited intake of copyright material by more than a fifth without destroying the scientific value of the library. On the other hand—apart from the urgency of increasing the purchase of foreign books—the output of important copyright material has increased for forty years, and is increasing, at a rate which makes it certain that any benefit from limitation of intake would be neutralized within a generation.
It is possible, indeed, to put off the settlement of the question by building a store on one of the sites close to the Bodleian. These sites are known to all who are familiar with the streets and buildings of Oxford. The objections to a new storehouse are obvious. There is no site large enough to provide for the steadily increasing intake of the Bodleian for more than a century and a half ; a " sectional " building of this kind would only add to the difficulty of the development of the library as a centre of teaching ; shelf access in the new store alone would be useless. Nor is it hard to see the disastrous effect of a huge 000kstore in the neighbour- hood of the Bodleian, where an architectural balance between " secular " and collegiate buildings is precariously maintained, and must be destroyed by anything large enough to house the intake of books for a century.
Another seeming remedy is the construction of a book- store in the suburbs of Oxford, where land is relatively cheap; and space unlimited. To understand the calami- tous effect of this plan it is necessary to look into the future. Suppose that all the " not wanted " books in the Bodleian are removed to this store. (A committee of experts in each subject would have to pass the sentences of exile ; no library staff would be willing to undertake the work.) Within a generation the shelves emptied in this way will have been filled with new books. It will then be necessary either to discard every year from the Bodleian sufficient material to make room for the year's accessions of " wanted books," or to send to the suburban store books which are of living interest. An annual weeding out would be too costly—since the experts would again be needed—and would disorganize the catalogue and the general working of the library : the second plan would probably be taken.
Look forward another generation. The suburban bookstore will have become a second library, several miles away from the old buildings ; its contents will be the haphazard selection of a particular time. The cost of administration will have increased, the difficulty of getting books will have increased ; and all the time nothing will have been done, for nothing can be done, to make the old Bodleian into a modern library which would bear comparison with libraries now being planned or built at other Universities.
There would seem no way out of the difficulty, if the difficulty is to be met, and not merely left to another generation to meet, except by building a new library. The question of a site is a local question. Several sites are possible ; the choice must be left to the resident members of the University. The question of cost cannot be settled by the University, since the University cannot by any means find from its own resources more than a fraction of the half a million pounds which might be necessary. This is a formidable sum ; more terrifying perhaps to the academic mind than it need be even in these days when learning and mag- nificence have drifted apart. Three considerations ought not to be forgotten. Private benefaction in England is directed largely (though in Oxford alone there are splendid enough exceptions to the rule) towards the endowment of the sciences. It is assumed that the needs of the older and newer subjects connected with the study of man in society are met by existing institu- tions. If it is generally known that these institutions are inadequate, there is surely more than a chance that the old foundations, already linked with an historic name to commemorate each new advance of knowledge in the past, will find new founders and the means to continue a noble tradition. Nor is it fantastic to point out that the Bodleian library was a home of learning when all the English-siieaking peoples were under one political allegiance ; the culture which it fostered is a common inheritance.
Pinally, it is impossible to question the value of a great library to a modem State. A library is not an instrument of compulsory education. No one is compelled to use it. It is one of the mainsprings of a free intellectual -life. Men of every temper find in it the means of bringing their own ideas to fruit, whether they care most for the con- servation of past tradition; or shaping of new ideas. It is a paradox to say that we have too many great libraries ; we have too few. It is more than a paradox to think that, because we are as a nation less rich than we were, we cannot afford to spend the nation's money precisely at a point where the return is beyond doubt, E. L. WOODWAR15-,,
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