Bodleian Library

Above is our tour guide, Ian.

Recognize this room? It's the Bodleian Library but it's also where two scenes from Harry Potter were shot. In the Sorcerer's Stone it was the Infirmary and in Goblet of Fire it's where they learned to dance for the ball.

We had a fantastic tour guide, Ian, which took us through both the Old and New Bodleian Libraries and gave us a lot of background about them as well as Oxford University itself. In the 11th century Oxford was the center of education because of the King's palace and the churches located nearby. At this time, education was a means to an end: a job with the church or crown. In 1167, after the French and English King had a falling out, all of the English students in Paris were made to leave the country. They relocated to Oxford even though there was no official university there at the time. A guild was set up because of competitiveness and in the 1200s the first colleges were founded. These colleges were controlled by the university and now there are 39 of them with students from 120 different countries.

Oxford University is the oldest university in the English speaking world and the Bodleian Library is the oldest public library in Britain and the second largest. It was named after Thomas Bodley who fought for it to be a deposit library and contributed much to the design of the original library. I took 64 years to build because there were so many wars which depleted much of the country's funds. Alumni were asked to contribute as well as the King. The King had no money but he did offer his protection. The library was finally finished in 1444 and the first collections consisted of 281 manuscripts given by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester which he brought from Italy. In 1515, King Edward VI ordered that all images of the Catholic faith be removed from he library and there was a huge book sale. Only 3 manuscripts from the original collection remain.

The library is for reference and does not lend its materials. When books are requested they are sent underground through tunnels by a pulley system from storage to the reading rooms. There is limited space and to cope with this they have sent those items which are least requested to their Swindon storage facility 30 miles away.1 million pounds has been spent to restore books and Google has given money to digitize manuscripts.

Dewey Decimal Classification is not used to organize materials. Instead, materials are organized by size and arrival date to the facility. However, a new display area is slated to be created by 2015 which would mean users would have access to materials and therefore the classification scheme would have to be changed. For right now, the largest problem that this library faces is a well heard problem by now: limited space for a large amount of materials.

British Library

We started off the day by heading to King's Cross and posing at Platform 9 3/4 to celebrate our love of Harry Potter.

We were taken through the British Library and given a tour by Heather Morley. She informed us that it was opened in 1998 after being removed from the British Museum Reading Room where it was housed from 1857. The maps in their collection are second only to the Library of Congress. They receive 8,000 publications every day as everything published in the United Kingdom must be collected. The basement goes down 75 feet to the tube level but only half of the collections are stored on-site. The Northern line of the tube runs through the middle of the storage shelves and therefore they had to be reinforced to withstand the vibrations. There are a total of 200 million books in the collection which can be accessed using the online catalog.

In order to use the facilities you have to register for a reader pass and prove a need to see specific materials. You have to demonstrate that you have looked at other venues and were unable to find the materials anywhere else. The books are sent throughout the library using a trolley system that moves within the walls. During all the time this system has been in use no materials have been lost. They have their own cataloging system which is organized based on size not subject. The library has a tri-fold purpose: collect, conserve, and record the existence of materials.

Many famous people use the library for research. Heather said that Johnny Depp has used the oral recordings to practice his English accents for roles.

Many rare items are kept in the British Library. They have everything from the Magna Carta, original lyrics written by the Beatles, and many variations of Alice in Wonderland. I learned that there have been several different versions of Alice in Wonderland and each version has different illustrations which were amazing such as Ralph Steadman and Mervyn Peake.