Oxford Libraries Architecture: Rare Book of the Week

Oxford Libararies Architecture by Geoffrey Tyack with photography by Dan Paton is not technically rare since it's due to be published later this week, but it is a marvellous volume of interest to readers of Fine Books & Collections.

The richly illustrated book fom Bodleian Library Publishing focuses on just over 50 of the city's libraries, a few of them known via 'Most Beautiful Libraries in the World' roundups on social media, but the majority probably a closed book to most people. Indeed, even those who have studied in Oxford will not have been inside many of these superb buildings since undergraduates tend to work mainly in their own college library. Few, for example, will have seen inside what was formerly known in my day as the Codrington Library at All Souls (the first library in Oxford to be built on the ground floor, renamed in 2020 because of the benefactor's slave connections) - I needed to submit a handwritten request from my academic tutor to be invited to use it. 

As a graduate of The Queen's College I was particularly pleased to see its Upper Library (where I spent most of my final year) as the cover star, but also its newer subterranean extension which has been built since I left in the early 1990s on the inner pages. Indeed, Tyack - emeritus Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford, and formerly Director of the Stanford University Centre in Oxford - is keen to show the evolution of the city's library architecture, covering its history from the 13th to 21st centuries, including examples such as the Vere Harmsworth, built after my time, and the Oxford Brookes University Library.

The big hitters are all here including several of my former regular haunts, the Radcliffe Camera, Duke Humfrey's, the Oxford Union, and the Taylor Institution (for language students, but my girlfriend studied Spanish and Italian so...), but also those with a much lower profile such as the atmospheric Pusey House where the eponymous Professor of Hebrew's spectacles and pen are on display.

While obviously of particular interest to those interested in books and collections, this will also appeal to those with an interest in architecture and the built environment. Paton's specially commissioned images are beautifully shot, the pages on Zaha Hadid's spectacular extension to the St Antony's College library particular standouts.

The university's digitization programme has been in full swing for some years which in some ways makes things easier for today's students, but it's a pleasure to enjoy this fine celebration of bricks and mortar libraries, and indulge in some nostalgic reminiscing about the trials of ordering books using little slips of paper.