The Books of Oxford

This morning I was fortunate to go on a private tour of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University’s official biblioteque and one of the world’s greatest book depositories. There were eight people, including me on the tour, so it was truly an intimate and special look.

One of the many things I discovered was that the current head librarian is the first woman and the first non-UK person to hold the position. Sarah Thomas was hired from Cornell in 2007. She is the 24th Librarian in the library’s 400+ year history (people tend to stick around once they get the job).

There are all kinds of interesting facts about this place and about the history of books and book lending. In the earliest years of public book lending (this is during the middle ages in the 13th century, if one wanted to “borrow” a book one had to pledge a certain amount of money. When they brought the book back, they got their money back. What’s interesting is that they used to have “money chests,” where these book pledges were kept (there was one on hand at Bodleian). Even today, there is still someone with the title of Secretary of the Chest, or something along those lines. He or she must keep up with late fees.

Another thing I found astonishing was that Oxford has scanned in some 400 million pages from its library as part of Google’s book digitalization efforts. The staff there, including Ms. Thomas, was careful to point out that the Oxford library is as much, if not more so, a service institution as well as a book depository, and they’re eager to share the wealth of knowledge they’ve collected over the hundreds of years.

And make no mistake that “wealth” is impressive. After a tour of the architecturally rich facility dating back to the 13th century and continuing up through the 1950s (sorry for all the parenthetical notes, but it’s worth pointing out that Oxford University has just officially granted the Bodleian £26.9 million to construct a new building to house the continuously growing collection of books — I think someone said they receive up to 3,000 new titles a week and they do not turn anything away), we saw an original copy of the Magna Carta (dated 1217), an original hand-written copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (with annotations from Percy), some artifacts from the Marconi Company library including some of the first heartbreaking wireless transmissions from the Titanic as it struck the iceberg and was sinking, Shakespeare’s original folio from 1623 (the first anthology of all his plays), and a Gutenberg Bible.

These books and manuscripts were presented to us in a private room, each by a different curator.

One of the questions the curator of the Magna Carta asked was, what difference does it make to even have the physical original? It’s written in Latin — medieval Latin, no less — and it’s on a brittle piece of parchment (probably sheep’s skin). There are perfectly good English translations and copies available for £ 4.99 at Blackwells bookshop on the High Road. And yet, people continue to line up around the block when this copy goes on display.

His answer came from an academic perspective and was a good one — that since each was hand copied, so as to be read aloud to the “people” in the various English counties at the time, there are subtle changes to the text, some of which even dropped out over the years, as well as added features to the presentation of the manuscript, such as the seals on the 1217 version that give historians knowledge of who was caring for King John’s nine year old son while they were trying to legitimize his ascension to the throne (Kind John commissioned the Magna Carta in 1215 and died in 1216, leaving his son heir to the throne, but not without challengers; one of the acts these “keepers” did was to re-issue the Magna Carta to remind people of the mutual responsibility between government and the people).

But I think there’s a different reason there is such an aura around the physical copies that I just can’t put my finger on (there are four remaining copies of the original from 1215 and something like 10 later copies). As the curator pointed out, this is an 800+ year old manuscript, the ideas of which are still referred to and in use today.

Maybe we need to see some proof of the origins of such powerful ideas. Maybe the physical-ness of it — literally the scrawling, elaborate italic type as it appears on the page — lends some other kind of knowledge, regardless of whether we can read it. I don’t know. I certainly know that I would not have been so excited about the thing myself had I not just been in its company.

— Sam Martin

Sam is the director of publishing for frog where he oversees frog's global content, editorial, and digital publishing strategy. He is also the editor of design mind, frog's print and online media platform. Sam is the author of numerous books of non fiction and has written for Dwell, Metropolis, GOOD, and other magazines.