Town to meet gown as Bodleian plans Swindon site

New chapter in 407-year-old library's history would see up to 8m books relocated from Oxford to outskirts of Swindon
Bodleian library, Oxford
Bodleian Library in Oxford has grappled with problems of space since it opened its doors to scholars in 1602. Photograph: Graham Turner

The Bodleian Library, bursting at the seams under the weight of a book collection expanding by 5,000 volumes a week, yesterday announced a solution: up to 8m books will be leaving Oxford's dreaming spires for ever, for the unlovely but pragmatic surroundings of an industrial estate in the outskirts of Swindon.

The site, 28 miles from Oxford on the edge of a motorway and railway line, has the considerable merit for the library authorities of having no heritage or landscape value whatsoever.

They provoked bitter local controversy over the last attempt to solve the problem – a plan for a giant warehouse on the outskirts of Oxford, which was condemned as endangering the books by siting them on a flood plain, and destroying cherished local views.

The new scheme is part of £116m project that should solve a problem the library has grappled with for centuries. "The new site is an excellent solution: good for the books, good for us," the library's director, Sarah Thomas, said.

The crisis threatened to bring the library's activities to a standstill, with every possible store in Oxford full and books being taken off site as far away as Cheshire. The Swindon site was chosen after 90 possible locations were viewed.

The original plans have changed so that only the less-frequently used books and periodicals will go permanently to Swindon. Thomas estimates the library will have up to 200,000 requests a year for material from Swindon, which it aims to meet within 24 hours with books transferred by van.

The rarest books will now never leave central Oxford. They will be transferred to another secure store at the science library, while the 1930s New Bodleian is emptied to create new reading rooms, storage, and a gallery shows off the greatest treasures. These include four copies of the Magna Carta, the Shakespeare First Folio and the handwritten manuscript of The Wind in the Willows.

The library opened its doors to scholars in 1602 already suffering from lack of space as it gathered up earlier collections dating back to the 14th century. Since then it has relentlessly swallowed up its neighbours – a whole row of medieval cottages was demolished to build the New Bodleian – but each attempt at a solution has proved in vain, as the library also receives a copy of every book published in England.

The current total stands at somewhere around 9m books and 10,000 medieval manuscripts – plus a handful of floppy discs which arrived in a brown office memo envelope last week from Alan Bennett's publishers, part of the author's vast archive, which he donated last year.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/17/bodleian-library-swindon-oxford
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