Lost in the Stacks

Over the past four years, I have had the immense good fortune to be given the opportunity to use two of the best libraries in the UK - the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the University Library in Cambridge. What makes them the best? They are both copyright libraries, meaning that they have a right to a free copy of every item (magazine, book, newspaper) published in the UK. Therefore, they are both huge - the 'UL' has an estimated stock of 8 million books, [1] whilst the Bodleian Library holds around 9 million. [2] This does not include the books held by the Bodleian Libraries as a whole (an umbrella term recently coined to the irritation of many – ‘change’ is a not a thing which the venerable institution of the University of Oxford does very well – to reflect the fact that the books held by the university itself are now spread across a number of physical sites). I won’t emphasise too much the 1 million difference between the two, because I know all too well that I have been, well, a bit spoilt when it has come to adapting to Cambridge. The fact that I was suddenly at a slightly different ancient university, with different coloured bricks adorning differently shaped dreaming spires... well, you get the picture. Constantly comparing the two places is certainly ridiculous, but it is hard not to do so when it comes to the library, the place that is the heart and centre of my life of study right now.

My initial, Oxonian objection to the University Library was, I will admit, a very shallow one. It was architectural. The Bodleian, with its towers and crenelations, put me in mind of a castle, a fortified stronghold within which a great wealth of knowledge was kept safe. The UL – I’m sorry – makes me think of nothing so much as a giant penis. (I heard a story that the architect was determined that the tower be taller than the spires of King’s College Chapel, previously the tallest building in Cambridge. If that isn’t a case of phallic pride I don’t know what is!) It isn’t that the UL is not an impressive building. Its odd mix of Byzantine-cum-Communist-cum-Classical Chinese (sitting inside small courtyards in the middle of the building, the flowing roofs reminded me forcibly of the Forbidden City in Beijing) is quite frankly pretty awesome. Its tower (at the top of which, it is said, copyright-deposit pornography is said to reside) can be seen from miles around, so the architect certainly achieved his wish. But, gosh darnit, it simply doesn’t possess the, to me, infinitely more pleasing neo-Classical perfection of the Old Bodleian, or the sinuous curves of the Radcliffe Camera.

However, the most important part of a library is, of course, what is inside it, and it is inside that the true difference between the Bodleian and the University Library is to be found. The UL, you see, has ‘open bookstacks’. Historically, at the Bodleian, if one required a book that was not on ‘open shelf’ in the main library, it had to be ‘called up’ from an underground location of varying distance from the library itself – the Bodleian currently boasts storage as far afield as Swindon and Cheshire. This physical separation between readers and books has recently been eased, a little, by the opening of the Gladstone Link, previously a closed bookstack. But the Gladstone Link is shiny, and new, and designed for comfortable working, and doesn’t really have all that many books in it. The UL, on the other hand, has four main bookstacks, each 6 floors high, crammed with books. And they are completely open to readers.

The thing that I can’t help but love about the UL bookstacks is that they completely fulfil, for me, my mental image of what a library should be like. There are maybe one or two miniscule desks per floor, but apart from that, the stacks are just full of books – ceiling to floor shelving, with walkways between shelves that can only accommodate two people if they press themselves flat against the volumes before them. Some of the bookstacks are overflowing, with books on tables or on floors. They are also mazes. The doors out of the stacks are sometimes hidden in odd places, so that I feel an urge to run a piece of string behind me, just so I can find my way back to the stairwell. Only yesterday, after a whole term getting used to the UL, I found myself wandering, with rising panic, through rows and rows of shelves, trying to find my way out.

And yet, there is something wonderful about that. The Bodleian is tidy, and organised, and in the main reading rooms you can calmly and quietly endeavour to live the life of the mind. The UL, on the other hand, is confusing, and more than a bit messy in places (how, you ask yourself, can a run of books begin on a shelf halfway down the stack, and then conclude beneath a table at the other end of the room?), and you can only set up calmly to read after launching what can sometimes feel like a mountaineering expedition up to South Front Floor 6 to get the books you need. But in its overwhelming-ness there is something wonderful. The whole building almost seems to creak with the weight of the millions of books hidden in its different corners, and, pacing through the shelves of the stacks, you cannot avoid realising how many people have written so many things on so many different subjects – and, indeed, how small the thesis you are working on will seem among such a collection if it ever makes its way onto its shelves. But, in this case, I do not find being but one grain of sand amongst a vast beach disheartening. Rather, I think it makes me feel rather less lonely, even when I do find myself alone at the top of North Front, lost amongst the bookstacks.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Library

[2] http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/75804/Central-Bodleian-Guide-2011.pdf