A Packed Monday

Our Monday schedule was packed. We started off with a visit to the Oxford University Press, and from the outside view of the neo-classical building on Great Clarendon, I expected to find giant iron and steel machinery grinding out sheets of black and white print. I was disappointed to learn that the University no longer prints their own books and periodicals but outsources that work to save costs. Still, we spoke with Bev, an OUP archivist, who educated us on the history of the press. Did you know that the press was given a charter to print books by King Charles I? We did get to see a hand-operated Victorian press. Here's Liz showing us how it works.



The type on this press was set by putting individual letters into a frame, which meant that you had better make sure you print enough pages the first time around or you have to re-load all the letters back into the frame if you want to print another run.

Bev also told us about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary. The editors who took on the daunting task of collating examples of every English word realized it would be impossible to do all the work themselves, so they relied on readers who would find quotations that included the words, write them onto slips of paper and return them to the scriptorium where they were sorted and put into the dictionary. Here's a box containing some of the original entry slips.



It seems that Wikipedia cannot claim to be the first collaborative reference work to harvest the vast body of human knowledge using volunteers to submit entries.

We were also treated to a copy of a letter from J.K. Rowling to the OED regarding her use of the word muggle in reference to non-magic aware human beings in her book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I was also unaware that the word had connections to drug slang; perhaps it gives the book a new layer of meaning.



After our visit to the OUP we trekked over to Linacre College, a graduate school in Oxford University, to look at their private library. The school on has about 400 students, so their library is relatively small and comprised of the basics; literature classics, basic science, history and reference. According to the librarian, the computers are their most popular resource. The library is open 24 hours with self-service circulation. I was surprised to discover that the majority of the spine labels were hand-written.



The library occupies what was once the chapel in a large house, so it has an inspirational feel, however the books have been stuffed into whatever spaces available, including this very narrow passageway.



We broke for lunch, after which we convened to hear former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion read some of his new poems to us. It was a great chance to talk with the man who agreed to take the Laureate position with the goal of creating a public archive of audio recordings of poets reading their work--accessible through poetryarchive.org .



Tuesday is shaping up to be another full schedule. More on that later.