The Same, Yet Different

Friday found us visiting two librarians focused on serving two distinctly different populations. Ruth Bird operates the Bodleian law library, part of the Social Sciences division of University Library Services (ULS), which is unaffiliated with a specific college and provides legal research resources for all of the university students. This frees up individual college libraries to tailor their collections for their students specific needs without worrying about housing back issues of every publication on the planet. Interestingly, the law library does not circulate its resources. Students may access anything in the library, but it cannot leave the building. This ensures that all materials are available for all students at any given time. Given the nature of law resources, most of the materials wouldn't circulate anyway, and the majority of the library's constituents prefer this setup.

The law library houses around 450,000 volumes and 90% of the materials are serial--journals, monographs, reports, etc. All this information is organized using an in-house classification system, and although ULS is converting to the Library of Congress classification system, the law library will use the Moy's system, which classifies materials according to type of law.

ULS receives legal deposit, which means that publishers have to provide a free copy of every publication in the United Kingdom. That's a lot of material. The university only makes relevant material available for student use, but maintains a storage collection for items such as fiction books that aren't related to university programs.

Opened in 1964, the library has a modern style with large open floors, vast skylights, sleek brass lamps, and lots of light colored walnut. Benefactors of the building included the Rockefeller foundation, the Oppenheimer Trustees and the government of Pakistan. The furnishings are listed, which means they hold historical value, and indeed the library looks like a showroom of mid-20th century decor.

While Ruth handles students from across the university program, Naomi van Loo serves the students of New College. Despite the name, the New College is actually one of the older colleges in Oxford, founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham. The current library building opened in 1939 and besides housing the school's research materials it is also a World War I memorial. Thanks to the associate program for American students who want to complete part of their college experience at Oxford, New College library serves more undergraduates than any other college library.

Naomi firmly believes in the value of physical books as opposed to digital resources, noting that she already has some 500 book requests that will have to wait for the new fiscal year begins. New College is a lending library, so in that aspect it is more like what students in the U.S. are accustomed to, but the collection is organized using an in-house subject classification scheme that's a little different from the Dewey system.

I'm saving what's left of my camera battery, so I'll be relying on the other librarians for pictures from this visit and will post images as soon as I have access to them. We're all very busy, so be patient.