PROPOSAL for the Bodleian Libraries Bibliography Room (printing workshop) (revised January 2018, August 2018)

By Paul W. Nash

The background

In August 2015 the Bodleian Libraries moved its Bibliography Room (consisting of a printing workshop and seminar space, with a collection of specimens and realia for teaching use, hereafter referred to as the BR) from its temporary home in the Story Museum into a room in the Old Schools Quadrangle.  Regrettably this room was too small and, despite concerns raised at the time, the effect has been to fragment the workshop and reduce its capacity for teaching, academic support, outreach and commercial work for the Libraries.  The following specific problems have been caused:

1) Class-sizes have been reduced, and the number of classes held each year likewise. If one compares the number and size of classes and workshops held in the period 2014/2015 with that of 2015/2016 (or 2016/2017) this can be clearly seen (see Appendix I below).

2) Seminar teaching has been possible only with small groups, and larger groups have to be accommodated away from the BR (in the Weston Library), without the same access to its equipment and teaching-aids.

3) Similarly, printing for the Library (bookplates, keepsakes etc) has been reduced, and there has been relatively little commercial printing (in the sense of material printed explicitly for sale, in the Libraries’ shops or elsewhere). At the same time, the costs for students of attending classes and workshops in the BR have risen, compared with their 2014/2015 levels.

4) A good deal of furniture was left behind at the Story Museum, including all the BR’s chairs (new stools have had to be acquired, in a small number to suit the new space, but these are not suitable for all users of the BR), and one of the presses, the eighteenth-century common-press which formerly had a vital part in teaching in the BR, was moved to the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library. At the time of the move, it was stated that the press would still be used for demonstrations in the VSC, but this has not happened between 2015 and  2017, and rarely in 2018. Indeed, I suggest that the VSC is not a suitable place to undertake such demonstrations (since relatively little teaching is undertaken there, as it disturbs the Scholars, and the use of the ink, solvents etc. necessary for practical demonstrations is inimical to the VSC’s environment).

5) The specimens and realia of the BR have been reduced. This is not directly related to the size of the new room, but to its ethos. Under the direction of the Centre for the Study of the Book a number of the most useful specimens of printing, and the earliest (and therefore most useful) woodcut block, have been removed to the archival collections of the Bodleian. These can still be consulted (in the Weston reading rooms or, by special arrangement, seminar rooms), but not used in the BR for teaching. This is very much against the principle of teaching collections laid down by Strickland Gibson and others (see The Bodleian Library record VI:6 (September 1961), pp. 645–653).

A further problem, evident in the period leading up to the move, was the unresponsive and dismissive attitude of the Bodleian’s managers towards the then Superintendent of the Bibliography Room (the author of this proposal), and those who expressed support for the BR when it became clear that the Libraries’ management wished to down-size the Room. Indeed, the managers (including Richard Ovenden, Catriona Cannon and Chris Fletcher) made some surprisingly strenuous efforts to deny that anything was amiss in this move, to deny that there had ever been a plan to give the BR a larger space (the old Exhibition Room was promised at a meeting held on 1 September 2010), and to suppress discussion of the matter. This failure on the part of Bodley’s management, despite repeated attempts to communicate with them and resolve the problems, led to my resignation as Superintendent in August 2015.

I shall be happy to provide further details of the move, the attempts to communicate with Bodley’s managers, and the actions of those managers, on request.

In my attempted concourse with Bodley’s managers I was supported by a group of users of the BR, past and present, and when the move and down-sizing took place this group became a semi-formal support group for the BR (notionally called the Friends of the Bibliography Room). However, a further problem of the period since the move has been the flat refusal the Centre for the Study of the Book, to accept the friendly overtures of that group, and open up again lines of communication between the Bodleian and the members of the group.

The present

A new Superintendent (Richard Lawrence) has been appointed and has done excellent work; classes and workshops are being held, and work is being done for the Libraries, but all on a reduced scale compared with 2014/2015 and earlier (see Appendix I below). A great opportunity was missed in 2015 to perpetuate and, at a vital moment for the Bodleian, expand its printing-related activities, its classes and workshops for the University, visiting students and school-groups, outreach to the public at large and children in particular, and commercial work to help fund the activities of the Room.  The Libraries chose instead to down-size the BR, to alienate its Superintendent, and to try to conceal that these things had happened.

The proposal

I would like to leave the rancour and difficulties of the past few years behind, and propose a change to the BR which would see it return to its former size and status, and have the potential to grow and serve the Libraries better and further.  Specifically I propose:

1) That the BR needs an adequate space (a minimum of 100 square metres – the present space is around 65 square metres). This will allow a return to pre-2015 levels of teaching, with a dedicated seminar space of sufficient size, the accommodation of the large collection of wood type in typecases (this collection was given 2012 and is currently mostly packed up in boxes); and the expansion of printing/teaching activities in the future. To this end I propose that it be moved either to:

1A) The old exhibition room in the Old Schools Quadrangle. This was the site proposed for the BR when the move from the New Bodleian was first discussed in 2009–2010, and would be an excellent space, being of the right size, as accessible to the public as any in the Old Library, and near to a source of running water. This room remained unused in the period between the opening of new exhibition spaces opened in the Weston Library in 2014, and the spring of 2018, when it was re-opened as a ‘Reader’s Breakout Room’, a use which I suggest is entirely inappropriate to the Bodleian in every sense; an unstaffed reader’s common-room will not serve the Bodleian or its readers (‘new’ or old) well, and indeed has been used little since it opened in 2018. The room also contains a ‘pod’ (where does Bodley’s management get these ridiculous terms?), a separate room in which the needs of disabled readers can be discussed in private with members of Reader Services staff. Needless to say, this ‘pod’ has received very little use indeed. This valuable space (the old Exhibition Room) would be much better assigned to one of a dozen other library functions, including that of the Bibliography Room.  It is recognized that, in 2015, there was a serious obstacle to the use of this space, in that the removal of the air-conditioning system and cases would inevitably involve a significant capital cost (indeed, I wonder if this is was the reason the BR was down-sized and the matter not considered open for discussion in 2015 – because the Libraries had not prepared to use this room from 2014, having concentrated on the Weston project, a circumstance from which they wished to distract attention). However, this obstacle has now been removed, and the air-conditioning and exhibition cases are gone, and an expensive refit and pod-installation have been undertaken, all, I am afraid, to the detriment of the Bodleian.

Or

1B) The current Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) in the Weston Library. This would be an ideal space for the BR, of suitable size, perfectly situated and with access to running water. The only disadvantage would be that the Weston is currently open no later than 7:00 p.m., so that evening classes could not be held after that hour. Regrettably, the CDS has been seriously under-used, indeed hardly used at all, since the Weston opened (this is in no way a reflection on the current Co-Ordinator of the Centre, who has done the best job she can with the resources available to her). I propose that the BR and CDS swap rooms, as I believe the BR could make much better use of that space.

2) That the eighteenth-century common-press now in the VSC be returned to the BR for use in teaching.

3) That the teaching collections be returned to the BR, not just those items which have been removed recently, but the Gibson collection too. The Gibson collection was always intended as a bibliographical teaching aid, was begun and enlarged by donation on that basis, and should never have been removed from the BR.  It was taken into the Libraries’ archival collections in the early 1990s, but has been used since that period hardly at all.[1] The significance of the collection lies in its value as a series of bibliographical lessons (in printing, type, illustration, imposition, cancellation, binding, paper etc.) and most of the books in the collection are also held in other collections in the Bodleian. The items in the Gibson collection should be handled, and used in teaching, as their donors intended (and indeed the founders of, and donors to, this collection would be horrified at its current inaccessibility and lack of use, and the Library is resiling from its duty to respect the wishes of those donors). I propose that the collection be moved from the bookstack to a locked cabinet in the BR, the keys to be held by the Superintendent and the Co-ordinator of the CSB (to preserve security as far as is necessary). The collection should be ‘opened’, so that further teaching specimens may be added to it (as was the original intention), and also that it be properly catalogued in OLIS/SOLO, to make clear its utility as a teaching collection (thus with special emphasis on the copy-specific notes, which are searchable in SOLO), with the location ‘Bibliography Room’.

4) That a committee be established to run the BR, chaired by the Keeper of Special Collections, and that open, candid communication between the Libraries’ management and the users of the BR should be foremost among its aims.

5) That the ‘Friends of the Bibliography Room’ be recognized by the CSB and the Libraries, and representatives invited to join the committee described in 4).

These suggestions represent, I believe, a low-cost solution to the current problems of bibliographical teaching at the Bodleian.  In due course further improvements should be considered, the most important of which would be the appointment of a full-time (paid) Superintendent of the Room, who would be able to oversee the teaching and work done there, and undertake a good deal of that work and teaching, for the greater good (and profit) of the Bodleian and the University.

The Libraries’ management should also consider means of repairing the damage to their reputation by their dismissive and hostile attitude towards supporters of the room, and making amends to the former Superintendent (the author of this proposal).

However, for the time being, I believe the implementation of the five specific proposals listed above would go a long way towards repairing the damage done to teaching etc. at the Bodleian in August 2015.

Distribution. This proposal has been distributed as follows. At each stage the recipients were/are invited to comment, and add their comments to the proposal before it was/is distributed to the next group.

11 September 2017to staff in the Centre for the Study of the Book, with copies to Special Collections and the Superintendent of the Bibliography Room.

25 September 2017 to the Bodleian’s ‘Round Table’ of management. Response: see Appendix II below.

9 October 2017to the Curators of the University Libraries. This timing was intended to allow the Curators to discuss the proposal, should they wish, at their meeting of 16 October. Response: see Appendix II below.

The proposal was not discussed at the meeting of 16 October, but at this time Chris Fletcher, Head of Special Collections, agreed to meet me to discuss it. This meeting (held on 20 October) was allowed only 30 minutes, and was most unsatisfactory. Dr Fletcher rejected the figures supplied in Appendix I, and offered alternative figures, which proved to be for a different year, and so presented as to give a false impression of use of the Bibliography Room. For the figures see Appendix I; for correspondence relating to this meeting see Appendix II below.

The proposal was due for general distribution on 23 October 2017, but this was postponed following the meeting of 20 October. Further distribution of the proposal was as follows:

21 February 2018to the Curators of the University Libraries (the proposal will be presented for a second time). I believed this proposal must fall within their remit, as the tier of Bodleian administration above that of the Libraries’ ‘Round Table’ of management  This timing is intended to allow the Curators to discuss the proposal at their meeting of 5 March.

19 March 2018 general distribution to the University, its staff and the public at large. Response: see Appendix II below.

10 August 2018this proposal was revised to bring it into compliance with the Data Protection Act and University rules and distributed again, in a modest way, to the University and general public.

APPENDIX I

Use of the Bibliography Room in the academic year 2014/2015 compared with that in 2015/2016. Detailed tables (supplied by me) are available here (Appendix III below):

Headline figure for teaching/engagement (to the nearest hour): 2015/2016: 178 hours

Use of the Bibliography Room in the academic year 2016/2017. Detailed tables (supplied by the Centre for the Study of the Book) are available here (for a gloss on these figures, see Appendix II below):
https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/bibpress/bibliographical-press-report-2016-17

Headline figure for teaching/engagement (to the nearest hour): 2016/2017: 318 hours

Nota Bene.  These figures represent time only, the number of hours of teaching and engagement.  They are significant, but far from the whole story since my contention is that the reduction of space and resources in the Bibliography Room in 2015 has resulted in a reduction in the capacity of the room (both literally and intellectually). Fewer students can now be accommodated, and they can there receive a less valuable educational experience; this diminution is represented only crudely by these chronological measurements. There are, regrettably, no detailed and consistent figures available for the numbers of students and visitors accommodated in each class, nor qualitative data for the standard of teaching. But both these factors have been reduced since 2015.

I should stress that the reduction in quality of teaching has nothing to do with the personnel (and I would particularly praise Richard Lawrence for the work he has done as my successor as Superintendent of the Room).  The reduction is purely the result of reduced space and resources, specimens of printing, presses and realia. 

APPENDIX II

Responses from those to whom this Proposal was circulated.  In most cases, I have reproduced only my side of the correspondence in detail (some waffle has been omitted throughout), and paraphrased the responses from management (when present). The full correspondence can be made available on request. My own responses do not, I am afraid, always show me in the best light, and flashes of ill-temper and impatience may be observed – but I think it best to reproduce all the important verbiage.

E-mail from Frankie Wilson, Head of Assessment & Secretariat, 25 September 2017, who responded that the proposal would not be considered by Round Table because there was no reason to consider it, and it dealt with a matter which had been resolved in 2015.

Thank you for your prompt reply.  I am afraid I must disagree that the matter was closed in 2015.  It may have been closed as far as Bodley management was concerned, but that is far from being the same thing.  And, in any case, my proposal is a new one, related to the troubles of 2015, and indeed intended in part to solve them, but very far from being the same matter which Chris believes "closed".

I hope Round Table will reconsider the question of whether my proposal should be discussed, and may be willing to look at the five explicit proposals I make in a constructive light at its next meeting.

All the best
Paul xx

Following my meeting with Chris Fletcher of 20 October 2017, I sent the following e-mail in response to a message from Dr Fletcher in which he noted of the eighteenth-century common-press currently in the Visiting Scholar’s Centre was cracked and not suitable for use in teaching.

Dear Chris

Thank you.  Unless a new crack has developed in the head, that crack is some 150 years old, and repaired with a late 19-century staple (it is mentioned in Alan May's article in the PHS Journal I gave you).  There are other cracks in the woodwork too -- one in the side-rail and one in the plank -- but none of these renders the press unusable.  I would not recommend printing a long print-run on it, but for regular demonstrations it is (or was, when I last looked at it in September) perfectly fit.

I am afraid the removal of the press from the Bibliography Room, followed by an attempt to classify it as "not for use", is symptomatic of the problems we talked about today.  This press is not a museum object, just as the printed specimens once in the BR were not archival objects -- both were given to the Library for use in teaching, and should properly be used in that way.

No answer was received to this message (none was expected).

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31 October 2017

Dear Chris

Thank you again for meeting with me on the 20th, and for offering to talk to Catriona about the CDS, and to the Special Collections Management Group about the Gibson Collection.  In the mean time, the problem of our figures disagreeing has been playing on my mind.  I wonder if I have my statistics wrong.  I am sure I am right about 2014/2015 -- I was there, and remember it as if it were yesterday -- but I may have 2015/2016 wrong.  I wonder if you would let me have a copy of the figures you quoted to me when we met?  If I have got it wrong, I would like to make amends.

For the time being I am still entertaining my dream, but will do nothing more to pursue it until I hear back from you about the CDS and Gibson Collection proposal.

All the best

Paul xx

Dr Fletcher replied directly, saying that the figures he had used were for 2016/17 and that he had mentioned my proposal on the CDS to Catriona, who was, like Chris, perfectly satisfied with the current arrangement. The Gibson collection would be stock-checked and made orderable via Solo (this has still (August 2018) not happened); a handlist of the collection would be made available in the Bibliography room (this has still (August 2018) not happened). To this I replied as follows:

Dear Chris

Thank you.  Are … [the] figures available on the Intranet?  I could not find them.  …

On your second point, I have to say I am not in the least bit surprised … I am very sorry that the Bodleian is satisfied with having such a space as the Centre for Digital Scholarship used so little.  It is quite wrong in my view.  "Satisfied with the current arrangement", however, sums up Bodley's complacency, and the problems which I am trying to address, very neatly.

On the Gibson collection, none of what you report answers my proposal -- the Gibson collection should be in the Bibliography Room, used by those teaching there and handled by students, as its creators and donors intended.  Making it orderable via Solo is good, a hand-list available in the BR is good, that it can be used in the Weston is all very well -- but I note there are still no plans to catalogue it properly.  And, as I say, none of this answers the real need of the BR, and the real purpose of Gibson.

I am, among other things, a rare-books cataloguer, and I offer to catalogue the Gibson collection, on my own time, according to the latest standards for rare-books, with special attention to the copy specific aspects of the items (the most important aspects with this collection), if the Library will agree to move the collection to the Bibliography Room, "open" it for additional specimens and treat it as a teaching collection.  I venture to suggest that I would be singularly fitted for the job, knowing the collection and understanding the importance of it as a gathering of bibliographical freaks and lessons, and also knowing something of printing history and bibliography, to which these lessons relate.  I hope this offer might be seen as a quid-pro-quo rather than an attempt at bribery ...

All the best

Paul xx

No response was received to this message (none was expected).

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On 9 November I requested the figures again. Dr Fletcher replied that they would be published shortly. A link to a “Report of the Bodleian Bibliographical Press for 2016-7” containing the statistics in question (see Appendix I above) was circulated shortly afterwards.

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20 December 2017

Dear Chris

I have now had a chance to look at the figures which ... [were] supplied ... [in the] report on the Bibliography Room.  Overall, the report is good ...  But the figures are problematic, not just in themselves, but because you used them at our meeting last month as evidence against the premises of my proposal for the Bibliography Room, saying that you did not "recognize" or "accept" my figures.  In fact, these figures do not disagree with my own in any way.

My proposal included figures for the use of the Room (crude figures, admittedly, giving the number of hours of use only) for two consecutive years, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, while these figures supply statistics for the next year, 2016-2017, and compare them with mine for 2014-2015.  The figures show, as one would expect, an increase in the use of the Room in this year, compared with 2015-2016 -- but they have been spun to exaggerate this increase.  And, even in their spun state, and taking the crude measurement of time only, they show less use of the Room in 2016-2017 than in 2014-2015 (when the Room was last in larger premises, with a good range of teaching specimens, and with its former superintendent).

To look in detail at these figures, and explain what I mean by "spun":

1) The figures have been divided into four groups, which division gives rise to a higher result for "printing for higher education and research" and "workshops for schools" for 16/17. To achieve this, a number of doubtful decisions have been made about under which heading to include certain events.  For example, the 11 November event would have been better under "workshops for schools" and "photography and recording of folk singers" would have been better under "public engagement". The "higher education and research" events also include 24 hours of "one-to-one sessions", none of which is in the Outlook diary, so that their being in the correct division, and indeed their having taken place, is impossible to verify. Could some of these one-to-ones have been my own sessions with ... [my student]?  If so, they should be excluded from the statistics, as I excluded these sessions from my own figures for 14/15 and 15/16.

2) The list for 16/17 includes many events, a total of 37 verifiable hours (and I suspect others which I have not been able to verify), which took place not in the Bibliography Room but in the Weston Library.  It is not comparing like with like to include these events in the statistics, which are intended to show levels of use of the Bibliography Room for teaching, and should not include other events organized by the Centre for the Study of the Book.  This inclusion affects particularly the "public events and courses" division, which is inflated by 32 hours as a result.

3) The hours spent on working with the Bibliophiles to print their term card, and on open sessions, are not included under any of the other headings, but are listed as a separate group, evidently in an attempt to show lower results for 14/15 under "printing for higher education and research" and "public events and courses", under which headings these activities would best have been placed.

Leaving aside the question of the doubtful 24 hours of one-to-one workshops, I suggest the figures should be corrected as follows (figures rounded to the nearest whole hour):

Overall hours of teaching/engagement: 2014/2015 = 426; 2016/2017 = 318

If divided according to the first three divisions noted above:
Printing for higher education and research: 2014/2015 = 128; 2016/2017 = 126
Workshops for schools: 2014/2015 = 6; 2016/2017 = 32
Public events and courses: 2014/2015 = 292; 2016/2017 = 160

This shows, as I say, an increase in the use of the Room in 2016/2017, but still not such activity as occurred in 2014/2015.  However, I should emphasize that these figures are very crude in supporting my argument, which is that the Bibliography Room has suffered since moving to the Schola Musicae in 2015 from too little space and reduced resources and, while this has evidently affected the overall number of hours of teaching there, it has had its main impact on the numbers of students the Room can accommodate.  This is only indirectly reflected in the statistics offered here -- inevitably since numerical details of the number of students in each class or workshop are not usually available.  I will make this point in my revised proposal, which I will re-submit to the Curators in the new year ...

May I wish you a happy Saturnalia

Paul xx

No answer was received to this message (none was expected).

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Following the distribution of March 2018, the author of the proposal was summoned to a meeting with Chris Fletcher, and the Library’s Employee Relations Advisor, and told that the proposal was in breach of the Data Protection Act, and the University’s rules on the use of e-mail, and should be withdrawn. This was agreed. At the meeting the erstwhile superintendent of the BR again stated his case for the improvement of the lot of the Room, and appealed to Dr Fletcher for compromise. This appeal was rejected outright by Dr Fletcher, who stated that management would not consider any of the specific proposals made above and was entirely happy with the library’s running of the BR and the use of space in the old Exhibition Room and Centre for Digital Scholarship.

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