Another photograph from the archives at Cornell University. This one is of the Bodleian Library (Old Schools Quadrangle), although it is mislabelled on Flickr as Brasenose College. I know it’s the Bodleian, because I used to work there! The tower is known as the tower of the five orders, because it showcases different architectural styles.
The photograph is thought to date from between 1865 and 1885.
Image source: Cornell University via the Flickr Commons. No known copyright restrictions.
A photograph of the Bodleian Library which I took from the Fellows’ Garden at Exeter College on Oxford Open Doors day. You can see the south side of the Old Schools Quadrangle.
The University are spending a lot of money redeveloping the Bodleian, improving disabled access to the building, and making more material available on open shelves. It’s very strange for me, having worked there a few years ago, to imagine the changes. It seems like a revolution has taken place. Books from the New Bodleian (renamed the Weston Library) have been moved to a book storage depository in Swindon and the New Bod is being transformed into a modern library suitable for housing the library’s special collections. The book conveyor has been silenced. No more ker-clank ker-clank ker-clank to be heard on the stairwell. These are big changes, but it is good to see the University investing so much in its libraries. It would have been easier to just leave things be.
You can read about the project here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I visited Oxford yesterday, to revisit some old haunts from my library trainee year. It was Oxford Open Doors day, so I was able to visit lots of lovely places not normally open to the public, including the Codrington Library at All Souls College.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
