LIBRARIES IN BRITAIN
AND IRELAND

Contributors

CHRIS BAGGS was formerly a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information and Library Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

ALAN BELL was formerly Librarian of the London Library.

ALISTAIR BLACK is Professor of Library and Information History, Leeds Metropolitan University.

B. C. BLOOMFIELD (died 2002) was formerly Director, Collection Development, Humanities and Social Science, The British Library.

RODNEY M. BRUNT is Principal Lecturer in the School of Information Management, Leeds Metropolitan University.

ANTONIA J. BUNCH was formerly Director, Scottish Science Library.

LIZ CHAPMAN is Deputy Director of Library Services, University College London.

IAN CORNELIUS is College Lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Studies, University College Dublin.

JOHN C. CRAWFORD is Research Librarian, Glasgow Caledonian University.

JOHN C. DAY was formerly in the Department of Library and Information Studies, University of Northumbria, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

DEBBIE DENHAM (now Mynott) was formerly Reader in Children’s Libraries and Literature at the University of Central England.

BOB DUCKETT was formerly Reference Librarian, Bradford City Libraries.

ALISTAIR S. DUFF is a lecturer in the School of Communication Arts, Napier University, Edinburgh.

SIMON ELIOT is Professor of the History of the Book, University of London.

GEOFFREY FORSTER is Librarian of the Leeds Library.

P. R. HARRIS was formerly Deputy Keeper of Printed Books, British Museum, and the British Library.

MARTIN HEWITT is Professor of Victorian Studies, Trinity and All Saints, University of Leeds.

PETER HOARE was formerly University Librarian, University of Nottingham.

GUY HOLBORN is Librarian of Lincoln’s Inn Library, London.

JOHN HOPSON was formerly Archivist of the British Library, London.

ERIC HUNTER is Emeritus Professor of Information Management, Liverpool John Moores University.

GRAHAM JEFCOATE is Director of the University Library, Radboud University Nijmegen, and was formerly at the British Library.

REVD ALAN F. JESSON was formerly Bible Society’s Librarian at Cambridge University Library.

PHILIP HENRY JONES was formerly in the Department of Information and Library Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

EVELYN KERSLAKE was formerly in the Department of Information Studies, Loughborough University.

GERARD LONG is an Assistant Keeper at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

JULIA TAYLOR MCCAIN is a research assistant at Bournemouth University.

IAN MCGOWAN was formerly Librarian, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

LIONEL MADDEN was formerly Librarian, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

JACK MEADOWS was formerly a Professor in the Department of Information Studies, Loughborough University.

CATHERINE MORAN is in the Music and Drama Library, Dublin Institute of Technology.

IAN R. M. MOWAT (died 2002) was formerly University Librarian, University of Edinburgh.

DAVE MUDDIMAN is Principal Lecturer in the School of Information Management, Leeds Metropolitan University.

CHRISTOPHER MURPHY is an independent researcher and consultant.

BERNARD NAYLOR was formerly University Librarian, University of Southampton.

DAVID PEARSON is Director of Research Library Services, University of London.

SIMON PEPPER is Professor of Architecture, University of Liverpool.

PEARL QUINN is in the RTE Stills Library, Dublin.

F. W. RATCLIFFE was formerly University Librarian, University of Cambridge.

ROBERT SNAPE is Tutor/Librarian, Myerscough College, Preston.

PAUL STURGES is Professor of Library Studies in the Department of Information Studies, Loughborough University.

FRANK WEBSTER is Professor of Sociology, City University, London.

Preface to volume III

Since the middle of the nineteenth century an unprecedented expansion and diversification of library activity has taken place, which is reflected in the range of topics covered in this volume. Similarly library history, though a specialised subject, has attracted a substantial and varied literature over the years. In setting the scope of this volume we have above all been aware of the wide array of library types and library themes that need to be included in a history of libraries in the last century and a half.

Something of the eclectic nature of library provision in this period can be gleaned from the particular example of the historic (but also industrial) city of York, as presented in O. S. Tomlinson’s chapter on libraries in the book The noble city of York, edited by A. S. Stacpoole and others (York, 1972). In addition to the continuing growth of the ecclesiastical and scholarly York Minster Library, the city saw the development of more social library provision in the form of commercial circulating libraries. Ten of these existed at the start of our period; then from about the time of the First World War library services were provided by the stationers W. H. Smith and Boot’s the Chemists, and by a sprinkling of ‘twopenny libraries’ established between the wars. Other libraries have included the York Subscription Library, the Mechanics’ Institute and the Railway Institute; religious libraries, from the Society of Friends to the Bar Convent; professional libraries like the York Medical Society and the Yorkshire Law Society; the libraries of the confectionery manufacturer Rowntree and Company; educational libraries such as the two Anglican teacher-training colleges from the 1840s (now reunited as York St John College), the University of York, founded in 1961, and various school libraries; and, of course, from 1892 the municipal public library. York is also only a dozen miles from Boston Spa, one of the two main sites of the British Library and a major library force locally, as well as nationally and internationally. All these types of libraries command our attention.

Thus for the uninformed reader, unaware of the variety and depth of library provision in the modern period, a first visit to the contents pages of this volume would possibly spark surprise. A popular expectation, we speculate, is that a history of libraries will merely address the topic of public libraries; but we must also address the huge range of other libraries, not forgetting the context in which they developed – not least the implications of Betjeman’s ironic remark in his poem ‘In Westminster Abbey’:

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots’ and country lanes . . .

The lush texture of modern library history required a rigorous structuring of the varied types of libraries to be described in this volume. However, to give lengthy attention to every single type of library is an impossible task even in a volume of this size: for example map libraries, music libraries and newspaper libraries (all with holdings and services often significantly different from those of the traditional book-centred library), not to mention other multi-media collections, have not been given particular attention, though references to them will be found in more general chapters.

   The volume is divided into nine parts. The headings of some parts present themselves readily, thanks to the homogeneity of the chapters they contain. Introductory chapters consider the sources and methodologies appropriate for the study of library history in the modern era, in some cases quite different from those needed for earlier periods, and the place of the library in the modern world (the contextual introduction to the contributions that follow). There are discrete accounts of public, national and university libraries, and a section on the development of the library profession. All these divisions are relatively predictable.

   The arrangement of the rest of the material is perhaps less obvious. We were aware that, like the modern age itself, library development occurred at a different pace and in different ways in different places. Hence we have a section presenting the reader with national perspectives – from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales – that cross-cut the wide variety of library experiences described in the volume.

   In contrast to the libraries of the state and the establishment, a significant amount of effort has been expended, over the past century and a half, by people establishing, or supporting, libraries for themselves – often, though by no means always, in the context of recreational reading. It is particularly important therefore to acknowledge this autonomous social enterprise, which we mark out under the heading ‘The voluntary ethic’.

   Equally unobtrusive, though at the other end of the spectrum, is the panoply of libraries created and used by the professions and ‘experts’ – in a wide variety of fields – that so defined the rise of the modern age. Some of the major manifestations of this ‘special library’ phenomenon are presented in a separate section.

   Finally, no volume on the library in the modern era would be complete without paying appropriate attention to the implications for libraries of the competing and enabling information technologies of the digital age. While electronic developments permeate the whole recent history of libraries, we have provided space for a discussion of the issues more generally, opening the way for future historians of libraries to take up the continuing story.

Abbreviations