Oxford University Library

(Originally posted on 9 May 2008 on the family website)

I spent the day in Oxford with a colleague the first Saturday in May. We had an enjoyable day. We took a tour of the city centre and some of the colleges, including Merton College, one of the oldest colleges at Oxford. Some say it is the oldest, as they were the first of the original 3 colleagues at Oxford to get their charters and bylaws in order, which were then used as the template for other colleges not only at Oxford, but their arch nemesis, Cambridge.
Anyway, one of the interesting facts about Oxford University is that it has a copyright charter, which means that it has to, by law, hold a hard copy of every single book published in the UK. This is in addition to its historical documents and books. I forget the exact number, but there is supposedly in excess of 300 millions volumes of documents in the libraries. They counted about 10 years ago.
As a result, the university rapidly has run out of room, and so the solution was to build the libraries underground. There are now over 12 miles of tunnels under the city of Oxford, where the books and documents are stored. You can read any document in Oxford, provided you are either a student at one of the colleges, or a citizen "reader", but you cannot check the books out of the library. Another colleague, who attended Oxford explained the process as such:
"If you want to read a book or document, you first look it up on the electronic database, then you write your selection on a piece of paper, along with the room you are in or will be reading the book in. This is then sent to the librarians in the tunnels, who locate the book for you. Because the tunnels are so vast, they all use rollarskates or Rollerblades to get around. There are trolleys on tracks that carry the baskets with the books in them to the room where they are destined."
My colleague said she went on a tour of the tunnel library once and was fascinated by then system of moving the books. I imagine the trolleys to be a bit like old mine cars.