CURATORS OF THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Oxford University Library Services: Annual Report 2007–8
and an update on A University Library for the Twenty-first Century

• Summary
• Report of Bodley's Librarian
• Selected Notable Acquisitions
• Access to Collections
• Service Enhancements and Innovations
• Conservation and Preservation
• Outreach
• Funding
• Libraries
• Staff
• Statistics, 1 August 2007–31 July 2008

Summary

By the time an annual report appears in print, several months will have elapsed since the close of the academic and fiscal year. In the era of instantaneous communications and blogs, the measured record of an annual report stands in sharp contrast to the snippets and bursts of information that constantly compete for one's attention. An annual report is an opportunity to take stock, from the perspective of time, and to document permanently the achievements and highlights of an organisation.

For the Oxford University Library Services, 2007–8 marked several milestones in its history:

• The Garfield Weston Foundation made a hallmark donation of £25 million and Julian Blackwell pledged £5 million in recognition of the Library's inspiring plans for transforming the New Bodleian Library into an advanced Special Collections library. These exceptional gifts, matched by £25 million from Oxford University Press, dramatically brought forward the project to open up the wonders of the Bodleian to young and old in an inviting ground-floor public space entered from Broad Street.
• The Library's access to electronic resources continued to grow. With over 28,000 e-journals and hundreds of thousands of digitised books and manuscripts, Oxford's libraries provided their readers more digital content than any other academic library in the UK.
• An ambitious Estates programme, aimed at creating library facilities that match the expectations of world-class researchers, developed a number of projects:
  • the Old Road Knowledge Centre opened to serve bio- medical researchers;
  • the Radcliffe Science Library completed its renovation to modernise its user spaces and services;
  • the programme for the Humanities and Mathematics Library on the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter was developed in concert with staff and readers and, following a highly competitive review, the architectural practice Bennetts was selected to design the Humanities Building (Phase I) of which the Humanities and Mathematics Library serves as foundation and community hub;
  • plans for a high-density storage facility continued to develop following the denial of planning permission to build at Osney Mead;
  • designs for the transformation of the New Bodleian from an antiquated book-stack housing backroom operations and some reading rooms into a refurbished Special Collections library were developed with architects WilkinsonEyre.
• OULS delivered several service enhancements, including expanding Saturday hours in several libraries, extending wireless access into numerous reading rooms, and upgrading its public Web interface by the addition of innovative software products that simplify searching and retrieval.
• The Library successfully met the challenge of reducing its deficit substantially by introducing efficiencies in the acquisition and cataloguing of materials, by consolidating service points, and by undertaking a thorough review of operations and implementing a series of recommendations that resulted in a more economical provision of services. OULS Human Resources and Accounting were especially constructive in their contributions to the infrastructure of the Library.
• A new managerial structure was introduced, uniting functional and disciplinary activities for improved communication and coordination of activities. A new position, Assistant Director for Research and Learning Services, was created to oversee the services to the divisions and to incorporate the work of Reader Services. The Library Executive consists of Bodley's Librarian; the Associate Director and Keeper of Special Collections and IT; Assistant Director for Research and Learning Services; Assistant Director for Collections and Resource Description; Director of Administration and Finance; and the Executive Secretary. An expanded advisory group, the Cabinet, includes the above, plus the Head of Systems and e-Research Services, the Head of Humanities Libraries, the Head of Social Science Libraries, and the Head of Science and Medical Library Services and Keeper of Scientific Books.
• OULS continued its integration of libraries. The Geography and Hooke Libraries ceased to exist as separate entities and were incorporated into the Radcliffe Science Library. The Old Road Knowledge Centre replaced two small medical science libraries. Two libraries joined OULS: the Ashmolean's Heberden Coin Library is now administered by the Sackler and the Wellcome Institute History of Medicine Library is now an OULS member.
• The Library's public programmes flourished, with back-to-back record-breaking attendance and positive reviews for exhibitions 'Italy's Three Crowns: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio', 'Citizen Milton', and 'Beyond the Work of One: Oxford College Libraries and their Benefactors'. A series of lectures, poetry readings, and other activities celebrating creative endeavours opened up the wealth of the Library's holdings and expertise to a broad audience. The Bodleian Library imprint graced several publications, including scholarly works on two of its great treasures, the Gough Map and the Flora Graeca.

OULS is a vibrant organisation that is meeting the challenges of the Information Age with strength and energy. Its staff is dedicated to providing excellent service to its users, and it seeks to be a productive collaborator with colleagues throughout the University, including college librarians, museum curators, and academics in the divisions. Outside the University, OULS staff are active contributors to professional research and societies, authoring articles, presenting papers, and submitting successful proposals for grants. The Library is building on a centuries-old tradition of excellence which promises to continue in the years to come.

On 22 September 2005 the Curators of the University Libraries published A University Library for the Twenty- first Century, a Report to Congregation. ¹ In the three-and-a-half years since the report was issued, Oxford University Library Services has advanced the proposals set forth in the report substantially. In the Annual Report for 2007–8 the Library links its achievements and activities to the plans outlined in the report, A University Library for the Twenty-first Century, showing a trajectory of progress toward most of the goals identified, but also the occasional diversion. Most notably, the delays associated with and finally the denial of planning permission to construct the Depository at Osney Mead have served as the catalyst for rethinking the role of the high-density storage facility in the Library's service strategy.

This Annual Report and Update will be followed in the coming weeks by a document that looks at the future of Library services as delivered in new physical and virtual configurations. The library strategic services paper will set the new direction for the Library in the context of the themes of the Library for the Twenty-first Century report, showing constancy over time, but also a reinterpretation of some aspects of implementation that takes into account changed circumstances.

Later in 2009, at the close of Trinity Term, OULS expects to issue a formal strategic plan that expands on the objectives outlined in the University's Strategic Plan ² and that takes into account feedback from user surveys, focus groups, and other sources. OULS's Strategic Plan for 2009–14 will serve as a blueprint for the coming half decade and will replace the Vision for 2011, ³ OULS's most recent strategic document.

In 2005 the report A University Library for the Twenty-first Century identified five key demands to which the University's central library services were responding:

• the need to increase storage capacity for collections;
• the need to improve the conditions in which collections are held;
• the need to enhance services to users by providing better access to collections, including longer opening hours, browsable stock, increased lending and stack calls;
• the need to expand electronic and digitised collections;
• the need to make the most cost-effective use of resources.

The phenomenon of digital collections is a distinctly twenty-first-century issue, but it connects tightly to the perennial concerns of storage, preservation, access, and cost-effectiveness. Although the digital is often touted in the popular press as a free good that will enable all to have instantaneous access to the storehouse of the world's knowledge, thus resolving the constraints under which libraries have operated for millennia, the reality is much more nuanced. Digital and online information services are major assets in a university library's panoply of services, but they are most effective when combined with a variety of other support activities, including the work of subject specialists and other information professionals. Underpinning the Library's services is an infrastructure that enables scholars and researchers to use its resources effectively. The infrastructure is physical—comprising the distributed estate of libraries and such aids as the paper catalogues—and electronic, especially the online catalogue and Web-based access to the Library's holdings.

The Annual Report which follows provides specific examples of the ways in which the Library is advancing its services within the framework of the vision endorsed by the Curators and presented to Congregation in 2005. The report is illustrative, but not comprehensive, since the activities of Oxford's libraries are so various and manifold.

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Report of Bodley's Librarian

2007–8 was a turbulent year. It commenced, as had several previous years, with a massive deficit, pegged at over £3 million on a budget of over £32 million. In the early weeks of 2007–8 expenses for which the Library had not accounted added almost £1 million to the gap it was trying to close. This was hardly an auspicious beginning, and it was a severe challenge to aim for a budget target of reducing the deficit to £2 million whilst maintaining the services of a world-class library. Indeed, the goal was not only to maintain excellent service, but to expand the capability of the Library to respond to reader needs. It is a tribute to the staff of the Oxford University Library Services that they were able to achieve this goal under intense financial pressure.

The deficit loomed large following a detailed accounting of income and expenditures and an analysis of library funding completed under the auspices of the Services Funding Working Group on Libraries during the previous year. As the University prepared for a budget under which charges for direct and some indirect library services would be allocated to divisions, it was essential to have a thorough understanding of costs and of the relationship between expenditures and services rendered. The report, issued in June 2007, ⁴ illuminated the substantial subsidy the University contributed toward the Bodleian's role in serving the 'Res Publica Literatorum'. The Library's reputation, and indeed, to some degree, Oxford's, rests on the fulfilment of this mission to collect, preserve and make available the published and archival record of our civilisation for scholars. However, a shortfall of some £4 million between the support received through HEFCE and the actual costs of providing the services to external readers, coupled with increased demands on the part of divisions for accountability, provided the impetus for OULS to review its activities and to identify more cost-effective approaches for service delivery. At the same time, the Library sought to improve qualitatively the support it provided for its Oxford and international base of registered readers, a total population exceeding 65,000.

The Library also examined the revenue side of the equation, making the case to HEFCE that it was underfunded for the services it provided to external UK Higher Education Institution researchers. In February 2008 HEFCE issued a report by Sir Ivor Crewe on research library funding that designated Oxford as a National Research Library. The report recommended the development of a new model for allocating funding in 2009. Other sources of funding for OULS are grants, donations, and income earned through its revenue- generating arms of Commercial Operations and Publishing.

With a budget of over £32 million and a staff of well over 600 employees, there were opportunities to manoeuvre. Indeed, the Curators' report A University Library for the Twenty-first Century identified the 'fragmented and costly library estate operating on almost eighty sites' ⁵ as one of the Library's deficiencies needing remediation. Through a buildings and refurbishment programme that included a new depository; the renovation of the New Bodleian Library; a new Humanities and Area Studies Library in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter; the remodelling of the Radcliffe Science and Hooke Libraries; the building of the Old Road Knowledge Centre; and a conservation laboratory, OULS anticipated staff savings over a five-year period of up to '£2 million overall, with savings made through redeployment, staff turnover and voluntary severance'. ⁶

The lynchpin in leveraging these anticipated savings was the Depository. Planned as an automated repository to hold eight million volumes, the Depository would serve first as the surge space for the New Bodleian's copious collections during the Broad Street library's renovation. With over 3.5 million items crammed into its antiquated ziggurat of stacks, the New Bodleian was in desperate need of renovation. In almost the same timeframe as these two construction projects the Library had ambitious plans to build a new Humanities Library that would consolidate at least ten faculty libraries, and the Depository would serve as a reservoir for materials not destined for the million-volume open-stack Humanities Library. In 2005 the prospects for the Depository had seemed rosy. The Osney Mead Industrial Estate, close to the centre of Oxford, was not predicted to present any problems in gaining planning permission.

Nonetheless, the Depository proved highly controversial. Concerns about protection from flooding and design issues relating to the ungainly bulk of the building preoccupied the Library in 2006, leading to revised plans which addressed the points raised. In 2007 OULS confidently anticipated the approval of its planning application. When torrential rains in July flooded Oxfordshire and made the proposed Osney Mead site an island, the University deferred its appearance at the City Council's Strategic Development Planning Committee in order to assess new information about the potential for flooding. The 26 September meeting was a nail-biter, with the proposal narrowly winning approval by a single vote. Before champagne corks could be popped, members of the City Council invoked a regulation that permitted the vote to be reconsidered before the full Council. Opponents to the proposed Depository location were numerous. Yet because of its crucial role in achieving the estates objectives for the Library and in making progress on the larger goals of modernising the Library, OULS persisted in seeking planning permission. Debate about the issues figured prominently in local, national, and even international press. Disappointingly, for the Library, the proposed building was strongly rejected by the Council in November. In December the University filed paperwork to appeal against the decision, and in July 2008 a two-week public inquiry was held before a planning inspector appointed by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

The consequences of delay were severe. Overflowing materials which could no longer be shoe-horned into the New Bodleian were sent to Cheshire to be stored in salt mines managed by a commercial operation. ⁷ Originally conceived as a short-term solution, the outsourcing of books in 2007–8 cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, adding to the Library's deficit. To reduce expenditures, the Library limited deliveries of requested items from DeepStore to twice weekly, inconveniencing readers.

The New Bodleian's renovation was delayed, leaving the heritage collections stored there at risk. In 2005, because of the inadequacy of the storage environment and the vulnerability created for the Library's archival holdings, the National Archives (TNA) had granted the Bodleian only a provisional certification to house collections of national importance, contingent on making progress in establishing BS5454 (British Standard for the Storage and Exhibition of Archival Materials) conditions. ⁸ With the expiration of the provisional certification and neither Depository nor renovated New Bodleian in sight, TNA reassessed the situation in April 2008. In June TNA granted a further extension of three years because OULS was committed to creating a BS5454-compliant environment in both the Depository and the New Bodleian, as evidenced by its decision to appeal against the denial of planning permission. Yet every month that passed without achieving that standard left irreplaceable heritage collections at risk of fire and water damage. For the first half of 2008, the staff of the Library existed in a kind of limbo, unable to move forward on plans formulated three years earlier. As the fiscal year came to an end, the Library waited for a decision by the Planning Inspector, expected in early September 2008.

Like water dammed by an obstacle in its path, the energy of the Library found expression in other areas. Planning for the New Bodleian continued with regular meetings with staff from WilkinsonEyre, the architectural firm chosen for the renovation. The New Bodleian would be transformed from outmoded book fortress into a rejuvenated space for special collections, including suitable housing for the Bodleian's most venerable treasures; modern reading rooms designed for scholars who combine their study of ancient artifacts with the resources of a technologically advanced society; the Centre for the Study of the Book; conservation laboratories that would unify scattered activities and draw on cutting edge scientific tools to preserve Oxford's historic collections; and inspiring public spaces to welcome visitors and scholars alike to exhibition galleries, an auditorium and a café. ⁹

The Humanities, Area Studies, and Mathematics Library gained shape as Library staff joined University colleagues on the Humanities Project Sponsor Group (PSG) in reviewing and selecting architects for the Humanities building, of which the proposed Library will represent about 25 per cent of the £200 million facility. Phase I, which is anticipated to be completed in 2012, will bring together the Faculties of English, History, Philosophy, and Theology. ¹⁰ Correspondingly, the Humanities Library will unite the faculty libraries of those four disciplines and will anticipate services for mathematics, area studies, and most other humanities subjects. The Humanities PSG conducted a thorough evaluation of leading architects with practices in the UK, which, for those who participated, was an intensive tutorial in modern architecture. With the creation of the academic centre at the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter surely ranking as one of the most significant advances in the history of Oxford, extraordinary care was taken in the selection of architects. Bennetts, the firm chosen to carry forward the design, presented the Library as the heart of the Humanities building, increasing its prominence both through a proposed ground-level entrance and a beacon-like glass lantern reading room rising two stories above ground opposite the historic Radcliffe Observatory.

As part of the planning process, librarians led a series of focus groups and individual interviews with humanities scholars to gain insight into the current and anticipated future working practices of academic staff and students. Study in the Humanities was found to be extremely varied in nature, and the methods and extent of use of library materials very diverse. The main unifying theme was an enthusiastic take-up of electronic resources, where available, together with continued use of printed resources for particular functions, such as rapid browsing and comparison of multiple sources or editions. A particular aspiration for the new Library is the flexibility to adapt, cost-effectively and without disruption to service, to further changes in information provision and ways of working.

Two other projects featured in the Estates objectives in A University Library for the Twenty-first Century ripened toward fruition in 2007–8. The Old Road Knowledge Centre, which replaces the George Wiernik Library and the library in the Rosemary Rue Building, offers medical researchers enhanced physical library facilities on the ground floor of the Old Road Research Building. Features include group study and training space, greatly improved IT provision, enhanced and larger private study and collections spaces, self-issue facilities and comfortable communal spaces collocated with café and atrium space. The Knowledge Centre also provides a base for outreach librarians with responsibility for the Churchill and Old Road sites. ¹¹

The Radcliffe Science Library underwent a significant transformation in 2007–8. Building works to re- purpose the Library as a central reference and lending library began in March 2007 and were scheduled to be completed at the end of September 2007. Slippages in the schedule, resulting from delays caused by the discovery of much greater use of asbestos in the building than originally anticipated, meant that the hand-over was not completed until May 2008. Among the improvements added are a new lift giving level access to all floors in both wings for the first time; a fully-glazed linking structure housing a new staircase, affording magnificent views of the University Museum of Natural History and of Rhodes House; an access control system; a new enquiry and issue desk; and a lounge area with comfortable seating. Below ground, the former staff-only stack area on level 3 has become a public area for textbook collections, and in the former Hooke Library space a new thirty- computer training room has been created, with adjacent refreshment area. In conjunction with the renovation the Hooke Lending Library and the Geography Library were integrated into the RSL, following the plans to reduce fragmentation of the Library's estate in order to improve services and reduce costs. ¹²

The trend to consolidate libraries is facilitated both by parallel developments in academic research topics which span multiple disciplines and by the rapidly accelerating quantity of content now available electronically. In 2005 the Curators successfully made the case for a major capital investment programme with five objectives:

• to increase the accessibility of library collections;
• to increase the storage capacity for the collections;
• to improve greatly the conditions in which collections are held;
• to bring together in a more cost-effective way currently dispersed activities;
• to expand very substantially the electronic content available to University members by purchase of more electronic journals and datasets (benefiting in particular, but not exclusively, science and medicine), and by digitising older material to improve access to historic collections (benefiting in particular, but not exclusively, the Humanities). ¹³

The ELISO (Electronic Library and Information Services for the University of Oxford) plan made the case in 2004 for substantial investment in electronic resources to bring the University closer to its peers. Increases to the budget in subsequent years, predicated on the savings that would result from greater efficiency and elimination of duplication, resulted in access to electronic journals and databases, which, coupled with the Library's active digitisation programme, brought OULS to the position of an unrivalled electronic collection in the UK. Oxford readers particularly relished the freedom of access to such a wide range of materials. They could now enjoy consulting business databases whilst working in India, finding an important citation for a research proposal whilst sitting in a laboratory, or, in the perennial tardiness of some students who complete papers at 2 a.m., locate the full text of a relevant book long after the Bodleian had locked its doors.

Titles in the public domain scanned in the Library partnership with Google supplemented purchased resources and were made available via Google Book Search to the world. A number of other digital library initiatives were undertaken, including the digitisation of the Library's Medieval and Renaissance Blockbooks, and Masterpieces of the Oriental Book, each funded through a private donor.

The Political Poster Collection from the Conservative Party Archives was digitised with support from the Conservative Party Archive Trust, and digital images of more than 25,000 medieval and Renaissance manuscript illuminations were mounted on a Bodleian Web site following their digitisation funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for inclusion in the ArtSTOR resource.

The JISC-funded Electronic Ephemera project, a collaboration with ProQuest Information, began. This project embraces the cataloguing, digitisation, and conservation of over 60,000 items from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera.

Funding was received under the JISC–NEH Transatlantic Digitisation Programme for a collaborative project with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC to create a resource called the Shakespeare Quartos Archive, with the aim of providing a single interface for images of all the quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays and the rich encoding of the text of all surviving quarto editions of Hamlet.

The encoding of early modern English books as part of the collaboration between Oxford and Michigan University Library in the EEBO TCP Project continued.

A pilot project in the digitisation and cataloguing of manuscripts and paintings from the Oriental Collections was mounted by the Oxford Digital Library in November 2007.

After years of discussion, the first steps have now been taken to begin the digitisation of Oxford's Cairo Genizah fragments as a contribution to the creation of a worldwide Genizah database. The fragments in Oxford number approximately 5,000, out of an accumulation of almost 200,000 Jewish manuscripts and fragments—now scattered in institutions and private collections world-wide. They were found in the nineteenth century in the genizah or store room of the Ben-Ezra synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo) in Egypt. The Bodleian's Genizah fragments, though small in number, are of great significance particularly in the areas of Talmud and liturgy. Generous donors have already contributed to the project.

Much progress was made on the creation of a Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), using the Fedora Digital Repository software, and with funding from the JISC as part of the Electronic Ephemera Project. This work was given a significant boost by the announcement that Oxford would become a Sun Centre for Excellence in Digital Libraries, allowing the Library to acquire, at very favourable terms, the new Honeycomb Storage Technology developed by Sun Microsystems. This will also allow OULS to mount the Oxford copy of the resources digitised within the Google project.

The year 2007–8 saw the completion of the initial development phase of the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA), the institutional repository for the University, managed by OULS. Numerous advocacy activities were undertaken by Library staff including two large-scale seminars. The ORA system began to be populated with content ranging from pre-prints to e-theses and conference materials.

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Selected Notable Acquisitions

In September, and thanks to the generosity of All Souls College, the History Librarian was fortunate enough to buy a rare printed facsimile of a primary source document held in the Secret Archives of the Vatican and discovered in 2001. Access to Processus contra Templarios will allow researchers to study the proceedings of the investigation into and trials of the Knights Templar. This is an unusual opportunity for the Library to make such rare material available to medievalists in the UK. The entire run of 799 copies was reserved by libraries from across the world within two hours of being offered for sale and it is understood that very few will be coming to this country.

Substantial support from the British Inter-university China Centre, a project based in Oxford and involving the universities of Oxford, Bristol and Manchester, has enabled the purchase of two major electronic resources: China National Knowledge Infrastructure's Century Journals Project, which has taken more than one thousand titles in the humanities and social sciences back to their first year of publication, and the backfile of Shanghai Library's National index to Chinese newspapers and periodicals, which is the definitive search tool for all Chinese periodical publications from 1857 to the present.

Another major addition to e-resources included the IEEE/IEE journal packages in electrical engineering.

The Bodleian Library received a generous bequest of collections from the late Bent Juel-Jensen, one of the Library's most supportive friends. Ethiopic manuscripts and collections of early printed books relating to Sir Philip Sidney were among the items received.

Sir Roy Strong made a gift of the papers of the Trevelyan Oman family, including the papers of Sir Charles Oman, the Oxford historian.

Acquisition of the Particular Book of James Nedeham completed the sequence of the manuscript royal building accounts for the reign of Henry VIII, an acquisition supported by the Friends of the Bodleian, the Friends of the National Libraries, the Aurelius Trust, and a number of private donors.

The papers of the Harcourt family of Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire were allocated to the Bodleian Library by the Secretary of State on behalf of the nation, under the Acceptance in Lieu of Tax (AIL) scheme. A grant was received from the Marc Fitch Fund to catalogue the papers.

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Access to Collections

As the Library's collections continue to grow and encompass a wide range of formats, having the right tools for managing and discovering them becomes ever more important. In 2005 the Library had contracted with VTLS for software that was intended to replace its ageing GEAC library management system. In 2006 and 2007 the Library postponed its implementation three times and in 2008 it made the decision not to continue with VTLS. At the same time, it moved forward with plans to introduce a more user-friendly interface to its collections, concentrating on aspects of the project which would provide new software for better reference linking, enhanced management of and access to electronic journals and datasets, and improved access to library materials managed through OLIS. It purchased three products (SFX, MetaLib, and Primo) from Ex Libris that provide better control over its electronic resources and which simplify searching and discovery for readers. New interfaces were developed using both harvesting and federated search technology. OxLIP+, providing access to the Library's bibliographic databases and articles, was released at the end of this year. At the same time, 'Oxford Single Sign On' was introduced, simplifying and improving authentication of remote users of the Library's subscriptions services.

SFX was launched in September 2007 under the name 'Oxford University e-Journals'. It provides an A–Z list of our e-journals and also full-text linking from within bibliographic databases. Feedback from readers has been extremely positive. The system is very reliable and easy to use.

After a lengthy procurement process which included the in-depth evaluation of several systems, Oxford University signed a contract with Ex Libris in April 2008 to purchase the federated search product MetaLib as a replacement for the homegrown OxLIP system. (OxLIP gives alphabetic and subject-based access to databases, electronic reference works, e-book and e- journal packages) MetaLib integrates seamlessly with SFX, the system used for e-journal management and access. The third element in the package, Primo, branded SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online) was tested at the end of the fiscal year for introduction in Michaelmas Term 2008. Primo integrates both local and remote resources to give flexible cross-searching capabilities.

The shift to integrated products, rather than a monolithic approach that expected all resources to be managed through a single system, reflects a trend in libraries to seek innovative ways to provide access to a diverse array of resources that have been acquired and indexed over time using many different systems. This approach will be more congenial for Oxford, where college, departmental, and OULS libraries represent their holdings according to a variety of conventions, and where special systems have been employed to catalogue literature in non-Roman scripts or non-textual formats.

Another effort undertaken by the University, thanks to the efforts of the ICT Support Unit, was the extension of wireless networking into many reading rooms and libraries. By the end of 2007–8 the following had been completed: Bodleian Law Library, Duke Humfrey's Library, Education, English Faculty Library, New Bodleian Library, Philosophy Library, Social Science Library, the Taylor Institution, and the Vere Harmsworth Library. Wireless access is an integral part of service delivery as more resources are available electronically and an increasing number of readers arrive at libraries with laptops.

Behind the scenes, Library staff contributed bibliographic records to populate the Library's catalogues. Over 730,000 records were added, including over 330,000 records for most of the large electronic datasets.

Projects to complete the cataloguing of the medieval Psalters in the Bodleian's Collections (funded by a private donor), and the Latin manuscripts from German-speaking lands (funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung) continued, as did the cataloguing of the Abinger Shelley Archive (funded by the John R. Murray Charitable Trust). A private donor funded a project to catalogue a series of Oxfordshire estate papers; the cataloguing of the Tolkien Archive continued with support from the Tolkien Trust, and the cataloguing of Philip Larkin papers was funded through the Strachey Trust. Funding was also received from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a project entitled Harmonia Mundi. This is a pilot project in collaboration with Cambridge University Library intended to enhance access to printed music collections within Oxford and Cambridge through the automation of manual catalogues. Funding was also received from the Wireless Preservation Trust to continue the cataloguing of the Marconi Archive; and from the European Parliament to catalogue a portion of the papers of Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne.

The Vere Harmsworth Library has completed cataloguing a large set of previously uncatalogued microfiches, 'Travels in the South and Southwest', through the creative use of OCLC FirstSearch technology.

Work has been undertaken on the Aris papers, including preparation of eleven boxes of cuttings about Aung San Suu Kyi collected from the foreign language press, mainly from Burma and Thailand, 1988–98 ( 5,347 folios).

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Service Enhancements and Innovations

Extension of library opening hours marked a significant step in service enhancement. The Social Science libraries continue to find new ways to help staff and students to get the most from the resources. The Social Science Library created an induction video for freshers hosted by YouTube which has been viewed 2,275 times. ¹⁴ It was cited as an example of best practice for library marketing in an SPEI Digital Library Report. Web 2.0 developments encourage greater collaboration between libraries and their users as well as providing new avenues for sharing information. These included online tutorials on the use of e-resources, RSS feeds for subject-specific accessions, links to SOLO for online reading lists, a 'Frequently Asked Questions' wiki, online users' forum, a Bodleian Law blog, a Google custom search engine for statistical data, and several virtual library tours. The Social Science Library, the Education Library, and the Refugee Studies Centre Library each created MP3 versions of their guides. The Law Library has introduced a weekly online Law Library newsletter which has proved very popular and useful to its readers.

The libraries have all been active in developing Web sites in recent years, and there was great enthusiasm to continue this development and to adopt the new OULS format for library and subject pages in partnership with the OULS Web Coordinator. The new system has allowed the easy rollout of functions such as book suggestion forms as well as supporting timely updating within a more consistent format. The Bodleian Library Web pages were overhauled and redesigned, alongside the OULS site, and were the first to go live at Easter. The QuestionPoint virtual reference service (managed by staff at the Main Enquiry Desk) was replaced by 'Ask an Oxford Librarian'. History was also an early adopter and its site now includes RSS feeds, an online enquiry form, no fewer than thirteen online guides to services, collections and e-resources, an archive of training material, easy linking to reading lists and supporting material for the undergraduate syllabus, and StudentZone (developed in partnership with the undergraduate representative on the Committee for Library Provision).

In the area of electronic communications, two or three news items were uploaded on the OULS/Bodleian Library Web site each week. The Communications and Publishing Office began recording, editing, clearing rights for, and mounting podcasts branded as BODcasts in October 2007, and recorded four events, resulting in twenty-two podcasts. With the launch of the new Web site in January 2008 they initiated e-announcements and created a facility on the Exhibition and Events Web site for readers to register for updates. Over 100 readers registered in seven months, and e-announcements began monthly with the performance of The Winter's Tale in July 2008.

OULS actively addresses the needs of its disabled readers. In 2007–8 the Accessible Resources Acquisition and Creation Unit took the initiative to make available the University's undergraduate and graduate prospectuses in a variety of accessible formats.

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Conservation and Preservation

In addition to the continuing work of conserving and preserving the Library's extensive collections, Conservation Care undertook a number of special projects, including:

• the conservation of manuscript volumes in the Carte Collection;
• the conservation of the Gough Map;
• the major collaboration with the Electronic Ephemera project;
• the digitisation, repair and rebinding of MS. Laud Misc. 740 sponsored by a private donor;
• repairs and surveying on the Marconi Archive;
• repair and cleaning of Ordnance Survey maps prior to digitisation.

  A major success was the completion of the project to build a cold-store for the storage of nitrate-based materials from OULS as well as other ASUC Collections. This is sited at the Nuneham Courtenay Depository.

During the year, the Preserv project moved into a second phase, Preserv2. Run jointly with the British Library, Southampton University and the National Archives, the project has explored some of the difficult issues of long- term preservation of digital objects, from format identification on ingest to generic repository harvesting interfaces providing Web-based preservation services. As a direct outcome of this work, Ben O'Steen of Oxford and David Tarrant of Southampton won the prestigious CRIG award at the Open Repositories 2008 Conference.

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Outreach

The Bodleian's main summer exhibition in 2007 was 'Italy's Three Crowns: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio'. It was curated by Professor Mark McLaughlin and viewed by 36,090 people, receiving favourable reviews in The Times Literary Supplement. The winter exhibition, 'Citizen Milton', was curated by Dr Sharon Aitchinstein, Reader in Renaissance Literature at St Edmund Hall. A record number of visitors for a winter exhibition—26,668 people—attended. It was featured as The Times' Top Exhibition, and favourably reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement. A booklet associated with the exhibition, generously funded by Bernard Quaritch Ltd., sold out its print-run of 2,000 copies. The 2008 summer exhibition, 'Beyond the Work of One', opened on 24 May 2008 to celebrate the successive generations of benefactors who by their generosity have enriched the Oxford college libraries' holdings for a period of over 700 years. Highlights included a fourteenth-century bishop's mitre made of silk with pearls and semi- precious stones belonging to William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England, founder of New College; an illuminated Psalter that belonged to Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII, and Katherine of Aragon, wife of Henry VIII; Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus, illustrated with hand-coloured woodcuts; Samuel Johnson's gruel mug, used on his regular visits to his friend Thomas Warton in Oxford; Codex Laud, the pre-Columbian screenfold manuscript from southern Mexico which now bears William Laud's name; and Gerard Manley Hopkins' autograph manuscript, 'The Dublin Notebook'.

Oriental Collections and Western Manuscripts staff collaborated on a spectacular display to mark World Book Day 2008 on 6 March 2008, featuring the Creation as recorded in three beautiful and historic manuscripts of the sacred books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam—the Torah, the Bible and the Qur'an. Guest speakers Dr Norman Solomon, Professor Alister McGrath, and Professor Yahya Michot each gave a ten-minute talk relating to the theme in Convocation House at lunch-time.

The Taylor Institution Library and the English Faculty Library are most active in mounting small exhibitions. The Taylor Institution Library held three exhibitions this year. The first, in September and October, organised jointly with the Bodleian's exhibition, 'Italy's Three Crowns', was entitled 'Dante: A small exhibition of early printed books and later editions from the Taylorian's Moore and Paget Toynbee Collections'. In March, 'Fernando Pessoa: Man of a Thousand Faces' illustrated the work of the twentieth- century Portuguese writer, and coincided with the performance at St John's College of a one-act play about the life of Pessoa, arranged by the Instituto Camões Centre for Portuguese Language. In June 'Le Bureau des Singes: towards a new Bestiaire' was an exhibition of new works by artists Lucy Parker and Maisie James inspired by the Taylorian's Strachan Collection of livres d'artistes, on which the two had worked as archival assistants.

On Magna Carta Day, December 2007, the Bodleian's holdings of thirteenth-century engrossments of Magna Carta were viewed by over 1,500 people. The day included a presentation by Richard Sharpe, Professor of Diplomatic, attended by 200 people.

In October 2007 a poetry reading to celebrate the Bodleian's acquisition of the Clutag Press Archive was held in Convocation House, with readings by Bernard O'Donoghue, Seamus Heaney and Mick Imlah. A further poetry reading by Geoffrey Hill took place as part of the Oxford Literary Festival in March 2008.

In January 2008 the visiting American scholar Robert Bachelor realised the significance of the Selden Map of China, MS. Selden supra 105. The map has always been known as an interesting curiosity from the time it arrived in the Library in the mid seventeenth century, but Bachelor was the first to notice the shipping routes, which make the map unique among both Chinese and indeed European maps of the period, and he has described it as 'an object of globally recognizable significance'. All earlier maps looked inwards and depicted China as the centre of the world. The Selden Map looks outwards, showing China's contacts with a greater East Asia and the rest of the known world, as far west as Aden and the Strait of Hormuz. In May 2008, Timothy Brook made the map the focus of his inaugural lecture as Shaw Professor of Chinese.

The Centre for the Study of the Book thrived, with a symposium in February 2008 on 'The Printed Book in Sixteenth-century Europe', held in collaboration with All Souls College, and funded by All Souls and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; and a Curators' Workshop on Islamic manuscripts, with speakers from the University of California San Diego, the British Library, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Leiden. Special lectures included the co-sponsoring of the McKenzie Lecture delivered by Professor Isobel Mayrhofer from the University of Witwatersrand. Masterclasses were delivered in Medieval Studies by Richard Gameson and Professor Emilie Savage-Smith, and 'The Comparative Codicology of the Hebrew Manuscript Book' by Professor Malachi Beit-Arie of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in collaboration with the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. In November 2007 the Centre co-hosted with the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages a research seminar entitled 'Editing Kafka', with six international speakers, which drew an audience of seventy delegates. In July 2008 the Centre hosted the Bruce Chatwin Seminar, in collaboration with New College, featuring papers from six academics working on aspects of the work of Bruce Chatwin, whose papers are housed by the Bodleian Library.

Masterpieces from the Library's collections were loaned to the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford; the Field Museum, Chicago; the Tate Gallery, London; the Exhibition Centre, Winchester Cathedral; and to a special exhibition which was mounted in the British Academy, London, in June 2007 to mark the launch of the University's Campaign, Oxford Thinking. xxx Bodleian Library publications flourished, with eleven titles (four of which were reprinted) ranging from scholarly to popular trade publications. Postcards from the Russian Revolution and Postcards from the Trenches reproduced images from a recent bequest of an important collection of political propaganda postcards. Together with the Gough Map, they were reviewed on the Today programme (BBC Radio 4). The Independent published a double-page spread of the Gough Map with an excellent distillation of its history and meaning, and the Daily Mail featured the map in a one- page article (1 February 2008).

The Persian Book of Kings is the fifth title in the series Treasures form the Bodleian Library, which gives readers access to seldom-seen treasures through these highly illustrated cultural studies written by leading scholars. The Magnificent Flora Graeca was launched by Dame Shirley Sheerwood at a reception in Blackwell's Bookshop in December. Two books were recommended by Choice, the influential reviewing body of the American Library Association for US academic libraries: The Magnificent Flora Graeca and The Slave Trade Debate.

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Funding

'The Bodleian is unique; it not only has possibly the largest and most important University collections in the world, but it is leading the development of cutting-edge information services which are so vital to academic research. I am proud that my personal Trust can support the Bodleian and thereby enable its neighbour, Blackwell's, to be a shared destiny lifetime partner.'

So Julian Blackwell (Trinity College,1950), President of Blackwell's, described his extraordinarily generous decision to make a personal gift of £5 million in support of the transformation of the New Bodleian Library. Not only was Mr Blackwell's gift—the largest single cash donation made by a private individual to Oxford's libraries—important in its own right; its effect resounded well beyond the financial level. Here was a former student of the University, whose working life has been separate from, but intimately connected with, the Bodleian, demonstrating his belief in the power of Oxford's libraries to advance the frontiers of scholarship, and to make that learning understandable to a wider, non-academic audience.

This donation—formally announced at the Bodleian's annual Founder's Lunch in March 2008—was an inspirational act of philanthropic leadership. Suddenly, the £75 million campaign target, which at one time had seemed a distant dream, was now a very real hope.

The second major gift of the year translated that hope into reality. In May 2008, we were able to announce that the Garfield Weston Foundation was to make a grant of £25 million towards the New Bodleian project, the largest gift ever made by the Foundation. The Foundation's gift is to be matched by a £25m donation from the Oxford University Press, and the Bodleian is deeply grateful for OUP's long-standing support.

Collectively, therefore, the total of pledged gifts received this year for the New Bodleian's refurbishment stands at £55 million, two-thirds of the project total. It is a mark of the high regard in which the Bodleian is held that it should attract such significant and widespread support.

News of the Foundation's remarkable gift formed the centrepiece of the launch of Oxford Thinking: The Campaign for the University of Oxford. Its aim of raising a minimum of £1.25 billion for the collegiate University represents the largest fundraising drive ever to be mounted by a university outside of North America, and the ambitions of the Bodleian are an integral aspect of the Campaign.

The New Bodleian's transformation is a flagship project for both the Library and the University; yet it sits alongside many other vital causes for which the Libraries are seeking support, and for which philanthropic gifts were received during the past year:

• a major grant of US$1.4 million was received from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a three-year project, named FutureArch, to ensure the preservation and accessibility of digital personal papers—the contemporary versions of manuscripts created by politicians, writers, scientists and intellectuals that are in danger of being lost to future scholarship;
• a pledge of £100,000 from a major trust, and a gift of £50,000 from an alumnus, were donated in support of digitising the Bodleian's Hebrew manuscripts and a major exhibition to be mounted in winter 2009–10;
• seven separate individuals and trusts rallied to the Bodleian's support over the course of just one weekend in April to pledge funds in excess of £100,000, allowing the Library to bid for at auction and purchase a Tudor manuscript intimately associated with Henry VIII's reign (the Particular Book of James Nedeham);
• the sum of US$120,000 was donated to complete the cataloguing of the Bodleian's medieval Psalters and to publish the results;
• three separate pledges and gifts of £50,000 were made in support of the Centre for the Study of the Book at the Bodleian. One will endow a new visiting fellowship to be associated with Exeter College, and named in honour of the distinguished librarian, scholar and antiquary, Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726);
• a pledge of £30,000 was received in support of Korean resources;
• the Friends of the Bodleian made gifts totalling £32,000, enabling a range of acquisitions to be made and conservation projects to proceed;
• two Friends of the Bodleian, both retired alumni, pledged generous sums of £10,000 and £8,000 for library endowment, one of whom has asked that the gift be ear-marked for the expanded exhibitions programme which will be such an integral feature of the New Bodleian;
• there have, in addition, been very many smaller gifts, either as part of ongoing commitments or single gifts, by alumni and friends inspired by the Bodleian as one of the world's leading repositories of the written record of civilisation.

In addition, the Bodleian benefited from seven legacy gifts worth £206,800 from friends who remembered the Library in their wills. The amounts they donated ranged from £300 to £155,000; regardless of their individual size, each will make a real difference to the very special educational experience at Oxford which the Bodleian makes possible.

During 2007–8, therefore, OULS received some £13.5 million in philanthropic income, a record for this institution. This is testament both to the copious generosity of our readers, alumni, friends, and current and former staff; and also to the enduring power of the Library to inspire such deep affection and genuine admiration for its continuing role in supporting the 'Republic of the Learned'.

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Libraries

Universities once claimed bragging rights by the number of libraries they supported. In recent years there has been a decisive movement toward integration. The eighty sites noted in 2005 have contracted to thirty-four. However, even as libraries within OULS combined with others for more efficient and cost-effective delivery of service, new libraries came into the fold. The Library of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine was integrated with OULS on 1 August. During the year an agreement was reached between the Sackler Library and the Ashmolean Museum that the Heberden Coin Room Library, housed temporarily in the Sackler during the redevelopment of the Museum, would remain permanently in the Sackler. This will provide considerably longer opening hours for this collection and useful adjacency with the rest of the Sackler collection.

The roster of OULS libraries on 31 July 2008 was:

Bodleian Japanese Library

Bodleian Law Library

Bodleian Library (Central Bodleian)

Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House

Chinese Studies Library

Continuing Education Library

Education Library

English Faculty Library

Experimental Psychology Library

Health Care Libraries (Cairns Library and Old Road Knowledge Centre)

History Faculty Library

Indian Institute Library

Latin American Centre Library

Music Faculty Library

Oriental Institute Library

Philosophy Library

Plant Sciences Library

Radcliffe Science Library

Refugee Studies Centre Library

Sackler Library

Sainsbury Library at the Saïd Business School

Social Science Library

Taylor Institution Library (Main library, Taylor Institution Modern Languages Faculty Library and Taylor Bodleian Slavonic and Modern Greek Library)

Theology Faculty Library

Vere Harmsworth Library (Rothermere American Institute)

Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine Library

Zoology Library

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Staff

Departures

Over the course of 2007–8 the Library reduced its staffing considerably through the use of the Oxford Mobility Incentive Scheme (OMIS). Under this programme thirty-seven staff departed in the past two years, including many employees with long service. In order to permit an OMIS departure, library managers needed to restructure work in such a way that direct replacements were not required. By reconfiguring organisational units and rebalancing workloads, the Library was able to continue its activities without major disruption to service. The Library consolidated reading rooms in the New Bodleian Library, reduced layers of management, and introduced efficiencies in acquisitions and cataloguing. Increased use of electronic resources decreased demand for fetching in the Radcliffe Science Library, enabling positions there to be cut back. ¹⁵

Notable retirements and resignations included:

• Frances Boyle, IT Development and Strategy Manager, who left to become Executive Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition
• Peter Burnett, Head of Technical Services, who retired after twenty-seven years' service
• Sally Charleton, who stepped down as Head of Commercial Operations
• Richard Gartner, Pearson New Media Librarian, who resigned
• Angela Gunn, who resigned from Health Care Libraries
• William Hodges, Special Collections Reference Librarian and the mainstay of the enquiry desk in Duke Humfrey's Library for many years, who retired after more than forty years' service
• Shelby McGinty, OULS Accountant, who resigned
• Alison McKay, Conservator, who resigned
• Gail Merrett, who resigned as Head of Staff Development
• Martyn Minty, Oriental Institute Librarian, who retired after thirty-six years' service
• Gabriella Netting, who stepped down from her post as Deputy to the Keeper of Scientific Books
• Judith Palmer, who retired as Keeper of Scientific Books and Head of Science and Medicine Subject Area
• David Perrow, who resigned as Associate Director, Administration and Finance
• John Pinfold, for many years Librarian of Rhodes House Library, who retired
• Fiona Richardson, who retired as Librarian of the Sainsbury Library at the Saïd Business School
• Steven Rose, Head of Reader Services, who left at the end of 2007
• Miguel Torrens, who resigned as Hispanic Subject Specialist
• Lucy Walden, who stepped down as Head of Human Resources

Other long-serving staff to step down were:

• Charles Davis, Administrator in Conservation, after forty- two years' service
• The Revd Richard Budgen, Deputy at the Theology Faculty Library but for many years before that Superintendent of the Bodleian Bookstack, after thirty-eight years' service
• Christine Mason, Principal Library Assistant in Reader Services and familiar to generations of readers for her work on the Bodleian's Main Enquiry Desk, after thirty-five years' service
• Jean-Pierre Mialon, Library Assistant in Duke Humfrey's Library, after thirty-three years' service
• Theo Dunnet, Principal Library Assistant in the Radcliffe Science Library, after thirty-two years' service
• Helen Rogers, Principal Library Assistant in Reader Services, known to thousands of readers as Supervisor of the Upper Reading Room Reserve, retired after thirty-one years' service
• Jacqueline Merralls, Chief Photographer in the Imaging Studio, after twenty-five years' service

Arrivals and changes

The recruitment of two Assistant Directors and a Director of Administration began during the year. Alice Keller, the Head of Collection Management, was appointed Assistant Director, Collections and Resource Description, in April 2008.

Donald Mackay and Roger Mills took on acting roles to head Medicine and Science respectively during the appointment process for a Keeper of Scientific Books in succession to Judy Palmer.

Laura How, OULS Accountant, started in January 2008 and Ruth Davies, Human Resources Manager, in February.

Eva Oledzka joined OULS as Special Collections Reference Librarian in June 2008, in succession to William Hodges.

Minh Chung was designated Subject Consultant for Korean studies.

Nick Hearn (January 2008) took over the role of Subject Librarian for French Language and Literature from Vanya Murray (who remains Film Studies Subject Librarian), in addition to his half-time role as Subject Librarian for Russian and Slavonic Languages and Literatures.

Clare Hills-Nova (January 2008) took on the role of Subject Librarian for Italian Language and Literature, in addition to her role as Subject Librarian for Art History.

At the end of the year Sarah Rhodes, Librarian of the Refugee Studies Library, became Subject Consultant for African and Commonwealth Studies from 2008–9, working closely with Lucy McCann, Isabel Holowaty and Mark Janes. Return to Contents

Statistics, 1 August 2007–31 July 2008

Footnotes

¹ Supplement (1) to Gazette No. 4743; also available at www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm.
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² The draft Strategic Plan, approved without amendment by Congregation, was published as Supplement (1) to Gazette No. 4845, 21 May 2008; also available at www.admin.ox.ac.uk/pra/strategic_plan/strategicplan.pdf.
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³ Supplement (1) to Gazette No. 4762, 1 March 2006; also available at www.admin.ox.ac.uk/lib/vision2011.pdf.
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⁴ www.admin.ox.ac.uk/lib/oxonly/SFWG%20OULS%20report%202007.pdf.
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⁵ Supplement (1) to Gazette No. 4743, 22 September 2005, p. 42; also available at www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#28ref.
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⁶ Ibid., p. 43; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#30ref.
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⁷ Ibid.; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#31ref.
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⁸ Ibid., p. 44; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#33ref.
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⁹ A University Library for the Twenty-first Century (para. 21) noted: 'The vision for the New Bodleian includes a permanent exhibition to display the Bodleian's treasures, and a suite of seminar rooms where students can be taught 'hands-on' using Special Collections materials. Existing Special Collections reading rooms would be extended, and more space provided for direct browsing. Special Collections stock currently scattered around other libraries and held in inadequate conditions could be brought together in a more secure and appropriate environment. Offices could be provided for 'Bodleian Visiting Scholars' so that academic exploitation of the collections could be facilitated. If financially viable, a restaurant for university members and visitors could be installed on the ground floor, as envisaged in the Broad Street Plan' (Ibid.; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#33ref).
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¹⁰ A University Library for the Twenty-first Century (para. 23) noted: 'The maximum advantage for library operations would be achieved if twelve existing Humanities and Area Studies libraries (plus Mathematics..) could be merged into one large library on this site. However, the decision as to which libraries will transfer to the new building—and thus its size—is one that will be determined by academic requirements' (Ibid., p. 45; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#34ref).
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¹¹ A University Library for the Twenty-first Century (para. 27) noted: '...in medicine, the existing four libraries will be concentrated onto two sites, the present Cairns Library at the John Radcliffe site and a new Medical Research and Information Centre on the Old Road site, combining services currently delivered through the Churchill, Radcliffe Infirmary and Old Road site libraries' (Ibid.; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#35ref).
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¹² A University Library for the Twenty-first Century (para. 27) noted: '...the Radcliffe Science Library and the Hooke Library will be combined to create an integrated lending and reference Science Library' (Ibid.; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#35ref).
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¹³ Ibid., p. 43; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#30ref.
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¹⁴ www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8POQ9YB7V0.
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¹⁵ ELISO proposed a business case to fund electronic expansion by consolidating the existing departmental library system in science, using the Radcliffe Science Library as a major hub. The business plan shows an initial investment balanced by a reduction in space, staff and materials costs over five years, with a break-even point after five years and cost recovery after ten years (Supplement (1) to Gazette No. 4743, p. 45; www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2005-6/supps/1_4743.htm#35ref).
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¹⁶ After deduction of £1.15m in respect of accrual; actual expenditure was £5.47m.
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