In this section, you can read about some outstanding libraries, old and new, local and global, grand and humble alike. From the urban libraries today that support some of society’s most vulnerable people, to the book collections assembled historically by scholars travelling around the world, this section brings together some key case studies examined by the Global Library.
Libraries in Focus
Early Modern Libraries
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
Originally a Benedictine abbey founded in 558 by Childebert I, the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés has a long and illustrious history. In 1621, a new order of Benedictine Monks, the Congregation of Saint Maur, was founded at Saint-Germain. They transformed the abbey into one of the prime intellectual centres of France, and greatly enriched its library. Jean Mabillon (1632-1707) and Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741), scholars and monks at the abbey, were pioneers in the disciplines of paleography, diplomatics and archeology.[29] They greatly contributed to the rich collection of Greek manuscripts at the library.
A number of English visitors engaged with the St Germaine library. Travelling in 1660-1662, the young Charles Bertie, future diplomat and treasurer, visited the library in July 1660. He mentioned the ‘three or four fine great globes with great covers on them’ at the entrance to the library and the books of ‘every art and science’, available in the library.[30] John Locke was a frequent visitor of the Abbey’s library. During his first recorded visit on the 23rd of July 1677, he noted that ‘in the Benedictyns’ Library at the Abbay of St. Germains [there are] 800 old manuscripts’, including ‘an old manuscript of the Romans upon tables spred over with wax; and the late testimonies of the Armenian & Eastern churches of their beliefe of transubstantiation’.[31] The following year, he visited the library again in the company of John Covell, the Levant company chaplain and scholar of Eastern languages. Locke mentioned that ‘in the Library of Abbe of St. Germains Mr Covell & I saw two very old manuscripts of the New Testament, the newest of which was, as appeared by the date of it, at least 800 years old’.[32] Covel, in his turn, described in detail the manuscripts he was able to consult in his journals. He stated that ‘in the Abbey of St Germain’s Librayr. There is a very ancient MS of the NT in Latin. In which in severall places I found two or three words written in Greek characters, especially in ye beginning of any book’, and went on to discuss some Latin and Greek manuscripts in detail.[33]
English and Scottish visitors to France often engaged with monastic library collections. Sir Andrew Balfour visited Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble in the early 1660s and noted the library there.[34] Apart from visiting St Germaine, Charles Bertie toured several other major monasteries and their libraries, including the Benedictine Le prieuré Saint-Jean de l’Habit, better known as Fontevraud Abbey, the final resting place of Angevin kings of England.[35] He was thoroughly entertained by the local mathematician and antiquarian, pere Lardier, who showed Bertie the library, its many curiosities and his own unpublished manuscripts on ‘the matches and descent of all the kings in Europe’, not to mention books ‘that treat of philosophy, geography and many other sciences’.[36] He also stopped at St Denis for a tour of the local treasures. Although he did not engage with a library there, he noted that he did not need to ‘describe any particulars’ since he ‘bought two books, the one called Abbrege de L’Inventarie de Thresor de St Denis, and the other called Inventarie ou denom brement tant des Corps Saints as Tombeaux de Royesse’, which ‘they sell at the entrance to the abbey’.[37] This demonstrates that major abbeys have become established as sightseeing destinations for travellers of all denominations, and that engagement with books at an abbey could take different forms from brief visits to libraries.
Similar to Jesuit colleges, monasteries offered Protestant travellers a chance to interact with Catholic culture, which could satisfy their curiosity or potentially become a source of anxiety about their own safety.
[29] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bernard-de-Montfaucon ; https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Jean_Mabillon (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
[30] Diary of Charles Bertie, p280.
[31] Locke’s travels in France, p158.
[32] Locke’s travels in France, pp 252-253.
[33] Chapter 1 notes ? does not se
[34] Andrew Balfour, Letters write [sic] to a friend by the learned and judicious Sir Andrew Balfour ... containing excellent directions and advices for travelling thro' France and Italy, with many curious and judicious remarks and observations made by himself, in his voyages thro' these countreys, published from the author's original m.s. 1700, p 264
[35] P304
[36] P304.
[37] P281.
Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1687.
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
The Brotherhood of the Trinity at Lyon opened a school in a barn in 1519. The school was too successful for the brotherhood to manage, and, enlarged, it was transferred to the management of the City of Lyon in 1527. The college moved to new premises. The college provided mixed education, and the female poets Louise Labé and Pernette du Guillet were associated with the college.[18] The college was suspected of associations with Protestantism, and it was entrusted to the Jesuit order in 1565. The history of the Jesuit involvement with the college over the next two centuries is at times turbulent, and it includes at least one exile between 1594 and 1603, at a time when they were suspected of planning an assassination attempt against Henry IV. New buildings were built and extensive repairs were conducted in the college between 1607 and 1616 and following a fire in 1644.
We have at least two vivid descriptions of the library at different points of the college’s existence. Visiting in 1608, Thomas Coryat saw the college during its first major reconstruction period of the 17th century. He gained access to the library through one of the local Jesuits, who was happy to show him around. Coryat described the library as ‘an exceeding sumptuous thing, and passing wel furnished with books’.[19] He was shown ‘the King of Spaines Bible, which was bestowed on them by the French King Henry the fourth’.[20] The Jesuits might have been keen to emphasise their favour and royal connections following their recent exile, which was grounded on the suspicion of assassination plots against Henry IV, who bestowed the Bible upon the college. Coryat noted that they ‘have great store of bookes in that library, but especially of Divinity’ and that paintings of prominent cardinals such as Cardinal Borromeo were proudly displayed in the college.[21] Seventy years later, visiting in December 1675, John Locke noted that ‘the library is the best that ever I saw except Oxford, being one very large, high, oblong square, all set with shelves as high as one can well reach standing upon a stool, & above a galery round to come at the books’.[22] He also made a sketch of the floor plan of the room in his journals. He commented that ‘it is yet but moderately furnishd with books, beng made, as they told us, not above a year agon’.[23] Richard Ferrier, travelling in 1687, also gained access to the college and to its library. He noted that the collection was ‘large, there is above ten thousand books of all sorts both historically philosophicall & sacred & yet they are going to enlarge it’.[24]
English and Scottish travellers visited a plethora of other Jesuit colleges. The Scottish physician, botanist and book collection Sir Andrew Balfour described the college of La Flèche, as ‘by far the best they have in France’ during his travels in 1661-64.[25] Edward Browne was very complimentary about the Jesuit church in Antwerp, which ‘goes far beyond any of that bigness that I have seen out of Italy’ during his travels in 1668-69.[26] He noted that ‘the Library of the College is great, and the Books disposed handsomely into four Chambers’.[27] White Kennet, who visited St Omer in 1682, described the practices of using the library space at the English Jesuit College. He noted that ‘after set hours of school a publick cosy study for retirement each scholar his appointed place with a desk an inkstand and a crucifix and some pictures; the seats so placed as one candle serves four; at the upper end a repository of manuscripts and some other rarities raild off’, giving us a rare glimpse into the practical usage of Jesuit libraries.[28]
Visiting Jesuits sites offered a unique opportunity for Protestant travellers to interact with one of the biggest sources of religious anxiety in England - the Jesuits. For many of the travellers, it was a rare chance to observe Catholic knowledge production and dissemination first hand.
[18] Florence Weinberg, Long Desires. Louise Labé, Lyonnaise, Lyon, Éditions lyonnaises d'art et d'histoire, 2002 - need to double check this claim.
[19] Coryat p67
[20] Coryat, p67
[21] Coryat, p67
[22] Locke’s Travels in France, p5
[23] Locke’s travels in France, p5.
[24] Richard Ferrier, 1687 (The Journal of Major Richard Ferrier M.P., while travelling in France in the year 1687, Camden Miscellany, New Series 53, Vol. IX, London, 1895, pp. 15-48), p29.
[25] Letters write [sic] to a friend by the learned and judicious Sir Andrew Balfour ... containing excellent directions and advices for travelling thro' France and Italy, with many curious and judicious remarks and observations made by himself, in his voyages thro' these countreys, published from the author's original m.s. 1700, p30.
[26] Browne, 1685, p108.
[27] Browne, 1685, p108.
[28] Un voyage a Calais, Guines, Ardres et St.-Omer en 1682. Extrait du journal de White Kennet. ... Publié et annoté par C. Landrin., 1893, p18.
Collège de la Trinité, Jesuit College in Lyon
The library of the college pictured c. 1900. The library was dismantled between 1911 and 1924.
The facade of the college in 1663
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
The story of Bibliotheca Palatina is rooted in the story of Heidelberg University, and the demise and the afterlives of this illustrious library are inseparable from the confessional conflict which engulfed most of Europe in the early modern period. The history of the library can be traced back to the establishment of the University of Heidelberg in 1386. Over subsequent centuries, the library absorbed other institutions, including the Abbey Library, donated in the will of Louis III, and the private libraries of various Electors of the Palatinate. In the reign of Elector Otto-Henry von Pfalz-Neuburg (1502 - 1559) the different collections were united in one building, in the galleries of Heiliggeistkirche (Church of the Holy Spirit), which served as the official starting point for the Bibliotheca Palatina. Although modelled on the library of the University of Wittenberg as a Protestant library for a newly Protestant university, its location in the city, not the castle, made access for the teachers and the students of the university easier. Rich in collections of Protestant theology, the library was looted during the Thirty Years War after the fall of the Palatinate to the Catholic League in 1622. Leo Allatius, the Scriptor for Greek at the Vatican Library, was put in charge of organising the library for transportation to Munich and Rome in December 1622. He packed the books stored in Heiliggeistkirche, in the castle, at the university, in the Elector’s personal library and in the private library of Jan Gruter (1560 - 1627), the Flemish-born and Cambridge-educated last librarian of the Bibliotheca Palatina. 196 crates of books left Heidelberg, 184 of which made their way to the Vatican by August 1623 (Allatius kept 12 crates for his personal library). 847 German-language manuscripts were returned to Heidelberg during the Congress of Vienna in 1816, the vast majority of the remaining collections of the Bibliotheca Palatina are still in the Vatican.[9]
Bibliotheca Palatina has two important connections to the domains of the Stuart monarchs in the early 17th century. The aforementioned Jan Gruter, the last librarian, was half-English (his mother was from Norwich). His parents emigrated to England during the Eighty Years War to avoid religious persecution. He was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and he later returned to Leiden in 1584, subsequently teaching at Wittenberg, Rostock and Heidelberg.[10] The second, more illustrious, connection is the marriage between Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V of the Palatinate in 1613. In the period between the marriage and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618, Elizabeth was the only Stuart dynast based at a European court. In this period Heidelberg attracted English visitors, including the famous travellers Fynes Moryson and Thomas Coryat. Coryat in particular visited the library with the aid of Jan Gruter:
But the Church of the holy Ghost which adjoyneth to their great market place, is the fairest of all, being beautified with two singular ornaments above the other Churches, that doe greatly grace the fame: the one the Palatine Librarie, the other the monuments of their Princes. The Palatine Librarie is kept by that most excellent and generall Schollar Mr. Ianus Gruterus the Princes Bibliothecarie, of whom I have reaſon to make a kind of thankeful mention, because I received great favours of him in Heidelberg. For he entertained me very courteously in his house, shewed me the Librarie, and made meanes for my admition into the Princes Court.[11]
[9] https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/en/bpd/bibliotheca_palatina/geschichte.html
[11] Coryat, 1611, p339
Coryat also complained that he only managed to spend a little time in the library, as during his visit ‘two yong princes of Anhalt [...] came suddenly into the roome upon me, being usherd by their golden-chained Gentlemen’.[12] Consequently, his own visit was cut short, as ‘all the attendance being given unto the Princes’.[13] As a result, he ‘lost the opportunity of seeing those memorable antiquities and rarities which Mr. Gruterus intended to haue communicated unto me’.[14]
Bibliotheca Palatina features much more prominently in English and Scottish travel accounts of the later parts of the 17th century, often as a focal point for laments and a symbol of lost Protestant glory. James Ussher, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, called it an ‘incomparable loss’ in a letter of 1628.[15] Multiple travellers mentioned the Heidelberg library when discussing their visits to the Vatican library. Richard Lassels saw the library almost immediately after its transfer to the Vatican, in 1623: ‘they shewed me, in the same roome, the Library of Heidelberg, sent to Rome by the Duke of Bavaria after he had disposed the Elector Frederick Prince Palatin of Rhein’.[16] Half a century later, the Scottish traveller Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715) was disappointed in the lack of truly ancient manuscripts in that collection, stating that the manuscripts ‘that were brought from Heidelberg, are the most ancient that are in the Vatican’.[17]
The Heidelberg library was significant both in its life and its afterlives. In the 1610s, it was the library associated with the court of a truly European Stuart princess - Elizabeth of Bohemia - and thus a point of interest for English and Scottish travellers visiting the Holy Roman Empire. After the sack of Heidelberg and the transfer of the library to Rome, even more English and Scottish travellers encountered the contents of the library in the Vatican. The contents of the library, its deep association with the Protestant cause and its physical location in the primary seat of Catholicism made the library into a focal point of English and Scottish engagement with libraries abroad.
[12] Coryat, p342.
[13] Coryat, p339.
[14] Coryat, p339.
[15] James Ussher, Letter CXXXIII in Richard Parr, The Life of the Most Reverend Father in God, James Usher […] With a Collection of Three Hundred Letters (London: Nathaniel Ranew, 1686) 400
[16] Lassels (1670) 65
[17] Burnet, p82.
Heidelberg Library, Germany
The interior of the Heiliggeistkirche today. The library would have been located in the two galleries on the upper floor.
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
Early modern Central Europe boasted a number of mediaeval and new universities, a wide range of educational institutions developed during the long process of Protestant and Catholic Reformations, and a number of splendid libraries, including the famous library of Matthias I, King of Hungary: the Bibliotheca Corviniana in Buda Castle. However, not many English and Scottish scholars actively engaged with these institutions, with the possible exception of the Heidelberg library. Edward Browne (1644 - 1708), the Norwich-born physician and traveller, was an outlier to this trend. He left the most detailed description of the Imperial Library in Vienna written by an early modern Englishman. Browne expressed surprise at finding such a ‘remarkable’ and ‘notable’ library in Vienna, ‘upon the extreme Borders of the Learned part of Europe’.[1]
The Imperial Court Library in Vienna, the precursor of the current Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, has its roots in the mediaeval 14th century Habsburg book collections, which were greatly enlarged in the late Medieval and Renaissance periods by Frederick III and Maximilian I through inheritance and marriages to Mary of Burgundy and Bianca Maria Sforza.
[1] Edward Browne, A Brief Account of some Travels in Divers Parts of Europe (1685), p144.
After Maximillian’s death, the books were taken to Ambras Castle in Innsbruck. A number of scholars and envoys, such as the humanist Wolfgang Lazius (1514 - 1565), the ambassador to the court of Suleyman I Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (1522 - 1592) and the Hungarian polymath János Zsámboky (1531 - 1584), enriched the library with their donations. These gifts included several hundred manuscripts brought by de Busbecq from Greece and the Ottoman Empire and over 560 manuscripts in Latin and Greek acquired by Zsámboky specifically for the library. In 1575, Maximilian II appointed the Dutch lawyer Hugo Blotius (1533 - 1608) as the first official librarian of the imperial library, located at the time at the Minorite monastery in Vienna. He compiled the first catalogue of the library in 1576. The catalogue contains 7,379 volumes. In 1623 the library was moved to the Hofburg, and then in 1631, to the Harrach House on today’s Ballhausplatz. In 1655, the then imperial librarian Matthäus Mauchter bought the Fugger Library of about 15,000 volumes, including the Fugger newspapers and archives related to the famed merchant dynasty. In 1663, the Hamburg scholar Peter Lambeck was appointed the imperial library prefect and imperial historiographer. He oversaw the transfer of rare books from the Ambras imperial collection to Vienna and compiled the Commentariorum De Augustissima Bibliotheca Cæsarea, a thorough catalogue which included around 100,000 volumes.[2] This was the library and the ‘library keeper’ Browne met during his travels.
Browne was impressed by the collection, but underwhelmed by the building it was housed in, noting that ‘the number and nobleness of the Books doth much exceed the receptacle or place which contains them, as making no fair shew at the entrance, and somewhat wanting light’.[3] He was particularly impressed by the manuscript collection in the library, as it included texts in ‘Hebrew, Syriack, Arabick, Turkish, Armenian, Aethiopick, and Chinese Books’.[4] Browne emphasised the illustrious history of the library, stating that ‘the choicest Books in the famous Library of Buda, of King Matthias Corvinus, Son unto Huniades, are now in it; the notable Library of Wolfgangus Lazius, who was Library-Keeper, was brought hither; and Three thousand Books of Johannes Sambucus are now in this Repository [...] the largest accession was made by the noble Library of Count Fugger’.[5] He also stressed that the ‘Learned Petrus Lambecius’, the current librarian who was showing him around, ‘hath also an excellent Library which is like to be added unto the Imperial’.[6]
In his letters home, Browne emphasised that he gained access to the library without the support of the Royal Society, and that after Lambeck the librarian discussed Browne’s visit with the Emperor, Leopold I, who in turn allowed Browne the ‘liberty to take bookes out of the library home to [his] lodging’.[7] Browne also made his own catalogue of the ‘extraordinary jewells & rarities’ of the Imperial library and Treasury, which he sent to his correspondents in England and later published in the printed editions of his travels.[8] The sense of unaided discovery of new knowledge and bringing it to the readers back in England potentially recasts Browne’s comment on Vienna as a ‘border’ of ‘learned Europe’ as a mechanism for self-fashioning of a scholar as a pioneer of unknown lands and bookish riches.
[2] https://www.onb.ac.at/en/more/about-us/timeline
[3] Browne, p 144.
[4] Browne, p 144.
[5] Browne, p 144
[6] Browne, p 144.
[7] Anna Wyatt, ‘Wide Excursions’ Dr Edward Browne (1644-1708) and the Writing of Travel in Restoration England’, PhD thesis, pp 199-200.
Imperial Library, Vienna
The modern home of the Imperial Court Library was built in 1722 by the orders of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor. This is not the building which so disappointed Edward Browne in 1668-69.
The Levant Company, similarly to other English trading companies, established libraries at its factories abroad. Cornel Zwierlein identifies the library in Aleppo as the earliest established Company library in the Ottoman Empire.[1] Simon Mills argues that these libraries originated in one-off payments granted to the chaplains of the company with the express purpose to purchase books and that they evolved into institutional grants to incoming chaplains.[2] The appointment of Robert Frampton as the Company’s chaplain in Aleppo in 1655 was a focal point, as Frampton was tasked with transporting books to Aleppo and, according to Zwierlein, was in charge of selecting 51 titles for the library.[3] Frampton was granted £50 for the purpose of purchasing books to be taken to his post in Aleppo, more than double of his annual allowance. Other Factories in the Levant also started establishing libraries in the mid 17th century. In 1667 the governor of the Levant company, Sir Andrew Riccard, gifted six volumes of the Polyglot Bible as the foundation for the library in Izmir.[4] This gift was encouraged by John Luke, chaplain at Izmir between 1664 and 1667. He used a quarter of his salary paid to his friends in England to supply him with books.[5] By the 1680s all three established Levant Company factories had their own libraries.
The books available in these libraries reflected the interests of chaplains and consuls, were of practical use to visitors, and served as a focal point for expat sociability. The traveller Francis Vernon noted in his journal that a plethora of topics were discussed at the consular table in the 1670s in Izmir, including the voyages of St Paul, the Euroclydon (north-east storm wind) and Turkish and Arabic dictionaries.[6] The factory library and the consul Paul Rycaut’s own collection of books were shaped around the needs of travellers and of Rycaut himself, a working writer and popular authority on the Levant. Vernon mentions coming across Edward Browne’s account of his travels in the Balkans, Varen’s Geographia Generalis, the works of the cosmographer John Ogilby, Hobbe’s translation of Homer, Martin Clifford’s Treatise of Humane Reason, ancient histories such as Curtius, Cornelius Nepos and Velleius Paterculus, Justin’s epitome of Trogus Pompeus, works on Turkish history and on heraldry, and dictionaries, including the recently published John Ray’s A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used (1674) in the consular and company libraries.
Factory libraries offered a space for learning, knowledge exchange and sociability to English travellers in the Ottoman Empire.
Additional reading:
Cornel Zwierlein, ‘Coexistence and Ignorance: What Europeans in the Levant did not read (ca. 1620–1750)’ in Cornel Zwierlein, ed., The Dark Side of Knowledge: Histories of Ignorance, 1400 to 1800 (2016)
Simon Mills, A Commerce of Knowledge Trade, Religion, and Scholarship between England and the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1760, (2020)
Sonia Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey Paul Rycaut at Smyrna 1667-1678, (1989)
[1] Cornel Zwierlein, p 235.
[2] Mills, p 25.
[3] Mills p 25, Cornel Zwierlein p 235.
[4] Anderson, p 16
[5] Anderson p 103
[6] Anderson, p 223.
The Levant Company: Factory Libraries in Aleppo and Izmir
The vast private library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli was one of the most important collections of sixteenth century Italy, not only for the range and quantity of its books, but because it attracted visitors from all over Europe.
Born in Napoli to a wealthy merchant family, Pinelli moved to Padua in 1558 to study law. Having settled here, he amassed an impressive collection of some 10,000 printed works and several hundred manuscripts. Crucially, however, Pinelli was also a generous host, inviting scholars to make use of both his library and his home, where they were able to consult works in multiple languages, including Latin, Greek, and Arabic, and enjoy the conversation of their fellow transnational scholars.
Pinelli’s visitors sometimes presented their host with works of their own composition by way of thanks for allowing them access to his collection. Manuscripts of English and Scottish authorship thus featured in Pinelli’s library, several of which were completed on site in the company of Pinelli himself. The works of the scholar brothers, Thomas and Henry Savile, Henry Cuffe (later executed for his role in the Essex rebellion), the Scottish poet Thomas Seget, the astronomer Edmund Bruce, the diplomat Sir Richard Shelley, and the antiquarian Richard White are all preserved among Pinelli’s papers at the Biblitoca Ambrosiana.
Following Pinelli’s death in 1601, the collection was shipped to Pinelli’s nephew, Cosmo, at Naples. The ship carrying the library was, however, attacked by pirates and 33 cases of books were tossed overboard. What remained of the collection was ultimately bought by Cardinal Federico Borromeo and formed the cornerstone of the new Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (1607).
Suggested Reading:
Marcella Grendler, “A Greek Collection in Padua: The Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601),” Renaissance Quarterly 33.3 (1980) 386–416
Angela Nuovo, ‘The Creation and Dispersal of the Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli’, in Books on the Move, ed. Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote (London: Oak Knoll Press and the British Library, 2007), 39–67
John-Mark Philo, ‘English and Scottish Scholars at the Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1565–1601)’, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, Vol. 42, No. 2 (2019), 51–80
The Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, Padua
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
In 1566, Ulisse Aldrovandi, inaugural professor of natural philosophy at the University of Bologna, founded of a remarkable museum-library, which he himself referred to as ‘an eighth wonder of the world’ (‘un ottavo miracolo del mondo’).[1] The collection boasted 3,000 printed works and 360 manuscripts, as well as a large hall devoted to natural curiosities and specimens gathered from around the globe.[39]
Aldrovandi’s collection was ‘sought out by students and scholars from all over Europe (in addition to princes, cardinals and others in power)’, including several English visitors and at least one Scotsman.[40] We know this thanks to the vast visitors’ book for Aldrovandi’s collection, in which the scholar recorded not only his visitors’ names, but also their professions, and nationalities (you can find details of his Anglo-Scottish visitors below).
Aldrovandi was a prolific notetaker. In his extensive reading on the natural world, he paid special attention to the descriptions of Scottish wildlife provided by Hector Boece’s History of the Scots (Scotorum Historia), a Neo-Latin history of the Scots first published in 1516. From the goose-footed monster that allegedly terrorised the Gairloch to Boece’s detailed description of fresh-water pearl-fishing, Aldrovandi found in the History of the Scots a rich array of natural wonders peculiar to Scotland. He also appears to have been collecting specimens from England and Scotland alike, as is suggested by his list of desirable samples to be gathered ‘From the Hebrides’ (‘Ex Hebridibus’) as well as the ‘Catalogue of Natural Specimens that are required from England’ (‘Anglicarum rerum naturalium quae desiderantur Catalogus’).[41]
Aldrovandi left his extraordinary collection to the university senate, and much of his library is now preserved at the Biblioteca Communale Dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna.
Suggested Reading:
[38] Quoted in Marinela Haxhiraj, Ulisse Aldrovandi: Il Museographo (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2016) 26
[39] Marinela, 18.
[40] Caroline Duroselle-Melish and David A. Lines, ‘The Library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (†1605): Acquiring and Organizing Books in Sixteenth–Century Bologna’, The Library, 16.2 (2015) 133–161 (134).
[41] Biblioteca Communale Dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna, MS Aldrovandi 137, ‘Ulyssis Aldrovandi Catalogus Perigrinarum Rerum Naturalium’, fol. 42r; 15r
Marinela Haxhiraj, Ulisse Aldrovandi: Il Museographo (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2016)
Caroline Duroselle-Melish and David A. Lines, ‘The Library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (†1605): Acquiring and Organizing Books in Sixteenth–Century Bologna’, The Library, 16.2 (2015) 133–161
The Library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (d.1605), Bologna
Cover of Aldrovandi’s Visitors Book, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, MS Aldrov. 41
![Eduardus Huttingus Anglus Medic[inae] doctor Edward Hutting, Englishman, Doctor of MedicineEduardus Huttingus Anglus Medic[inae] doctor Edward Hutting, Englishman, Doctor of Medicine](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/892a6a_10aba53e5942492caccf4f98e4e0a44e~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_808,h_228,al_c,q_80,enc_avif,quality_auto/Edward%20Hutting%2C%20Doctor%20of%20Medicine.jpg)
Eduardus Huttingus Anglus Medic[inae] doctor
Edward Hutting, Englishman, Doctor of Medicine
Studiosus Hericus Vartlaus Scottus Edinburgensis
The student, Henry Wartlaus, a Scotsman from Edinburgh
Doctor Philosophiae et Medicinae Edmundus Hollindus Anglus. Doctor of philosophy and medicine, Edmund Holland, Englishman
![Eduardus Huttingus Anglus Medic[inae] doctor Edward Hutting, Englishman, Doctor of MedicineEduardus Huttingus Anglus Medic[inae] doctor Edward Hutting, Englishman, Doctor of Medicine](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/892a6a_10aba53e5942492caccf4f98e4e0a44e~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_808,h_228,al_c,q_80,enc_auto/Edward%20Hutting%2C%20Doctor%20of%20Medicine.jpg)
Libraries Today
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
Across Norfolk, public libraries host a range of sessions for refugees and asylum seekers. These sessions go by 'International - Just a Cuppa,' 'English Language Exchange,' and 'Global Reading out Loud', to name a few. In September 2023, Costessey Library expanded its services for asylum seekers living in a nearby hotel. By volunteering and helping to design new sessions, we have been part of this initiative from the start.
What began as 'Just a Cuppa' drop-in sessions, which allowed for greater flexibility at the beginning, quickly evolved into English learning workshops. These include a wide range of activities that developed according to the diverse needs of the participants: while some devote their time to learning and writing alphabets, others learn new vocabulary, or focus on reading and understanding children’s story books. All the activities are facilitated by the volunteers, the majority of whom are fellow asylum seekers from the hotel. The diversity in the group enables us to discern the range of knowledge, educational levels and aspirations shared by refugees and asylum seekers currently housed in Norwich hotels.
The participants we have met share an impetus to learn English as fast as possible: an essential skill in their most recent struggle to live. The effort and dedication the participants show to make use of this opportunity to learn English is striking. After copying an entire children’s book or writing down newly learnt words, participants are still keen to continue as long as there are volunteers to help and the space remains available. Their individual and collective efforts, as well as their appreciation for the opportunities and services at the library, is reflected in the growing attendance, which has resulted in the need for an additional weekly session and for more volunteers. Costessesy Library enables asylum seekers to access a quiet and friendly environment, as well as new knowledge beyond English language acquisition, including information and technology. Responding to the needs of this particular group, the library has recently acquired a collection of dictionaries and foreign language books.
“For more than nine months, I didn’t know the way to the city centre. I didn’t even know there was a place like this [the library]”
- Library User from Sudan
The opening up of the library and of its services as an explicitly refugee-friendly space is incredibly valuable given the scale of isolation asylum seekers face, both spatial and social. For some, the library is the only public building they have ever entered since they were moved to Norwich.
One participant from Yemen, who has been living in Norwich for more than a year, remarked that: ‘I saw this building [the library] before, but I didn’t know what was inside. I didn’t know that I could enter’. He has felt cautious about getting involved with the local community: ‘I can’t tell about people in Norwich. I don’t know what is inside [the society] -- I don’t know anyone from outside of the hotel.’ For some asylum seekers, their first experience of the city has been rallies by the far-right who gather outside of the hotels calling for their deportation. By contrast, the library offers an opportunity to asylum seekers to get to know the local community, overcoming barriers to belonging and connecting to their new home.
Costessey Library, Norfolk
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
Dem Books Karakol is, in the words of Ulan Chargymbaev, CEO and ‘one responsible for the library’, a ‘social-creative library’. The idea for the project was born out of a desire of a group of citizens, in the civic understanding of this word, of Karakol, Kyrgyzstan’s fourth-largest city, to build ‘something for the city’, something ‘beneficial for the youth’. Driven entirely by donations and the sweat, blood and tears of the ‘founding fathers’ of the project, it opened its doors on the 20th of November 2020.
The initial foundation of the project and the space was funded by the Ashar method - a traditional Kyrgyz collective method of solving social problems. Taking its roots in nomadic practices of the Kyrgyz people, Ottoman taxation measures and, crucially, food - the word comes from the stem ash, meaning a collective meal following Ramadan or organised as appreciation for the help of relatives and neighbours - the method has now developed into a system of citizen-empowered community development.1 The library is physically located in a basement, which is provided for the project rent-free by the landlord. However, the initial organisers of the project had to build it from the ground-up, clearing around 100 tons of rubbish
out of the basement, learning design, building work and carpentry through community networks and from YouTube. Everything except the plumbing and electricity was made by the original group of 20-30 concerned citizens, including the floors, the walls, the ceilings and all of the furniture. All the books for the library were also collected through the Ashar system. They were donated by bookshops, publishers and other businesses in Kyrgyzstan and beyond.
The aim of the project was to provide the ‘youth’ with a space to read, discuss ideas andsocialise, and to create alternatives to spaces focused on substance (ab)use. The physical space of the library contains a coffee house with a two-tier pricing system for young people and adults, offering subsidised prices for the ‘youth’, a book hall, a co-working space, classrooms and a cinema room which is also used to host regular events. The library is open every single day, including all bank holidays and weekends. The 4000-odd books are available for rent inside
the library space, they are not borrowable, but the fee gives the member access to the particular book for life. Although around 60-70% of the books are in Russian, the language selection reflects the multicultural nature of Karakol, situated close to the Kazakh and Chinese borders. There are around 500 books in various world languages, mostly used by learners of those languages. All books are new, which makes a stark contrast with state-run Soviet-style libraries, often associated with outdated stock.
Dem Library, run by four full-time staff members and a team of around 20 volunteers, runs multiple streams of events and projects. Their first stream (or, as Ulan puts it, ‘project’) is event organisation. Dem Books runs TedEx format talks, quiz nights, essay prizes, seasonal events and celebrations of major Kyrgyz holidays. Dem Books ran 388 separate events in their first year - yes, more than one a day - and they have now settled into running around 100 events annually.
The second project run by Dem Books is a structured volunteer program. In addition to around 20 adult ad hoc volunteers, the library runs a dedicated program for high-schoolers, effectively offering them an internship which helps the participants to learn more about the cultural sector and develop soft skills. Initially designed for annual nine month long cohorts, the program has now been streamlined into twice annual three month long ones. The Dem Books team runs a
five-step selection process, which includes a cover letter, an essay and an interview. The most recent cohort of 25 participants was selected from a pool of 90 candidates. In addition to volunteering, being educated about Kyrgyz ethnic traditions and learning skills during dedicated workshops, the participants conduct a dedicated creative project of their own choosing. All participants receive certificates, the program is eligible to be included in the Kyrgyz youth
volunteering passport and the participants receive references for future education and employment.
The third project run by the library is the Dem Media social media platform which actively develops content in Kyrgyz language. Kyrgyz society, culture and politics can still feel dominated by the Russian language, so the aim of the project is to encourage learning and active use of Kyrgyz through producing social media content. Some of the more popular Dem Media videos have upwards of 300 000 views. The project is still under the oversight of the Dem team, but the day to day running of it has been outsourced to a team of Bishkek journalism students.
The fourth stream of dedicated events focuses on working with adults, including adults and teachers. As Ulan stressed, education starts at home, so the library aims to empower parents to help their children’s cultural development. This year’s program actually focuses on teachers. Dem Library secured external funding for a blended learning professional development program for teachers which includes intensive in-person workshops and around 6 months of online learning. Participants with the highest test scores receive all expenses paid trips abroad. Ulan was adamant in stressing that the trips to Egypt, Turkey, Thailand and, visas permitting, Europe are not designed for professional improvement. There are other programs in Kyrgyzstan for international professional exchange. Rather, these holidays are designed to empower teachers and remind them of the dignity of their profession. Poorly compensated, the profession of the teacher is not the most prestigious in contemporary Kyrgyz society, and it can be looked down upon by some segments of the population. Rewarding teachers with all expenses paid holidays to enable them to unwind and relax over there (aspirationally meaning abroad, my emphasis) is designed to remind teachers of the social importance and status of their profession.
Finally, the fifth stream of events are reader tests. A part of a wider Kyrgyz movement to popularise reading, these tests set a particular book as the theme of the test and ask the participants various questions about the characters, plot and other details. The book selected for this year’s competition is a biography of Zhusup Abdrakhmanov, a Soviet-era Kyrgyz leader who worked under Soviet leadership but was eventually executed by Stalin in 1938 following accusations of panturkism and nationalism. In our conversation, Ulan refers to him as ‘the father of Kyrgyz statehood’. The children’s competitions are dedicated to, in Ulan’s words, ‘world
classics’, from Pollyanna to The Little Prince. The books
Migrants are crucial to the operations of Dem Karakol in a number of ways. The largest migrant population in Karakol are Russian ‘relocants’, who moved out of Russia following the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Primarily working in the IT sphere, they are attracted by Dem Library’s coworking space and free wifi. This population is in decline, as few Russians stay in Kyrgyzstan long-term, deeming it to be a stopgap measure. Closer to the end
of our conversation, Ulan shared a painful way in which migration affects the working of Dem Library. Many Kyrgyz citizens travel to Russia for so-called low skilled work, leaving their families and children behind. The children, often staying with distant relatives or grandparents for years, experience social and domestic instability. They are one of the most vulnerable parts of the Kyrgyz population, and they are in the Dem Library’s target population of ‘the youth’. In Ulan’s words, these children and teenagers are most at risk for substance abuse and antisocial
behaviour. Although the library does not provide specialised events for these children, staff do their best to keep an eye on them and try to help them in any way.
The library is entirely run on donations and through fundraising. Ulan emphasised that they receive no funding from the state. The ‘founding fathers’, the original group of concerned citizens who built the project, try to attract funding to it. The project is on the lookout for financial sustainability. The current fundraising push focuses on acquiring patrons who would pledge stable monthly donations, signing a ‘gentleman’s agreement’, an honour-bound promise with no legal power. The library is also developing a business income stream, focusing on renting out classrooms and offering paid SAT preparation and English-language learning courses. All of the
events and training courses for parents and teachers are free.
The Dem team created a remarkable project fuelled by passion, hard work and dedication. Ulan admits that the team gets tired and burnt out. However, the realisation of the social significance of their project keeps them going. As he puts it, the understanding of the social role of Dem Library does not allow them to get tired. ‘Even sweeping the floors, you know that you are contributing’. Ulan and the team hope that they can communicate their most important message of all - one can rest through self-improvement.
The sentiments in this text reflect the language used by Ulan Chargymbaev in an in-depth interview.
Photo courtesy of Dem Books Karako.
Dem Books, Karakol
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
Greece’s first multilingual lending library
There is a real buzz in the library when I visit: children are playing tag, chatting with each other in multiple languages (Greek, Arabic, Farsi, and English), and building towers from multi-coloured blocks; a group of four women are sitting at the back of this former shop, enjoying conversation and making the most of the library’s air conditioning (at noon today, it will reach an intimidating 40° outside). On the couches, a pile of cushions seems to be moving of its own accord, forming a small tower. Look closer and a tiny hand is behind the couch (a donation from the co-founder’s father), pulling the cushions into place: the children are playing hide and seek, and the couches make for a better cover than the book shelves. Towards the lending desk, another girl is crying: tomorrow, she will be going on holiday with her family, but she just wants to stay at the library.
We Need Books:
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
Mallard Island
Mallard Island was the home of the explorer, advocate and conservationist Ernest Oberholtzer (1844 - 1977). Oberholtzer, or Ober, as he is affectionately called by the estate staff, acquired Mallard Island in 1922, and was most active there in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Ober worked on the neighboring (much larger) island named Deer Island with his business partner William Hapgood. Their 1917-1920 venture intended to create a useful spot on Rainy Lake for recreation and visitors, including a general store, cabins for rent and trip guides. That venture failed, and in lieu of back wages, Hapgood gave Mallard Island to Ernest Oberholtzer. Ober purchased the adjacent two islands (Hawk and Crow) in 1950 for their market value, and Gull Island was purchased by friends of the Foundation and donated upon one friend's death. Today, the Ernest C. Oberholtzer Foundation owns and manages four of the five “Review Islands.”
Keir Johnson, Mallard Island’s archivist, talks of Ober as a prolific book collector, who wrote to booksellers in Minneapolis, New York and London from his home in Northern Minnesota. A ‘master networker’, Obertholtzer had visitors all summer long. He was also generous with his books, gifting them to people he met. Keir fondly remembers receiving copies of Moby Dick and Huck Finn from Oberholtzer when he was a child. The basis of Mallard Island library is Ober’s personal collection and a collection of books organically supporting visitors to Mallard Island. The Foundation considers it as a research opportunity for external visitors, and the collection is used as such. The books are everywhere, in each of the ten cabins on the island, including but not limited to the one dedicated to books.
The core of the collection are Oberholtzer’s books about Indigenous/First Nations people and the nature of North America. The collection includes several thousand photographs taken by Oberholtzer during his expeditions and thousands of maps, including some that Oberholtzer drew himself. The book collection includes over 12 000 volumes, many from as early as the 1700s, but it also includes 20th century popular paperbacks. The core of the collections are books relating to Indigenous cultures. Tay-tah-pa-sway-wi-tong, an Ojibwe trapper, was one of Oberholtzer’s closest companions during his canoeing expeditions from 1909 onwards. Tay-tah-pa-sway-wi-tong’s descendant is the current Elder in Residence at the Ernest C. Oberholtzer Foundation, who still uses some of the artefacts collected during Oberholtzer’s time, including an Ojibwe medicine drum, to perform spiritual rituals. The Inaakonigewin Committee, a part of the Foundation, oversees the Anishinaabe portions of the Foundation’s mission and goals. The four Ober islands on Rainy Lake, including Mallard Island, are sacred, and are treated by First Nations people as such.
In the words of Tom O’Rourke, the Foundation’s Executive Director, Oberholtzer’s greatest achievement is Mallard Island itself. His formal training at Harvard focused on landscape architecture. He designed all the buildings on the island, drawing inspiration from the work of F. L. Olmsted, Jr, with whom he studied in his youth. The buildings at Mallard Island are reflective of their natural context. Located just half a mile from the Canadian border, which crosses Rainy Lake itself, Mallard Island is in the heart of Ojibwe country, a place both devastated by legal and political borders and a space where nation state borders matter less than the experiences of local Indigenous people who have lived on this land for millenia. In an experiential sense, the experience of Mallard Island is focused on cross-border migration, as many of the volunteers and participants are First Nations people who live on the Canadian side of the border. The collection itself also reflects this sense of movement, consisting of materials Oberholtzer collected during his travels throughout Ojibwe country and well beyond, into Northern Canada. Oberholzer’s life itself was, as the scholar Kristof Van Assche puts it, reflective of ‘the art of boundary crossing’.
The Foundation focuses on the preservation of books and buildings on the island. Freezing temperatures over the winter months provide natural mold control, but the books are otherwise subject to unexpected dangers. Due to the unprecedented water levels of the 2022 flood on Rainy Lake, one of the boathouses was recently going under water, and around 3500 books that were stored there had to be urgently moved. The books were moved to an Annex Library in the nearby town of International Falls. The Annex Library, now home to the rescued books and the Foundation archive, consists of two rooms in a local community centre, formerly a high school set up by the industrialist Edward Backus, whose attempts to industrialise the area Oberholtzer actively resisted for many years. There is no public access to the Annex library yet.
The books still housed on the island are supported by a team of dedicated volunteers, one or two of them retired librarians from a relatively local (5-6 hour drive) area, who come once a year for a book care week. They check the book inventory against the low tech catalogue, which records the titles of the books and their rough location on the island, and select books which need a bit of special care. Many of the volunteers are long-standing supporters of the Foundation, having volunteered for it for years if not decades.
Mallard Island provides an active schedule of programs over the summer months. Access to the island is severely restricted by weather - only generally accessible between late spring and early autumn - and by the capacity of the island, designed to house up to ten participants and two facilitators at any given time. The priorities of the Foundation are Indigenous culture, nature conservation and art, and the slate of programs reflects that. In addition to its own programs, the Foundation runs an application scheme for housed programs weeks, where external organisations can effectively rent the space to run their own initiatives, as long as they align with the values and priorities of the Foundation. Some of the recent programs include Sowing the Seeds, an interdisciplinary place-based learning program about water stewardship; Women and Water week, hosting the Anishinaabekwe Collaboration Across Water Jurisdictions; and Grandmother Drum Week, a week of ceremony and cultural practices. Although few of the programs focus on the books directly, many participants leave feedback on their holistic experience, including their hands-on contact with the thousands of books scattered across the small island. Each cabin has a logbook where people can leave a record of their thoughts, and they often mention childhood wonder experiences of curling up with a book in a cabin, or learning something specific for their research and understanding of cultural practice and local nature. Possibly the most famous response to the experience of books on Mallard Island is Louise Erdrich’s travel memoir, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country. Erdrich, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, wrote at length and with fondness about her experience of books on the island. All of the programs and participants draw inspiration from the natural beauty of the islands and the sense of sacred peace and tranquility it provides.
The Ernest C. Oberholtzer foundation is run almost entirely by volunteers. The Executive Director is the only salaried position in the Foundation, appointed by the Board of Trustees. As Keir puts it, Ober lived poor and died poor. The original Foundation was endowed by people with a close personal connection to Oberholtzer who wanted to preserve his legacy. As is often the case with volunteer-run libraries, there are competing priorities for the resources of the Foundation, including the preservation of the buildings, nature conservation efforts, regulating the library and fundraising. One of their current priorities is to rethink access to the book collection as a research resource, and make people aware that the collection exists and welcomes people interested in Ojibwe culture and Oberholtzer’s legacy.
Additional reading:
Krist of Van Assche (2014) Ernest Oberholtzer and the art of boundary crossing: writing, life and the narratives of conservation and planning, Planning Perspectives, 29:1, 45-65, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2013.808579
Image of the room with the orange table. This is Ober’s bedroom area, in what we call the Big House. You can see how prominent the books are.
Image of the (now) Boat House and how it’s perched at the edge of the channel between Mallard and neighbouring Hawk Island. This was when the structure was still called the Library.
Image of the trail leading through the center of the island. To the right, a 2-story structure called Cook’s House.
Dr John-Mark Philo, Principle Investigator
Oxford Poetry Library
Oxford Poetry Library is a volunteer-run community arts organization that promotes creative writing and spoken word set up by Phoebe Nicholson in 2017. Phoebe came to Oxford in 2009 as a student, and fell in love with the arts community of the city. Although Oxford is a very literary city with a strong poetry scene, many of its facilities are inaccessible without a university card, which reinforced the idea that poetry is something exclusive. Oxford Poetry Library started as an initiative aimed to broaden access to poetry. Its first iteration was a custom-built cargo bike full of donated books. Phoebe and the first volunteers rode the bike to markets and fairs around Oxford, directly engaging with people doing their grocery shopping or walking around marketplaces. One of the primary missions of the library is to bridge the town and gown divide in Oxford and create a space appealing to everyone in the community. The striking bike is decorated with the OPL’s bright purple plum logo - a reference to This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams, a poem used by Phoebe to stress the idea that poetry can be found anywhere.
Phoebe drew inspiration from Street Books, a mobile, pedal-powered library of books based in Oregon which aims to remove barriers to accessing books for the homeless community, to build a resource to democratize access to poetry.[1] Oxford Poetry Library grew organically as a grassroots library. The library settled into its current location in 2021, when Makespace Oxford - an organisation pairing underutilised vacant buildings in Oxford with community initiatives on a medium-term lease basis - reached out to the Oxford Poetry Library offering a subsidised space near the Oxford Railway Station. Oxford Poetry Library found its physical home at The Community Works, a building with a number of residents including Lula's Ethiopian and Eritrean Cuisine, a charity tackling period poverty called Wings, and a number of artist studios. Its collection grew from around 80 to over 1200 poetry books. The space is very much a public hub, drawing a diverse crowd.
The library is open for browsing and borrowing twice a week, to be reduced to once a week from next year onward to accommodate OPL’s growing program of events and workshops. OPL currently runs multiple monthly poetry workshop sessions and open mic nights. Getting Started with Poetry is an inclusive workshop for complete beginners, encouraging everyone to find their inner poet within. Drafting Table is a peer to peer workshop for developing poets seeking feedback from a friendly and supportive community. Drafting Table also serves as a space for developing mentorship connections with more established local poets. The flagship evening open mic event, This is Just to Say, is advertised as a fun evening cultural activity, and it often draws in people who might not already be engaging with poetry. Phoebe takes a particular pride in The Hip Crowd - a baby-inclusive matinee event aimed at parents and carers, normalising engaging social activities among new parents.
The Oxford Poetry Library pays subsidised rent and is based entirely on voluntary labour. Phoebe very kindly spent a lunch break of her day job chatting to me about the library. Patreon keeps the library afloat. OPL use an open source borrowing management system, Librarika, and provide dropboxes in other Makespace locations and community organisations around Oxford to enable people to drop off their loans elsewhere. The trusty cargo bike occasionally makes it out to special events and occasional fairs, and Phoebe remembers it with fondness. It was a powerful and eye-catching visual to attract passers-by who might not have otherwise engaged with poetry! However, the physical location has really allowed the library and its programme of events to blossom, so for the time being OPL and its small team of dedicated volunteers have concentrated their efforts into making the permanent space a success.
The library does not have a designated program of book stock expansion, but Phoebe actively curates the collection. She is grateful for the overwhelming number of donations, and is often surprised by the types of books people are willing to donate. In her own ad hoc purchases for the library, Phoebe prioritises widening representation. LGBTQ+ authors are very popular among the patrons of the library. Phoebe is especially passionate about including local Oxford-based poets, independently published writers, authors of zines. The books that tend to be most popular with the audiences are poems offering hope, contemplation of nature, human wellbeing and gentle explorations of the human condition. The library is adamant at supporting poetry as a way of understanding - something that does not require an apparatus, footnotes and references to comprehend.
The library attracts a very diverse crowd. Actively promoted on Instagram and Facebook and through physical posters and flyers, the library draws in people from the established Oxford poetry scene and newcomers to the city. The workshops, in particular, encourage the different demographics involved with the library to engage with each other. OPL has run programs aimed at refugees and asylum seekers in the past, focusing on refugee voices in poetry. One of the expansion priorities for the library is the local community, the people who live in the immediate vicinity of the premises, primarily in social housing. OPL is working with local partners to establish Sunday community days, where Lula’s will provide a subsidised all you can eat buffet, and the library will aim to provide a safe, inclusive, family-friendly space to engage people from the local community.
Oxford Poetry Library partners with many local community organisations and grassroots poetry libraries around the country. The Scottish Poetry Library, where Phoebe volunteered in 2016, was one of the inspirations for the project, and has in the past supported OPL’s organisers and volunteers. Manchester Poetry Library has also proved to be a kind, welcoming and supporting partner.
The biggest challenge for the library is the time and resources of its volunteers. Ideas and energy are always there but the voluntary nature of the project limits its sustainability and ability to create a reliable presence, as Phoebe explains. In a way, the fact that the library is so successful is one of its challenges - the demand for OPL's programming and opening hours often exceeds the resources the library actually has. As it is, it provides a home for anyone who wants to discover the alluring, imaginative and ever so multifaceted world of poetry.
[1] It is worth mentioning the rising issue of homelessness in Oxford: https://emmaus.org.uk/oxford/worrying-statistics-reveal-street-homelessness-up-by-70-in-oxford-says-charity/
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