Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library traces its origins to the 14th century, but its modern foundation dates to 1602 when Sir Thomas Bodley, a former Oxford fellow and diplomat, refurbished the existing university library and endowed it with his own collection. Bodley negotiated an agreement with the Stationers' Company in 1610 to receive a copy of every book registered in England, a precursor to modern legal deposit. The library opened to scholars in 1602, and its first librarian was Thomas James, who compiled the first printed catalogue in 1605. During the English Civil War, the library was used as a garrison and later restored, but it suffered a major loss in 1738 when a fire destroyed many books. The 19th century saw significant expansion, including the construction of the Radcliffe Camera (1749) and the New Bodleian building (1939), now named the Weston Library.

The Bodleian's collections are exceptionally diverse, spanning Western and Eastern manuscripts, incunabula, maps, music, and ephemera. It holds the Gutenberg Bible (one of only 48 surviving copies), the Magna Carta (one of four original 1215 exemplars), and the Shakespeare First Folio (1623). The library's Oriental collections include the Genizah fragments, a trove of medieval Jewish manuscripts, and the Dunhuang manuscripts from China. The Bodleian also houses the papers of literary figures such as J.R.R. Tolkien, who worked there as a professor and lexicographer, and the archive of the Oxford English Dictionary. Its digital initiatives, such as Digital Bodleian, provide online access to thousands of images, making rare materials available to a global audience.

The Bodleian's architectural ensemble is a landmark of Oxford. The oldest reading room, Duke Humfrey's Library, dates from 1488 and features a late-medieval hammerbeam roof; it was used as a filming location for the Harry Potter films. The Radcliffe Camera, a circular Palladian building completed in 1749, serves as a reading room and is connected to the Old Bodleian via an underground tunnel. The Weston Library, opened in 2015, houses special collections and exhibition galleries. The library also includes the Gladstone Link, a subterranean book storage facility, and the Book Storage Facility in Swindon, which holds millions of items. The iconic doorway of the Old Bodleian, flanked by columns and a statue of Sir Thomas Bodley, is a popular tourist attraction.

Beyond its famous holdings, the Bodleian has many obscure facets. It holds the only surviving copy of the 1623 First Folio in Oxford, but also a copy of the 'Bodleian Palimpsest' containing erased texts beneath later writing. The library's 'Bodleian Bindings' collection includes rare book covers made from human skin, a practice known as anthropodermic bibliopegy. The library once employed a 'Bodley's Librarian' who was required to be a male Oxford graduate, a rule only relaxed in 1947. The Bodleian's underground book conveyor system, installed in the 1960s, uses a network of tunnels to transport books between buildings. The library also holds the 'Bodleian Map Room', which contains over 1.5 million maps, including a 14th-century portolan chart. In 2011, the Bodleian returned a 17th-century manuscript to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, a rare act of repatriation.

Legal deposit

A legal requirement that publishers submit copies of their publications to a designated repository.

Incunabula

Books printed before 1501, during the infancy of printing.

Anthropodermic bibliopegy

The practice of binding books in human skin.