To the Salt Mines

HB: Was taken on a guided tour of the Bodleian Library at the weekend, by the very nice Director of Development there.

A couple of nuggets.

First, the Bod is a copyright library, entitled to receive a copy of every book published in the UK. I asked whether that included all the mass of self-pub material that's pouring out from Authorhouse and other similarly excellent publishing houses. He said yes: if a book has an ISBN no, the Bod retains a copy. They used to be selective about what they accepted, but since coming to regret turning down first editions of Jane Austen's works, they now just take everything.

And where, I asked, do they put all this material? I knew that the Bod's underground vaults are gradually expanding ever wider beneath Oxford, but it seemed a bit rich to turn Oxford into a honeycomb just for the sake of some of this self-pub material. Ah no, ses he, most new titles are sent direct & unread to Cheshire. To a salt mine in fact. I daresay all my fine output is doing its time there, before posterity finally pardons it.

Second nugget.

In the early 1600s, the Stationers Company had a monopoly over printing & kept a register of authors, titles and authorised works. But Thomas Bodley asked, how would they be able prove what exact texts those authorisations referred to if there weren't some central repository? The Stationers had no answer ... so the good TB offered to keep one copy of every book in perpetuity. He got his books free. The Stationers had their problem solved. And the arrangement has continued - through changes in law &c - ever since.