November 26, 2012 - Matthew Reisz for Times Higher Education
Large bright badges offering help to customers may have become a common sight in coffee shops.
But the wearing of them by librarians at the University of Oxford has been seen as the latest insult in a row over changes taking place among the dreaming spires' famous research collections.
Anger has been growing in the past few months over developments at the Bodleian Libraries that have led to vast humanities collections being rehoused, including the History Faculty Library being incorporated into the main collections. Matters came to a head last week with a discussion in Congregation -- Oxford's academic "parliament" -- about "the libraries and their future."
Sarah Thomas, Bodley's librarian, described how "since 2000 six new libraries have been constructed and 19 libraries have been merged into larger units." But Hugh Doherty, a fellow in history at Jesus College, Oxford, worried that current trends threatened to turn "a multiplicity of integrated libraries, specialized, browsable and staffed, into a series of flagship book depositories, clean, cheap and faceless."
But the wearing of them by librarians at the University of Oxford has been seen as the latest insult in a row over changes taking place among the dreaming spires' famous research collections.
Anger has been growing in the past few months over developments at the Bodleian Libraries that have led to vast humanities collections being rehoused, including the History Faculty Library being incorporated into the main collections. Matters came to a head last week with a discussion in Congregation -- Oxford's academic "parliament" -- about "the libraries and their future."
Sarah Thomas, Bodley's librarian, described how "since 2000 six new libraries have been constructed and 19 libraries have been merged into larger units." But Hugh Doherty, a fellow in history at Jesus College, Oxford, worried that current trends threatened to turn "a multiplicity of integrated libraries, specialized, browsable and staffed, into a series of flagship book depositories, clean, cheap and faceless."
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/26/oxford-debates-role-its-librarians-and-libraries#ixzz2DdF24uQB
Inside Higher Ed