Who is to blame for This Bod-ged Job?
Ever tighter government funding has led Oxford's bibliophiles to become amateur economists in recent years, and last month's fiasco at the Bodleian shows them up as exactly that: amateurs. Their lesson for us this week at the Oxford Student was simple; that in order to make money, you have to spend money.
In theory it should be simple, but in the real world it rarely is, and when the Bodleian wastes £120,000 from a pot of gold it already says is too small to meet the needs of this University's students, then questions have to be asked.
There is no doubt that the Bodleian has had to respond to recent changes in the funding of academic resources; it has embraced the commercial age, and the Bodleian brand is now almost as big as that of this University.
Yet the Bod's latest attempts to generate capital have left it red-faced and rather out-of-pocket. It has wasted ed thousands of pounds of money destined for the benefit of its users rather than its visitors, on surveyors and architects willing to cut a gaping hole into the Great Gate on Catte Street. The size of the this wasteage belies the hypocrisy of the Bodleian.
Plans for the visitors' centre had never created so much opposition, and yet the Bod reworked its plans and submitted them again early last year. With foresight and some sense of the public opposition to such a project, some of this money might never have left the Bodleian's funds, and they could afford some of the resources they claim they so desperately need.
The library was seriously discussing closure at 7pm every weeknight last year, claiming its resources could not fund the minimal usage of the Bodleian after that time.
Yet who has benefited from this squander? Certainly not us, and we should be wary of the Bodleian crying poor again when it has more money stashed away than it cares to admit.
10th Jan 2002