...So You Thought The Dome Was Bad?
Due to a lack of foresight by University authorities £120,000 of the Bodleian's money has been wasted on an unsuccessful bid to cut a hole, at least nine feet wide in total, in the seventeenth century wall next to the Great Gate looking into the Old Schools Quadrangle of the Old Library. The money was wasted on proposals for a 'managed visitor programme' which, it was hoped would generate tens of thousands of pounds a year.
"The level of opposition to the proposals was unexpected" explained Steve Waterman, the Secretary to Bodley's Librarian and assistant to the Director of University Library Services. The benefactor's grant could have been spent on books and facilities for students had the university realised that tampering with a Grade I Listed building was always going to provoke a huge outcry.
Funding for the Bodleian was cut in 2000/2001 by 4.1% and price inflation of books and electronic resources means funding is squeezed where it matters in the purchase of books and serials, although Waterman insists that there are no plans to close Bod libraries earlier due to this wasteage. Foreign published works have recently been under threat as costs soar and areas have to found where money can be saved. Although the Bodleian is a Copyright Library and has to stock all UK published volumes, it is not required to acquire books published abroad, which are frequently as useful if not more so.
The other issue that caused the University to withdraw its planning application was the widely held worry that not enough income would be generated to make the project viable. Even if the Bodleian had won the expected Heritage Lottery Fund money, which would have paid for 60% of the total capital cost, it could not have sustained itself. All rested on an estimate of 115,000 paying visitors a year, and in the words of Professor Martin Biddle, Senior Research Fellow at Hertford, "there is every reason to doubt whether this figure is robust".
In an article written by Biddle for the Oxford Magazine, the project is described as a "theme-park solution". He says there was a lack of critical appraisal and rigorous judgement "in the various committees which will have reviewed these proposals". The damning piece concludes by condemning the plans in no uncertain terms: "As regards care and sensitive curatorship of the buildings, the proposals fail at every point."
The project had conflicting aims from the outset, hoping to reduce noise and congestion in the summer months but also to attract more paying visitors and doubling the number of tours within the library. Tourists would have been encouraged to look away from the main attraction in the Divinity School - the ceiling. Sir Howard Colvin wrote in an earlier edition of the Oxford Magazine that "the authors of this grossly insensitive proposal need to be reminded that the Divinity School is one of the supreme monuments of English Gothic Architecture."
The use of Bodleian funds has come under fire in the past when threats of closure at 7.00 pm each weekday were faced down by an OUSU campaign last year, supported by over a dozen JCRs. Sacks full of OUSU postcards arrived at the door of the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Academic Services, Professor Slack, to persuade the authorities to continue the 10.00 pm opening.
Steve Waterman admitted that no new decisions will be made to control the number of tourists "in the short term". It is unclear how the noise and congestion issue will be addressed in the near future or even what a final resolution might be.
10th Jan 2002