Bodleian Library

Today we visited the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Oxford is a very pretty place. All the places we have visited so far are just beautiful. The Bodleian Library was first opened to scholars in 1602. It was created by Duke Humfrey but he died in 1488 before it was completed. He donated about 281 manuscripts to the library but Edward VI removed the Duke's manuscripts and had them burned and only thirteen remain. Thomas Bodleian was a Diplomat, who may have been a spy, he retired from the job after his wife and father died. Bodleian donated a large amount of money to the Oxford University library. In 1610 he made an agreement to have one of every book published sent to the library. All the first editions of Shakespeare's sonnets are at the Bodleian Library. The oldest manuscript in the Bodleian Library is from the year 527 B.C. of an Egyptian marriage contract written on papyrus. We learned that this library was also a chained library up until the eighteenth century. This library is using the Colon catalogue but is in the process of changing to the Library of Congress cataloguing system. This library is the first national library. Bodleian wanted it to be a public library but it is not. (This picture is from www.historic-uk.com.)