The Journal of Documentation
Volume 5
DECEMBER 1949
Number 3
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL LIBRARY
by F. L. Kent, M.A.
University Librarian, Bristol
University libraries may be thought of both as general libraries and as agglomerations
of special libraries, and since even those which concentrate their collections in a
single building have certain specialized subdivisions, each will be found to display
both characteristics in greater or lesser degree. The problem of the University
Librarian is not so much to reconcile these two points of view as to extract the
greatest possible benefit from the divergence of technique which each connotes. Most
librarians would be glad enough, if only for administrative reasons, to abolish their
departmental libraries, each of which is of course in its own way a special library; but
nearly all of us have them and it so happens that the University of Bristol has them in
large numbers. Since Bristol is to have the honour of welcoming the Aslib
Conference next autumn, a brief description of the library system of the University
may be of interest to special librarians; and if this article says much about the past,
something of the future, and but little of the present, the reason is that from some
indication of what it has done and what it hopes to do some opinion may be formed of
the value of what it is doing now – and that is a thing which all who attend the
conference will be able to see and judge of themselves if they so desire.
The University College of Bristol was founded in 1876, and though it is obvious that
it must have begun to collect books forthwith, it is not until 1883 that the records
mention a ‘small library’ attached to the College. A professor was appointed
honorary librarian in 1888.
The first substantial enlargements of the collection took place in 1892, when the
library founded in 1890 by the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society was combined
with the new library of the Medical School – the two medical libraries, together with
those of the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Bristol General Hospital, being housed in
the College buildings. The subsequent history of the Medical Library may
conveniently be given in brief here; it continued to be administered as a joint
undertaking by the College and the Society, both contributing towards its purchases,
until the Society generously presented its books and periodicals outright in 1925 in
return for a continuance of its existing privileges of reading and borrowing. The
unified University Medical Library now came under the direct control of the
University Librarian. At present it contains some 30,000 volumes, 4,000 pamphlets,
and 550 sets of periodicals (350 of them current, many being received in exchange for
the Bristol Medio-Chirurgical Journal). The valuable special collections of old
medical books and of works on mineral waters and spas originally formed by the
Society have been steadily added to since. Though administratively part of the

Griffiths, L.M.: ‘The Bristol Medical Library’ Bristol Med.-Chir. J. xxix, 1911, pp.335-73; Rudge,
C.K.: ‘The Bristol Medical Library’, ibid. xxx, 1912, pp.344-50. (Both articles have bibliographical
references to the history of medical libraries in Bristol before 1890.)
University Library, housed in the main library buildings and staffed by library staff,
the Medical Library still reflects in some ways the manner of its growth: it is the only
division of the University Library in which borrowing powers are exercised as of
right by a class of readers not members of the University, and the Medical Library
Sub-Committee (on which the Medico-Chirurgical Society has representatives) has
always been the only permanent sub-committee of the University Library Commttee.
The year 1892 also saw the incorporation into the library of the Faculty of Arts and
Science of that of the Bristol ‘Day Training College for Women’ (that is, the women’s
teacher training department of University College); the collection of the
corresponding College for Men followed suit thirteen years later.
Developments between 1892 and 1909, when the University College was raised by
charter to full University status, may be briefly summarized. With the splitting of the
Faculty of Arts and Science into the separate Faculties of Arts, Law, Science, and
Engineering there came into existence the elements of the present organization of the
University Library into divisions, each corresponding to one Faculty: the Arts and
Law libraries remained together and grew as a working collection but without much
in the way of research facilities or source material; the science books were scattered
among the individual departments, in each of which the professor began to build up a
working library and some of which were the fortunate recipients of valuable bequests
or endowments; and the Faculty of Engineering, which established itself in the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, began jointly with the Technical College to
build up a library there. The small scope of all these undertakings combined may be
judged from the size of the library grant, which in 1905 was £500 – and even that
figure did not represent a regular appropriation, for two years later it had sunk to
£160.
The expansion of activity which followed the transformation of the College into a
University in 1909 was reflected in the affairs of the Library. A building formerly
used as an Asylum for the Blind was acquired, and by 1911 both the Medical and the
Arts and Law libraries had been moved into it, though they continued to work as two
separate units each under its own honorary librarian. A few years later both
collections were moved to enable the old asylum to be pulled down to make way for
the new main building of the University, the great tower of which is so prominent a
feature of the Bristol sky-line.
The new building, opened in 1923, contained a library wing on three floors,
comprising a reading room for the Arts and Law libraries and a librarian’s room on
the top floor, a medical library at ground level with a small office for the staff, and
two stack rooms fitted with rolling presses in the basement. Mr. W. L. Cooper, M.A.,
F.L.A., was appointed Librarian the same year, being the first full-time paid Librarian
of the University.
During his librarianship the collection grew rapidly. He added important works of
reference and bibliographical tools in great numbers, and his flair for book-selection
and book-buying enriched the Library with fine collections of source material in a
wide variety of subjects, sets of periodicals and publications of learned societies, and

Except the newly established Library of the Institute of Education.
standard and critical editions of all kinds. He assembled also special collections of
early editions of English philosophical writers and of courtesy books, and the sale of a
considerable part of the Duke of Beaufort’s library at Badminton gave him the
opportunity of buying a remarkable series of first or other early editions of English
novels, particularly of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. All these special
collections continue to be added to as opportunity offers. Among many gifts and
bequest should be mentioned the Wiglesworth Ornithological Bequest, by which the
Library received the valuable ornithological collection of Dr. Joseph Wiglesworth,
together with its bookcases and a substantial endowment for its maintenance and
enlargement. An author catalogue and a shelf catalogue of the Library were prepared
on cards, together with hand-lists of government publications and of the special
collections. A printed catalogue of periodicals appeared in 1940 (with two later
supplements). The Library was designated by the Master of Rolls as a repository for
local records, and, although the city and surrounding county authorities subsequently
set up their own archive departments, with which the University has not attempted to
compete, it has accumulated a fair number of family and other archives, including an
important series of papers covering more than two centuries of the history of the
family of Pinney, merchants of Bristol and the West Indies.
Meanwhile the departmental libraries also continued to expand, and though the
responsibility for book-selection and staffing remained for the most part with the
professors, the ordering, the cataloguing, and maintenance became concentrated in the
hands of the University Librarian, who exercised more and more general supervision
as time went on. Only the Engineering Library and the Library of the Agricultural
and Horticultural Research Station at Long Ashton remained independent, though
they began to furnish lists of accessions to headquarters for incorporation in the main
catalogues; and of these the Engineering Library came under the full control of the
University Library at the beginning of the current academic year.
An extension to the Library was completed in 1940, comprising on the top floor a
spacious entrance hall or ante-library, a small exhibition room, an additional reading
room, and a range of offices, and on the lower floors four stack rooms, a number of
staff rooms, and a bindery; but this extension was set aside for other uses during the
war and was not brought into service till 1945 – it still indeed lacks its proper
furniture, the stocks of oak for which were commandeered. No damage other than to
the windows was suffered by the Library in the bombing of Bristol, although
buildings on three sides of it were destroyed by fire; and the only departmental library
to suffer was that of Anatomy, some of the books of which were fortunately held in
duplicate in the Medical Library. In 1946 Mr. Cooper retired after twenty-three years
as Librarian, and his work may perhaps be summed up by saying that he found a
scattered assemblage of uncoordinated little working collections and left for his
successors an integrated system recognized and appreciated both within the
University and without as a powerful instrument of education and research.
The present Librarian took office at a time of great change and expansion in the
University. The past three years have seen the establishment of the libraries of the
Institute of Education and of the departments of Child Health, Dental Surgery, Drama,

Cox, J. Shum: Catalogue of the Periodical Publications in the Libraries of the University of Bristol.
The University, Bristol 1940
Music, and Veterinary Science – the collections of the two later being housed partly
in the main buildings and partly in the departments. Lack of space for readers has
now become a pressing problem. The Library staff has been increased from a dozen
to twenty, and the book expenditure from £3,800 to £8,000 (the figures in each case
including the expenditure from endowments and special funds). The inter-library loan
traffic, too, which was always high in proportion to the Library’s size, has grown
enormously of late, and the number of industrial and research libraries to which loans
have been made has exceeded 100 during the past year. The total book-stock now
stands at 161,000 with 38,000 pamphlets and 3,250 sets of periodicals of which over
1,500 are current. Among other recent developments may be mentioned the
acquisition of two microfilm readers, the arrangement of numerous small exhibitions
to illustrate public lectures or special courses in the University, and the regular
posting on the Library notice-board of a calendar of concerts, plays, lectures, etc., in
the University and the city during term.
Future plans include further extensions to the main building, a new medical block to
which the Medical Library will be transferred, and a new engineering block with a
library to house the Engineering Library and the departmental collections of Geology
and Mathematics. The departmental system is likely to be continued, and although
this makes for complications in administration and is open to the objection that
students tend to become one-sided in their reading, it does at least ensure that the
maximum, number of books in constant use are within easy reach of those who want
them. One cannot apparently, have it both ways, unless one is prepared to undertake
duplication on a massive – and expensive – scale. It follows that the University of
Bristol is unlikely, so far as can be foreseen, to contemplate the erection of a
mammoth general library such as is planned at Birmingham, and indeed it is difficult
to see where a site in this hilly city could be found for it which would be equally
convenient for all departments.
But as the departmental libraries grow ( and some of them are already considerable) it
is certain that they will ultimately be staffed by Library staff and not, as at present, by
people appointed by the heads of departments and subject only to the general
supervision of the University Librarian. There already exist on the staff a
Superintendent of the Medical Library and a Superintendent of the Arts and Law
divisions, and it seems logical to envisage the appointment of a Superintendent for the
Science and Engineering division, with assistants in each department as and when the
departmental collections become large enough to warrant them. The possible number
of openings for special librarians of this kind in the future should be considerable. I
visualize, moreover, an integrated but not necessarily a unified library system, and I
see no reason why each departmental collection should not be organized and even
classified according to its own needs. This may sound heretical, but I prefer to keep
open the possibility of technical experiments in units sufficiently small not to involve
an impossibly large amount of work or physical disturbance of too many books, and it
might be one of the duties of a Science and Engineering Superintendent to supervise
such experiments and call upon the expert knowledge possessed by the special
librarian in the subject concerned.
All this lies a long way ahead, and I should emphasize that what I have just described
is a tentative design in my own mind and not an approved plan; but members of Aslib
who visit Bristol in September may like to view the University Library as a set of co-
ordinated special libraries and to think out some of the potential developments for
themselves. It will be for me and my successors to try to make our contribution to
and derive all possible benefit from the techniques of special librarianship, while
remembering always the essential unity which is explicit in the word ‘University’.