Library
Reference: UND/EA
Dates of creation: 1837 - date Durham University Library was established in January 1833 on the Palace Green site, between the cathedral and the castle, with a foundation collection of 160 volumes donated by William van Mildert, the last prince bishop of Durham and the founder of the university itself. In order to house the original stock of the University Library, William van Mildert had a gallery constructed in 1834 within Cosin's Library, which had first been founded in 1669 as the episcopal or diocesan library by Bishop John Cosin (1595-1672) on Palace Green. The Cosin Library collection, strong in holdings of medieval manuscripts and early printed books, became part of the university's trusteeship only in 1937, although it had been used by members of the university from early in the university's history. The Cosin Library building is of international significance in the history of libraries for its structure and design, and also for the portrait panels painted above the bookcases by Jan Baptist van Eerssell in 1668-1669 on Cosin's instructions; there is also a further collection of portraits hanging in Cosin's library, including some half-length portraits of English divines and statesmen in all likelihood painted for Cosin himself.
The University Library expanded considerably during the 1850s with a series of major bequests and donations: by Dr Martin Joseph Routh (1755-1854) in 1854, by Bishop Edward Maltby (1770-1859) in 1856, and by Dr Thomas Mastermann Winterbottom (1766-1859) in 1859. The library had to extend its space to occupy also the upper two floors of the Exchequer Building, the former bishoprick law courts on Palace Green that date from c.1450. An adjacent nineteenth-century lecture block was eventually given over to library use as well, and in 1966 an extension to the Palace Green Library site designed by George Pace provided a large reading room and a new stack. In 1983 the enlarged Science Library building on Stockton Road became the university's main library site with Palace Green left to house Law, Music, and Archives and Special Collections.
Recent developments in the operation of the library have included the introduction of an online circulation system in 1983. Online cataloguing commenced in 1990, with the closure of manual catalogues, and the Innopac library system was introduced in 1996, the year in which the library also joined CURL, the Consortium of University Research Libraries in the British Isles. The following year, EDI (electronic data interchange) was introduced for the transmission of the library's acquisition orders and the main library was further extended. In 1998, with the implementation of a Chinese, Japanese, and Korean module for its library management system, the library became the first UK institution to integrate in this way non-Roman script catalogue records for its East Asian language materials. A self-issue system was introduced at Queen's Campus Stockton in 2001, and the following year at the main library as well. Also in 2002, the Library adopted MARC21 for its catalogue records, and saw a card-entry access control system installed at both the main library and Queen's Campus Stockon sites. 2004 saw Durham Cathedral Library join the university library's management system for circulation and lending, the introduction of a self-return system at the main library, and the integration of the library's e-journal holdings information to the OPAC (online public access catalogue). In 2005, the Library began a major reclassification project to implement simplifications and modernisations to the existing complex classified arrangements for its collections by moving from four non-parallel classification schemes to one, the most up-to-date version of the Dewey Decimal Classification scheme. The holdings of college libraries also began to appear on the library's OPAC, renamed Catalogue in 2005.
The library is headed by the University Librarian and Director of Library Services and in 2019 was retitled as Library and Collections, previously Library and Heritage Collections.
Site Libraries
An Oriental Library was set up in 1950, based at Elvet Hill House in 1955, to house the exceptionally fine Oriental collections. On this site's closure in 1987, the holdings were transferred largely to the Main Library on the Science Site. Area Studies Collections relating to East Asia and to the Middle East and Islamic world still continue to constitute a major strength of the University Library's holdings.
The Institute of Education set up its own library in 1963 before this was incorporated within the University Library in 1979. It moved to the Main Building of the School of Education on Leazes Road in 1982.
A separate library for the new Science site had been established in 1924. After the War, this was established in the current Geography department building before gaining its own building in 1965, incorporating collections previously separated; ten years later, the university's former Zoology Departmental Library was also incorporated into that Library. The Science Library building was redesigned and extended in 1983 to become the Main Library. This building has been periodically extended since then and was renamed the Bill Bryson Library after the former University Chancellor's retirement in 2011.
In 1992 a small library was set up at Stockton to support the opening of the new campus there in that year. In January 1999 this library moved to the newly opened Information Resources Centre (IRC) on level 2 of the Ebsworth Building at Stockton. It became the Queen's Campus library in 2002 in recognition of Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee and the tenth anniversary of the Stockton campus. In 2019 it became the library for the International Study Centre in Stockton on the transfer of the two Stockton colleges to Durham.
Recent Major Bequests, Donations, and Acquisitions
The Sudan Archive was set up in 1957 by Richard Hill, a lecturer in Near Eastern history at the University of Durham, who was previously attached to the Sudan Government Railways and to the University College of Khartoum. The archive contains principally private papers of British subjects who lived and worked in the Sudan during the period of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1898-1955).
The Bamburgh Library was deposited in 1958, consisting of some 8,500 manuscript and print titles (including 16 incunabula) across a wide range of subject areas. Accumulated largely between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries by the archbishop of York, John Sharp (1644-1714), his sons and grandsons, the Sharp family collection was given to Lord Crewe's Charity. It was housed at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland from the end of the eighteenth century, with additions being made to it until the mid-nineteenth century.
The University Library acquired an important collection of materials relating to Quakerism in 1972 when the bulk of the surviving collection of the Sunderland Preparative Meeting of the Society of Friends Library (c.880 printed volumes) was deposited, followed by a small number of related manuscripts in 1974.
The Basil Bunting Poetry Archive was acquired from 1987 onwards by purchase and gift from various sources, with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Purchase Grant Fund, English Estates North, and others. It constitutes the most extensive collection in the UK of the work of the north east poet, Basil Bunting (1900-1985) and of material relating to him, and it supports the work of the University's Basil Bunting Poetry Centre.
The Pratt Green Collection of hymns and hymnology was also established in 1987 with the gift, via the Pratt Green Trustees, of the collection of hymn books and related print and manuscript works formed by the distinguished hymn writer, Dr Fred Pratt Green, MBE. (1903-2000).
In 1990 a merger took place between the collections of the university of Durham's former department of Palaeography and Diplomatic (established in 1948) with those of the university library into which they were amalgamated.
Since 1991, the generous bequest of a former keeper of Oriental Collections in the Library, Ian John Charles Foster (1908-1978), has enabled the Foster Book Fund to be available for the purchase of books and periodicals relating to Christian art, architecture, archaeology, liturgy, and church organisation.
Undispersed holdings from the library of Lord William Howard (1563-1640), surviving at Naworth Castle in Cumbria, were purchased by the library in 1992, with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, and the Friends of the National Libraries.
Durham University Librarians
1832-1834 : Revd Patrick George
1834-1855 : Revd Charles Thomas Whitley
1856-1858 : Revd Robert Healey Blakey
1858-1864 : Revd Henry Frederick Long
1865-1868 : Revd Francis Frederick Walrond
1869-1873 : Revd Thomas Forster Dodd
1873-1901 : Revd Joseph Thomas Fowler
1901-1934 : Mr Edward Vazeille Stocks
1934-1945 : Mr Henry Waldo Acomb (Acting Librarian 1940-1943 : Miss Beatrice Mary Hamilton Thompson)
1945-1967 : Mr David Goudie Ramage
1967-1989 : Miss Agnes Maxwell McAulay
1989-2009 : Dr John Tristan Dalton Hall
2009-2017 : Mr Jon Purcell
2018-date : Ms Liz Waller
1 General
2 Archives and Special Collections
3 Oriental
4 Science
5 Education
6 Stockton
A.D. Burnett, “A Note on Early Economics Teaching at Durham University and the University Library”, (Durham University Journal, 64, 1971-1972), p.146-147.