Note from Gabrielle, 2016-17 Librarian: I found this text on the library computer, in a document titled "Backup of Library Story," dated 07/09/1998. I assume this is when the text was written - I will post an update once I have found out.
A library was part of the earliest plans for London House. The Parsons Library was actually completed, like the Dining Hall, in 1937, but a collection of books had already begun to grow in 1930. There were donations from people who had been present at the birth of the Trust (the Dominion Students’ Hall Trust, as it then was); there were gifts from friendly organisations, and, right from the beginning, gifts of books from residents.
When I became the Trust’s first almost-full-time Librarian, in 1990, we decided that the libraries could serve residents in three ways. In each House there would be a quiet reading room, always available -- a place where you could get away from your own room, spread out the essential books and papers and work solidly. In each House there would continue to be a collection of light reading matter, of books that come and go and are continually being replenished from new gifts.
But there was a third opportunity. In spite of the random nature of earlier gifts, we already had the nucleus of a permanent library. The newly built Reference Area was designed for this third strand of the library, and most of my work, in the next years, went towards developing it. It was a unique challenge – to create a collection of only about six thousand books that had room for the essentials (reference sources and long term classics) in many subjects.
How was it done? The budget, like the space, was limited. I estimate that a thousand books, or so, have come from the earlier stock (many of them were stamped ‘First Class Book’ and were kept in the glass cases). Another thousand were new essential reference books, bought at full price. A thousand have been gradually hunted out from secondhand bookshops. There are plenty of these within walking distance of Mecklenburgh Square! More than a thousand are worthwhile new books bought at low prices – ‘remainders’ and ‘overstocks’. A thousand are valuable, often rare, discards from other libraries which we have saved for the future (in Britain in the last decade we have lived through ‘the dissolution of the libraries’, the scandalous disposal of older, less-used collections that managers now see no reason to keep). And several hundred, at least, are gifts from current residents that were clearly going to be of long term value to later generations.
I really mean ‘generations’. We have been gathering together a rather unusual library; a library that, like the Houses themselves, is intended not only for this year’s and next year’s residents but for decades to come. Some books, admittedly, become obsolete quickly. But many of those in the Reference Area will not. We have collections of writings by less-known English and foreign poets and writers that may, for all we know, never be replaced by a new edition. Future users of the Reference Area, only a minority of residents in any year but still an enthusiastic minority, will be able to judge in the future whether our plan has been a good one!
Andrew Dalby