Old shelves in a new building (2)

The Royal Library on the North Front gallery
1937

The elegant cases on the first floor galleries of the 1934 Library building now house modern works, but until 1954 the majority of Moore’s books were available for browsing. The effects of heavy use and exposure to fluctuating environmental conditions, combined with dramatic increases in the value of antiquarian books, led the Library Syndicate to place the books on reserve, fetching them on request for readers. Within the last twelve months the books of the Royal Library have been moved once more–hopefully for the final time–into the Library’s recently constructed, highest conservation standard stacks, to ensure that they can last many more centuries for readers.

UA ULIB.12.3.15

When the new University Library building was opened in 1934, amongst those to write about it was Arthur Oswald in Country Life. While generally pleased with the design of the building and its ‘utility and orderliness [alongside] a certain degree of beauty’, he gave particular credit to the attractiveness of the open corridors with elegant bookstacks. ‘The entrance hall, galleries and reading rooms all have subdued and agreeable colour schemes which, almost subconsciously, induce a sympathetic mood’. Many readers in the twenty-first century choose to work at the tables set in between the Royal Library bookcases, enjoying both the excellent light and, perhaps, the ‘sympathetic mood’.

Extended captions