Sarah Thomas

Oxfordshire character A woman of SIGNIFICANCE Bodley’s librarian Sarah Thomas is too busy to arrange books on her study shelves, so they remain conspicuously sparse bar a few volumes inherited from her predecessor and two photographs of her with Bill and Hilary Clinton. Sandra Fraser met the woman charged with taking Oxford University Library Services, home to 11 million printed items and rising, forward into the 21st century. Photography by Mark Fairhurst HEN Sarah Thomas was these facts: Of being foreign, she notes that the appointed Bodley’s Librarian this “I don’t perceive that I’ve broken a university and the city have a truly Wyear, having been headhunted barrier,” she says. “I’m the same person I international population and on her arrival from Cornell University, the media, was when I was five years old – I’m trying at the Bodleian, she discovered that her national and local, trumpeted that she had to do my best whenever I can… I’ve never childhood next-door-neighbour and broken through two barriers – she was the felt personally that I’ve been held back by playmate was honoured on a roll of first female and the non-British person to gender. You have to remember too, that beneficiaries of the library. It’s a daily hold the post in its 400-year history. ‘librarian’ is traditionally a female- reminder of home and where she grew up Sarah is much more down-to-earth about dominated profession.” in Massachusetts. Sarah’s engineer and teacher parents was 11 or 12 to her step-mother as a New Oxfordshire character valued education and encouraged her What I didn’t Year’s gift and the young girl was Elizabeth reading habit. the First giving it to Catherine Parr,” she “I would walk from my house down to understand was replies. She thinks further and, not this one-room library and return with a surprisingly, remarks on the Gettysburg stack of books,” she says. After exhausting what it is like to live address, written in Lincoln’s hand in 1863, Haydenville’s library she started travelling to oirignals of which are held at the Library of the next library town, and the next… “here every day in Congress and Cornell University. She has “We just always, always, had books and seen American dignitaries reduced to tears papers around,” she says. England. This before it and her mind is clearly whirring as As a student at the all-women Smith she continues: College, she entered the world of the courtyard, the music,“ “We [The Bodleian] own the oldest librarian through a classmate’s surviving book written in the English encouragement. Her first task was to language from the court of King Alfred the bookplate a collection of papers and books the theatres, the Great from the 9th century translated from dealing with women’s birth control – at that the Latin… you think about what that time still illegal in the state and though she people – who are just means to an American. It seems insists she has had no career strategy, it unfathomable…” sparked Sarah’s interest and imagination and extraordinary It’s items like these that Sarah wants the she went on to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the public, not just scholars or academics, to see, National Agricultural Library and the individuals even if they’re behind glass. Library of Congress. This year she was Her own favourite read is Jane Eyre by awarded the Melvil Dewey Medal – Dewey enjoy the books they read, and enjoy the Charlotte Brontë and she particularly likes was the inventor of the library classification environment they read in. Jill Ker Conway’s True North, a memoir system that still bears his name – recognising Our tour takes us on a Harry-Potter-in- about growing up in the Australian her contribution to the profession. Gringotts descent through the New Outback. That is Sarah’s history – but her future and Bodleian. Sarah, I note, has learnt to be “I like these stories about very strong that of the Bodleian is currently exercising diplomatic about Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s women,” she laughs. hearts and minds in Oxfordshire. The 1930s design. Having originally dubbed it Sarah’s personal collection of fiction has Bodleian is physically and metaphorically at an ‘awful building’ she agrees it has some been shipped from America to her new the heart of Oxford with buildings and architectural merits – it’s Grade 2 listed – home in Oxfordshire but she’s left the architecture to inspire and delight – but far but as part of the library’s renovation plans, majority of her library back in the US, underground lies a mass of books, papers she wants the ceremonial door to open and content to shop in Oxford for new books – and journals, not necessarily in the best of the ugly concrete apron outside to go, along the bookshops are such a pleasure. conditions. Reform is essential and Sarah with the overcrowded books and stacks that So does she like the UK and her new job? feels that people don’t understand what it represent a health and fire hazard. It will Have there been any nasty surprises? means to be adding three miles of become less tomb-like and more open, she “I think that I understood was how bookshelves to the Bodleian’s collections a hopes. My hope is that the merits of the wonderful it would be. I knew it would be a year – and have no notion of the delicate marvellous Heath-Robinson-like conveyor challenge – I wanted the challenge. What I state some of the older material has belt and pneumatic Lamson tube system didn’t understand was what it is like to live deteriorated into. used to deliver and request books here every day in England. This courtyard, The Bodleian has remained very much a respectively are preserved. The subterranean the music, the theatres, the people – who are ‘Shhhhhhhh’ library and has stuttered into chambers form part of the building’s 11 just extraordinary individuals,” she says. the 21st century clinging to many traditions floors, spreading out under Broad Street. Sarah is mindful of Thomas Bodley’s whose origins are impenetrable. When The entrance to these reminds staff to tell original aim when he created the library. He Sarah is showing us around Duke Humfrey’s their colleagues where they are, together knew he couldn’t replace Duke Humfrey’s Library, built in the 1400s and which still with instructions to follow the yellow lines manuscripts, destroyed in the Civil War, so houses books in Bodley’s original bookcases to an exit if they get lost. he cajoled, encouraged and invited dating back to around 1602, we are given Once inside one understands the need for beneficiaries to contribute to his new the hard stare by readers who clearly regard the new book depository, due to be built on library’s contents, which he wanted to be our presence, let alone Sarah’s sotto voce the Osney Mead industrial site alongside used by anyone seeking information, descriptions, a distraction. other warehouses, but currently causing regardless of their origins. Sarah has had to remind both herself and, concern among city heritage experts who When people walk down Broad Street at times, her colleagues, that she is now in fear it might ruin Oxford’s skyline – though and Catte Street years hence Sarah wants charge, especially where archaic rules and the plans show it’s far enough from the city them to see a modern library in operation, regulations are concerned. She’s managed to centre not to intrude and actually much something open and inviting to all people. get drinks of water allowed during long and prettier than the warehouses surrounding it. “Bodley’s object was not to get the arduous meetings – refreshments were Sarah has had many such problems to original manuscripts back, but to create this banned because a long-removed treasured juggle since her arrival in Oxford but these resource that would serve the Republic of Persian carpet was once housed in the same are balanced with great pleasures too. She the Learned,” she explains. room, but it took persistence on her part to didn’t arrive with a desire to see a particular It seems as fitting an occupation today as it discover why the rule existed when it didn’t manuscript or document so has delighted in was 400 years ago – and this Bodley’s make sense in the modern world. One items that she simply didn’t know the Librarian seems just the woman to get the wonders how high eyebrows will be raised Bodleian held within its vaults. I ask which task done in the modern era. ■ when she reveals her plan to create a coffee has most enchanted her. bar complete with squashy sofas within the “It’s a small notebook that was written, in Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford. Tel: 01865 library environs, but she wants people to her own fair hand, by a young girl when she 277000. www.bodley.ox.ac.uk.

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