FSLG Annual Review - Senate House Libraries - University of London

the early years of the seventeenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century
and include many minor writers as well as the better known. As they were sold and
not donated and he was better-known as a bookseller than a scholar, they are
unlikely to be known as the Aspin collection. More details can be found in the Arts,
Humanities and Social Sciences Newsletter, Trinity College Library, 5 th January 2009,
Volume 1, Issue 2 (available online).
Location of the Collection
The Mylne Collection, like other Taylor Institution Library special
collections, is not currently located in the main Taylor Institution
Library itself at St Giles in central Oxford but in the Libraries'
Repository at Nuneham Courtenay, a small village some five
miles south of it. It is kept together as a collection and readers
may order books from it to the Taylor Institution Library in
Oxford or may with special permission visit and find all 1,007
novels in one place in the same bay of shelves – so from the
point of view of readers it is not a bad solution to Oxford’s
problem of space in that the volumes are all there in one place
and can be browsed. It is perhaps in another sense not entirely
unfitting that they should be there. Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
another great French eighteenth-century novelist was greatly
admired by the 2 nd Earl of Harcourt and is said to have stayed in
the village in 1767 and to have planted seeds of many foreign
wild flowers including perhaps the wild bryony which trails
among the trees of the Harcourt estate as it does in his novel La
nouvelle Héloise. As already mentioned, there are no novels by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Mylne collection although there is
a novel by Pierre Rousseau, Les faux pas (MYLNE.793), published
in 1755.
Future of the Collection and digitization
The future location of the Mylne collection is uncertain. The Repository at Nuneham
Courtenay is due to close once the new high-density storage facility is completed in
South Marston near Swindon. The 1.3 million books currently at the Repository as
well as 2.7 million from the New Bodleian are due to be moved there from
Michaelmas 2010. The new Depository will house low-use material and especially
material which is also available digitally and its total capacity will be 8 million
volumes. As it will be high-density storage it will not be possible for readers to have
direct browsing access to the material. The New Bodleian is to be redesigned as a
centre for housing the Libraries' special collections by creating high-quality storage
for them, supporting advanced research and allowing public access through
exhibitions. It will be known as the Weston Library in honour of the Garfield Weston
foundation which donated £25 million in March 2008. There is however a principle
that older material from the Taylor would only be sent to the Weston Library if it is
not modern languages-related. The Taylor Institution Library is currently full to
capacity and would, as matters currently stand, be unlikely to be able to receive its
special collections back again.
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