Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: sources and methodologies for the history of libraries in the modern era
- 1 Libraries and the modern world
- Part One Enlightening the Masses: the Public Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Two The Voluntary Ethic: Libraries of our Own
- Part Three Libraries for National Needs: Library Provision in the Public Sphere in the Countries of the British Isles
- Part Four The Nation's Treasury: Britain's National Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Five The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries
- 26 Introduction: Higher education and libraries
- 27 The libraries of the ancient universities to the 1960s
- 28 The libraries of the University of London to the 1960s
- 29 The Civic universities and their libraries
- 30 Academic libraries and the expansion of higher education since the 1960s
- Part Six The Rise of Professional Society: Libraries for Specialist Areas
- Part Seven The Trade and its Tools: Librarians and Libraries in Action
- Part Eight Automation Pasts, Electronic Futures: the Digital Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
27 - The libraries of the ancient universities to the 1960s
from Part Five - The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: sources and methodologies for the history of libraries in the modern era
- 1 Libraries and the modern world
- Part One Enlightening the Masses: the Public Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Two The Voluntary Ethic: Libraries of our Own
- Part Three Libraries for National Needs: Library Provision in the Public Sphere in the Countries of the British Isles
- Part Four The Nation's Treasury: Britain's National Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Five The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries
- 26 Introduction: Higher education and libraries
- 27 The libraries of the ancient universities to the 1960s
- 28 The libraries of the University of London to the 1960s
- 29 The Civic universities and their libraries
- 30 Academic libraries and the expansion of higher education since the 1960s
- Part Six The Rise of Professional Society: Libraries for Specialist Areas
- Part Seven The Trade and its Tools: Librarians and Libraries in Action
- Part Eight Automation Pasts, Electronic Futures: the Digital Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
By the mid-nineteenth century Oxford and Cambridge had lost their age-old monopoly of higher education in England and Wales, with the founding of universities in London (1826) and Durham (1833), and on a smaller scale at St David's College in Lampeter (1827). Further competition followed with the establishment of the Civic universities later in the century and further expansion of higher education in the twentieth century, but Oxford and Cambridge continued to dominate the library scene as well as the academic world, at least in size and richness, and in popular perception. (Surprisingly, however, they play only a small part in the two most influential library reports at the end of our period: the University Grants Committee's Report of the Committee on Libraries (1967) (the Parry Report), and the Report of the National Libraries Committee (1969) (the Dainton Report).)
The existence of a number of other universities in Scotland and Ireland, dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, must not be overlooked, since they share some characteristics of their English counterparts, including the impact of new foundations. The four (or five) ancient Scottish universities at St Andrews (founded 1411), Glasgow (1451), Aberdeen (1495/1593) and Edinburgh (1584) came to face competition, though rarely in library terms, from professional colleges and younger institutions such as Anderson's Institution in Glasgow (1796). In Ireland Trinity College Dublin was established as a Protestant bulwark by Queen Elizabeth I in 1599; the non-denominational Queen's Colleges founded in 1845 and the Catholic University of Ireland of 1854 had developed by the early twentieth century into the federal National University of Ireland and the independent Queen's University in Belfast.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 321 - 344Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006