Librarianship in the British Isles changed little between 1650 and 1750, and such steadiness encourages a thematic account rather than a chronological one. However terminology did change, the word ‘librarian’ not appearing until about 1700. Hitherto somebody in charge of a library had been a ‘library-keeper’, though ‘bibliothecary’ or ‘bibliothecar’ featured in Scots usage and also in John Evelyn’s translation (1661) of Gabriel Naudé’s Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (Paris, 1627). For convenience this chapter will use the more familiar ‘librarian’, and the word ‘baroque’ will carry its diffuse chronological meaning.

Traditional local practices guided many librarians, but some treatises were available in English. John Dury’s The reformed library-keeper (1650) was based on letters he had written to Samuel Hartlib, occasioned by Hartlib’s ambition to become Bodley’s Librarian, though the published text censored that aspect. Evelyn’s version of Naudé was well known; Pepys may have thought it above his reach, but Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds bibliophile, bought a copy for eight pence. Though discounted by the critic Adrien Baillet, Naudé’s essay was influential, his ideas about the best site for a library reappearing, for example, in a memorandum by Richard Bentley. Baillet listed other writers on libraries and librarianship in his Jugemens des savants (1685) but most were not translated into English. Further guidance could be obtained from older but still cogent sources such as the Bodleian’s Jacobean statutes and even the compendious Jesuit library rules of 1580. Moreover librarians might learn of overseas practice through correspondence and travel and from visitors; Robert Wodrow, librarian at Glasgow University, notably enquired of George Thomson in Paris how French university libraries were managed.