Merton College Library

The first day of term is also the start of Libraries Week! We are happy and proud to have been serving members of Merton College and the wider community in Mob Quad for 639 years. This past year saw the donation of a collection of the works of Roger Lancelyn Green who brought myths and fables to many young readers (and who briefly worked in the Merton Library); the inaugural outreach event bringing local school children and medieval manuscripts face to face (thanks to the Manuscripts Outreach Network); and the digitization of our illuminated copy of Caxton's first edition Chaucer (watch for a post when it is ready to go online). We welcomed 1175 visitors this summer. We are looking forward to another busy brilliant year.

If you were unable to visit Merton this summer, you can still see images from our exhibition, Hebrew Books at Merton, on the Merton website. Thanks to Senior Library Assistant Emma Sillett for creating the online exhibition. http://tinyurl.com/y9l5pntv

Hebrew Books at Merton

This summer we 'retired' our full visitors' book and started a beautiful new one made by conservator and binder Victoria Stevens. It's the inside that really matters however. Leafing through the old volume I noticed the first entry was made by someone from Brno, Czech Republic and the last by a group of Merton students. In between, the entries reveal a variety of reasons for coming to Oxford or to Merton (to attend a wedding or graduation, to keep a hospital appointment, to propose marriage, to study, to have a family vacation). We're happy to welcome visitors and to share the special atmosphere of this library. All those comments and records of visits will become part of the library, as the old visitors' book will be added to the archives. There is still time to visit Merton this summer! see the website for information https://www.merton.ox.ac.uk/library-and-archives/visiting-the-library.

Visiting the historic library

This summer one of Merton’s books has returned temporarily to an earlier home for an exhibition focussing on the life and work of previous owner Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn. The volume of sermons of Jacques de Vitry, printed in Antwerp in 1575, retains its distinctive binding made for Echter’s library. The alum tawed pigskin binding bears Echter’s coat of arms, and the fore-edge is stamped with the author, title, and Echter’s ownership inscription. Echter’s Hofbibliothek was plundered by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War, and his books survive today in a number of libraries.
The exhibition, ‘Julius Echter (1573-1617). Der umstrittene Fürstbischof. Eine Ausstellung nach 400 Jahren‘ can be seen at the Museum am Dom in Würzburg until 17 September 2017. The exhibition presents the religious, social, and political situation in Franconia in the late 16th century and early 17th century.

The summer exhibition in the Merton Library celebrates the re-cataloguing of our Hebrew books onto SOLO by Dr Rahel Fronda this year. Many of them were sent to the college as gifts from Fellow Robert Huntington (c1637-1701) in 1673, while he was chaplain to the Levant Company in Aleppo. Although not large in number, Huntington's books at Merton include examples of Hebrew printing from the Ottoman empire. An example here: David Kimhi's Sefer Mikhlol, printed in Constantinople in 1532-43.

Last weekend Merton College hosted the second Teaching the Codex symposium. Thanks go to Dr Mary Boyle and Dr Tristan Franklinos for organising a great day. Thanks also to all speakers and helpers. Themes included Outreach with medieval manuscripts, pedagogical approaches to music manuscripts, teaching art history & manuscript studies, and Continental and Anglophone approaches to teaching palaeography. But don't feel badly if you missed it, because Dr Colleen Curran has produced a Storify summary of tweets during the day http://tinyurl.com/mhgqay3

Of course there was a visit to the Merton Upper LIbrary too!

Teaching the Codex II (with images, tweets) · cmcurran21 Tweets from Teaching the Codex II Conference (6 May 2017)

We're back for Trinity Term and highlighting a recent article by Seb Falk of Girten College, Cambridge. He suggests a link between a 14th-century treatise and the mid-14th-century astrolabe-equatorium which is one of the stars of Merton Library's small remaining collection of medieval astronomical instruments. Donated by fellows of the college, these instruments could be borrowed to aid in study and in making astronomical observations. Dr Falk's article appears in Sciamus vol. 17 (2016). (http://www.sciamvs.org/2016.html

SCIAMVS

Merton College is working with York Glaziers Trust to conserve our 14th-century stained glass windows and to protect them for the future. Read about the current trial of anit-UV protective glazing in Vidimus http://vidimus.org/issues/issue-105/feature/

Feature | Vidimus

If you missed it last year, now is the time to register for Teaching the Codex 2017 at lovely Merton College. More Teaching, More Codices!

Teaching the Codex 2017 Colloquium REGISTRATION NOW OPEN HERE, covering attendance, lunch, and refreshments. In order to further discussion, the format of this colloquium will vary from the 2016 format. Morning and afternoon session…

Something fun for Christmas based on this year's Merton Christmas card. Suggest what these philosphers may be saying to each other. Submit your caption here:
https://intranet.merton.ox.ac.uk/caption-competition
(MS 269)

Save the date! 6 May 2017 at Merton College Oxford.

Music in Manuscripts Panel: Speakers Dr Margaret Bent, who is an Emeritus Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Dr Eleanor Giraud, of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Follow her on Twitter here.…

This term's History of the Book Group seminar focusses on library history but not medieval.
Prof Lydia Wevers will talk about The Lives of Books, looking at material evidence of reading in the books from a sheep station library in New Zealand.
30 November, 5pm, Merton College Oxford
All welcome,but please RSVP to [email protected]

Merton helps the bees and the butterflies | Oxford Today Richard Lofthouse discusses the future of two very special Cherwell-flanked meadows with Merton Head Gardener Lucille Savin. 

Another academic year is beginning in Oxford, and this week conservators from the York Glaziers Trust are working in the Upper Library. They will be removing one of the windows with surviving late-14thc glass in the west wing for conservation at their workshop in York.

Calling all palaeographers and codicologists.
TEACHING THE CODEX is back!
A second colloquium will take place on 6th May 2017. Put it in your diaries now!
teachingthecodex.wordpress.com

Last month our Fellow Librarian, Dr Julia Walworth, spent two days at DePaul University in Chicago at a conference of library, archive and museum professionals that focused on how to improve the ways they help undergraduates and the public interact with original artefacts and materials.

Julia said:

"While digital technologies offer many exciting new possibilities, nothing replaces an encounter with an original document, book, or object.

"This conference was particularly valuable because most of the time was spent on sharing experiences and case studies (the successes and the failures), rather than on theorizing.

"Attendees included a broad international mix (many from the US of course, but also from places as diverse as Jamaica, Sweden and Qatar).

"There were talks about single classroom sessions on the one hand to year-long internship programmes on the other. A unifying theme could be expressed in four words: ‘beyond show and tell’.

"Oxford students are fortunate in having many amazing museum and library collections on their doorstep. I picked up some good ideas in Chicago. Merton students who have already been ‘speed dating with manuscripts’ should prepare themselves for the ‘one-minute essay’."

Julia's photo is of one of the conference venues: Cortelyou Commons—a room she says has many similarities to an Oxbridge hall.

The conference was titled 'Information and Artifactual Literacies: Engaging Minds in Libraries and Museums' and was sponsored by the Association of College & Research Libraries and the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) Information Literacy Section.

The unexpected discovery of a ream wrapper re-used in the binding of a 17th-century book in the Merton Library has been written up by Jane Eagan, Head Conservator at the Oxford Conservation Consortium. Read about it (with more images) at http://tinyurl.com/h6gkf9x

If you are in Oxford in August or September you can visit our lovely historic library. During the months July-September, historical tours of the College and Old Library run at 2 and 3 p.m. daily (except for days when the College is closed). Spaces are limited, so those wishing to come on the tour are advised to book with the Tour Coordinator [[email protected]] (up to 24hrs in advance) or with the College Lodge on the day. Remaining spaces are available on the door. There is a modest charge of £5 for the tour (£3 for University members), which lasts for approximately 50 mins. The charge includes regular admission to the College site.

Teaching the Codex: Pedagogical Approaches to Palaeography and Codicology An interdisciplinary colloquium and its digital aftermath

Dr Tessa Webber's 2016 Lyell Lectures concluded yesterday with some words from F W Maitland:

'We may doubt what we ought to teach, we may doubt how we ought to teach it, but that we ought to collect MSS and rare books--this is beyond the range of the most extravagant scepticism'.

(An address delivered...in the new buildings of the library' Cambridge University 1890). Thanks to David Ganz for sending a copy of text. Image is Merton MS 303 f 98r.

Term is starting again, and the library is *the place* for exam preparation. Meanwhile we are working on our summer exhibition featuring examples and archival documents from the Shakespeare Head Press, so watch this space for more in the coming weeks. If you're planning a visit to Oxford this summer it is not too early to book a place on a guided afternoon tour of our lovely library contact [email protected].

Milestone in the cataloguing of the Neil Ritchie Sitwell Collection at Merton College. The Sitwell siblings, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, contributed frequently to journals and magazines in the early twentieth century. The Sitwell Collection in the Merton College Library holds about 200 journal issues that contain contributions by the Sitwells or articles about them. Cathy Lewis, Resource Description Project Librarian, has just created the *2000th* catalogue record, relating to New Nash's Pall Mall magazine. In this issue Sir Osbert Sitwell writes about modern diets (in the Victorian era), Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebrations and London fog. The articles written by this eloquent family bring that era to life again and contribute significantly to the study of poetry in the early twentieth century. The topics of the Sitwell articles varied enormously, ranging from the value of poetry to bullfighting, but were never dull.

At Merton Library we're still reflecting on the colloquium Teaching the Codex held at Merton on 6 Feb and organised by Mary Boyle and Tristan Franklinos. Palaeographers and manuscript scholars from several disciplines, countries, and generations came together to share experience. Thanks to Colleen Curran there is a Storify summary link here: https://teachingthecodex.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/teaching-the-codex-storify/

Now you can visit the beautiful Merton Upper Library virtually via StreetView at https://goo.gl/maps/eTPD3SZARc32
Hope you enjoy it!

The Merton College Christmas card this year features a detail from Merton MS 297B, fol. 225r. This set of English statutes from the early 15th century has an illuminated initial with the appropriate royal beast at the opening of each reign. Richard II's white hart appears on the card. The manuscript was bequeathed to Merton by James Leech (d. 1588). He specified that the 200 some books in his bequest should 'for ever...remaine chayned in the said librarie to the common use of the students'. Although the books were unchained in 1792, the manuscript survives. Merry Christmas from Merton College Library!

This term’s meeting of the Merton History of the Book Group will take place on Tuesday 24 November at 5pm in the Hawkins Room, Merton College.

Elizabeth Sandis (DPhil candidate, Merton College) will speak on:
'From St John's College to Merton College: What the poetry of Griffin Higgs (1589-1659) reveals about collegiate identity at Oxford in the seventeenth century and today'
All are welcome. The talk will be followed by a viewing of some of Higgs's books and refreshments (rsvp [email protected] so we have the right number of glasses).

Griffin Higgs bequeathed books to Merton and to St John's. He also left money to endow the first position of 'Library Keeper' at Merton (recorded in the college register). Those with keen eyes will see that a Divinity Lecturer was to receive £20 p.a. but the Librarian only £10.

"Unmasking" the most common colour-printmaking technique in Early Modern Europe | Oxford... Colour-printed images were produced in their thousands across Europe from at least the 1490s, even in countries where colour-printing is thought to have been introduced hundreds of years later. Join Dr Savage for a discussion of how such prints were made, who bought and used them, and how they resha…