the Bodleian needs chairs

The Bodleian Library at Oxford needs new chairs, and has commissioned designs. Above are the three finalists. Like the author of that Guardian report, I strongly prefer the Barber Osgerby design on the left. It's a classically modernist shape, but with traditionalist elements I think will harmonize with its surroundings.

I post this as another installment in my ongoing love letter to libraries. Libraries need seats that people will want to sit in, and while big soft chairs are especially desirable for people who just want to read, there's still a need for good desk chairs to suit those occasions when one must summon all the research and do some serious typing — or even serious underlining and annotating. I could see myself getting good work done in that Barber Osgerby chair.

alas, poor Bodley

Good news and bad news at Oxford’s legendary Bodleian Library. The good news (especially if you’re Nicholson Baker or share his devotion to saving old books and magazines and newspapers) is that millions of books that there’s no room for in Oxford will be finding a new home in Swindon.

The bad news is that many of the books that are actually in the Bodleian — specifically, in the oldest part of the library, called Duke Humfrey’s Library — can no longer be accessed by patrons or staff because the university’s Health and Safety Officer has taken away all the stepladders. “Laurence Benson, the library's director of administration and finance, said: ‘The library would prefer to keep the books in their original historic location — where they have been safely consulted for 400 years prior to the instructions from the Health and Safety office.’” Right. So they are kept in the location where they have been safely cosulted for 400 years but no one will ever again be able to consult them. Safely or otherwise.