COLLEGE NEWS I Jesus College Annual Report 2022
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The Library and Archives Michael Edwards, Fellow Librarian and Keeper of the Old Library; Rhona Watson, Quincentenary Librarian; and Robin Payne, College Archivist The Old Library Post-pandemic, the Old Library has reopened fully and is now welcoming a higher number of research scholars than ever, ranging from PhD students to senior scholars, many from beyond the UK. Amongst other topics, researchers have used the Old Library’s collections to work on early modern book bindings, the publications of the Dutch philosopher and jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), and book ownership by women in the 17th and 18th centuries. An increasing number of researchers are interested in the recently identified books from the library of the philosopher Anne Conway (1631-1679). As Keeper, I am working on a research project to identify more of Conway’s surviving library. I hope to connect the Conway books in the Old Library to fragments of her collection elsewhere in the world. Supporting research of this kind depends on accurate and detailed catalogues of our holdings. Put simply, researchers cannot use what they, or we, cannot easily find. The current card catalogue is helpful, but no longer ideal. The project to catalogue the Old Library’s holdings of printed books online, carried out by Assistant Keeper Chris Barker, is continuing. It is revealing new and important information about our printed collection and its provenance that will be of immense value to current and future scholars. Chris’s cataloguing work is opening the library to new scholarly perspectives, and we hope that it will encourage greater use of the Old Library’s collections in the future. Librarians and researchers are interested in books not only as texts, but as material objects that bear the traces of reading and ownership. Marginalia, annotations, and other evidence of who owned and who read our books are increasingly attracting readers to the Old Library. For this reason, in a digital world where scans of many 16th and 17th century books are readily available online, rare books and manuscript collections like ours continue to have a crucial role. Despite a proliferation of online resources, every copy of an early modern book is distinctive, and the unique evidence it holds will remain important. The cataloguing project, and the Old Library’s recent focus on exploring the provenance of our books, continues to reveal interesting stories about the paths they took before they reached the Old Library. Two examples show the value and interest this kind of collection exploration can have. The first is of a prolific early18th century donor to the Old Library, Lionel Gatford. Gatford was a London cleric, Rector of St Dionis Backchurch from 1680-1715, and Treasurer of St Paul’s from 1714. He left his large theological and philosophical library of more than 1600 volumes to the College on his death. Gatford’s books are still identifiable by the distinctive printed paper labels pasted into them. In one sense, Gatford’s books are a monument to his generosity to the College, but they also tell other stories. Earlier in his career, in the 1690s, Gatford served as a chaplain of the Anglican Church in Hamburg (set up in part to cater to English merchants). Some of his books were acquired during his time in Germany, often through gifts or second hand. They connect the Old Library to a rich strand of German and central European learning:
