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29 - The Civic universities and their libraries

from Part Five - The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
F. W. Ratcliffe
Edited by
Alistair Black  and
Peter Hoare
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Summary

Why these universities or colleges should be only at Cambridge and Oxford, I know no reason … doubtless it would be more suitable and more advantageous to the good of all the people, to have universities or colleges, one at least, in every great town or city in the nation, as in London, York, Bristol, Exeter, Norwich and the like: and for the state to allow these colleges an honest and competent maintenance, for some godly and learned men to teach the tongues and arts, under a due reformation. And this the state may the better do, by provision out of every county, or otherwise, as shall be judged the best, seeing then there will be no such need of endowment of scholarships; inasmuch as the people having colleges in their own cities, near their own houses, may maintain their children at home, whilst they learn in the schools; which would indeed be the greatest advantage to learning that can be thought of.

William Dell, Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1653

Much has been written about the spread of education in England before, during and after the industrial revolution. Many of the publications touch on the emergence of the Civic universities and a few deal directly with their origins, birth and early development. Inevitably, much that has been published has implications for their libraries but, apart from occasional comparative studies and references in the history of individual universities, these have rarely been considered in a general library context. University libraries are essentially corollaries of their universities and their modus vivendi and modus operandi are to a very large extent determined by them. In the case of the Civic university libraries, this is specially important, for their distinctive origins and early history set them apart from the libraries of Cambridge, Oxford and the ancient Scottish universities, and also from most of the later foundations.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 357 - 376
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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