The librarian as religious

There are some analogies between the running of a library and the activity of being a minister of religion.

This is particularly true in the case of our ancient universities, like my university of St Andrews. Founded in 1413, Scotland’s oldest university and the third to be established in Britain, after Oxford and Cambridge, it tended for the first few centuries to the curricular needs of priests in formation. The tutors of those students destined for the Church were priests or men in religious orders. The librarian was also likely to be a religious, sometimes doubling up as university chaplain.

After the Reformation, as universities opened increasingly wide the doors of philosophy and science, it was often considered prudent to continue to employ religious as librarians. The library after all required virtuous behaviour from its readers in order to operate, and this virtue could be emblemised by the clergyman who oversaw the prized collection. This requirement was considered so serious, in the case of some libraries, as to be prescribed by the Church itself, exercising its divine prerogative. The library of the University of Salamanca had a notice – now available as an amusing postcard - which read ‘Excommunication is reserved to His Holiness against any person that might remove, lose or by any other means alienate any book, parchment or document of this library, without possible absolution until these be perfectly returned’.

At the heart of the functioning library is a promise, and a need to trust. The borrower promises to bring back the item they have retrieved from the shelves (or, for most of the history of our academic and reference libraries, had retrieved for them from ‘closed access’ collections). Their details are recorded by the library, and a receipt issued. Again, back in late medieval and early modern times, this was a promise of more considerable weight than today’s equivalent. Books were very costly to produce, and the item being removed from the library’s custodianship might have cost the equivalent of a year’s salary. And many of the books in the libraries of those days were not borrowable, but were for use on the premises as ‘reference only’ – a restriction frequently enforced by the application of a physical chain to the leather binding, attached to a wall or desk.

Of course, there is more to the promise than pure honesty. Self-interest plays a large part. Today, if I as a student fail to return a borrowed item, due either because its loan term has expired, or because another student has placed a request for it, I will have my rights as a library user withdrawn. Ultimately, if I have stolen a quantity of books and refused all requests either to return or pay for the losses, I may face the university equivalent of excommunication – non-graduation. I therefore gain from using the library in the same measure as I am prepared to share the resource with my fellow man or, since the late 19^th century, woman. And very few students disrespect that rule. There have always been some users who steal from the library, in modern times finding elaborate methods to evade the security point at the exit, or its sensor technology which reads the tiny device hidden within the book that sets off an alarm if it has not been defused by the mechanical issue process. But watchful staff and CCTV cameras are as strong a deterrent as a stern servant of the Church glaring from behind his desk.

The library is a place on campus where students are reminded of the value of the sharing of a precious resource. The books they require for the reading that builds their knowledge and forms the arguments of their essays are given only for a short period, and will be recalled by the giver – often sooner than they expect. There is a lesson there that goes well beyond their young lives.

John MacColl is University Librarian & Director of Library Services at the University of St Andrews