Cathedral libraries: a supplementary checklist

Abstract

THIS LIST augments the previous Checklist, published as the Oxford Bibliographical Society's Occasional Publication, no. 6, and contains some 250 additional items.! An encouraging amount of new material has appeared since 1970, indicative of a gradual revival of interest in cathedral libraries and a growing realisation of the role they have both locally and nationally. The most heartening recognition of their worth has been the recent award ofa British Library grant to the Bibliographical Society for the completion and publication of the union catalogue of cathedral libraries begun by Mrs. M. S. G. MacLeod (then Miss Hands) thirty years ago. Several individual libraries have also received grants from the British Library, the Pilgrim Trust and other bodies, for cataloguing, organisation and refurbishing parts of their collections. More cathedral libraries have been cooperating with their local universities and there are now eight with such associations.2 Lastly, cooperation among cathedral libraries themselves has recently received the organised structure which it needed, with the inauguration in 1975 of an annual conference of cathedrallibrari9-ns. Whilst retaining the general terms of reference of the original Checklist, this supplement includes two groups of material previously omitted. The 'catalogues' now include donors' books and borrowers' registers on the grounds that they frequently supplement the catalogues and provide invaluable information concerning the development and use of a library. Moreover, registers and donors' books have in most cases traditionally been housed in the library and belong historically with it rather than with the muniments. The second innovation is the inclusion. of items relating