put into a storage facility at Ruislip (West London), and books could from now on be retrieved as required. By now, half the collection was cata- logued onto the online system; the other half being still on index cards. The latter were scanned and placed onto the Library’s OPAC, making the entire collection search- able online (see link at https://catalogue.
libraries.london.ac.uk/search~S3). The collection has continued to be well-used today. Since the library’s final move, the depository at Ruislip houses the bulk of the collection.
The reading room at Mount Street, London Jesuit Centre, Mayfair. Photo © Weeson Oo
property in Liège, Belgium. “It was at some distance from the Channel ports and therefore, as far as the English Jesuits were concerned, mercifully freer than Louvain, […] from the attention of English spies.” (Michael Walsh, 2014, p. 12). The Library’s catalogue from this time lists some 7,000 titles.
Stonyhurst: 1794-1926 and St Beuno’s 1848-1926 In 1793, France declared war on England. Jesuits in Liège fled to St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst, losing the Library cata- logue. It was seized and carried off by the French army to the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, which put its stamp in it. In 1815, it was recovered by the Royal Library of Brussels, from where a copy was later donated to the Heythrop Library in 2007.
In 1848, due to overcrowding, theolo- gians and their books moved from Stonyhurst to St Bueno’s in Wales, while philosophers remained with their books at Stonyhurst.
Heythrop Hall, Oxfordshire: 1926-1970
Both separate collections were reunited in 1926 at Heythrop Hall in Oxford- shire, from which the Library derives its name.
The library’s catalogue at this time was in index card form, with typed records replacing handwritten ones. These were stored in a series of wooden, drawered cabinets, each drawer spanned by a metal rod that pierced the cards. (This catalogue was only discontinued in about 1990).
Cavendish Square, London: 1970-1993
In 1970, Heythrop College moved to 11-13 Cavendish Square, London. The move from Oxfordshire was sparked
September 2023
by the high cost of maintaining Heyth- rop Hall and a general drop in vocations there. At this time, the College joined the University of London. The library, by now numbering some 150,000 volumes, became a constituent library of the Uni- versity of London. In 1990, work began to catalogue the collection onto an online library management system (LMS), mak- ing it searchable online. Limited space at Cavendish Square meant a portion of the library was transferred into the University of London’s off-site depository at Egham.
Kensington Square, London: 1993-2018
In 1993, Heythrop Library made its penultimate move, to 23 Kensington Square. At Kensington Square, there were two reading rooms, one for philosophy and one for theology. The majority of the materials were stored in basements and various parts of the building complex, with some continued to be housed at the University of London’s off-site depository at Egham.
Cataloguing onto the LMS continued. Since the 2012 university reforms, Heyth- rop College struggled to sustain recruit- ment levels. This, and rising adminis- trative costs, contributed to the difficult decision to close the College in 2018. There was much concern for the potential loss of the library’s collection of by now over 200,000 titles.
Senate House and Mayfair: 2018-present The Jesuits, in collaboration with Senate House, agreed for the library to become an Associate Library of the University of London, accessible to members of Senate House Library and University of London students.
The Library at Kensington Square was
After the lockdown, in 2021, the library also started supporting more and more students attending courses in the London Jesuit Centre. The biggest cohesive group are those on the Ignatian Spirituality Course (ISC), which moved to the London Jesuit Centre in September 2020. The ISC brought its own library to the Heythrop Library reading room, so is a specialist collection within the holdings at Mount Street.
Classification – a mix of 3 systems! On a first and superficial look it seems like the Heythrop Library uses the Library of Congress Classification (LCC), but this is not true. There are some classmarks (B to BP, BJ, BL and BM) were the Library slightly modifies LCC, but some other classes (noticeably BT and BX) which look like LCC, but are in fact an adaptation: the Lynn-Peterson scheme (first edition from 1937! See
https://archive.org/details/lynn-alter- native-classification-for-catholic-books-1937); the second edition of 1965 is used. The third system is in BX (Church History) for which an in-house Heythrop (Col- lege) Library scheme had been created to classify books on Jesuitica and “Jesuits in Britain”, i.e. BX7457 to BX7500.
The future
What lies ahead after over 400 years of the Collection? The current library team is still tackling various backlogs, including about 2,000 volumes left in the reading room. The existence of most books stored in the University of London repository are still only recorded via the (digital) Card Catalogue: only about 5,000 of potentially 50,000-70,000 volumes has been catalogued on the current LMS; for journal holdings it is even worse: first, the database of the company storing materials at Ruislip needs to be checked. If a journal cannot be found there, staff looking after Heythrop’s materials at Egham are asked to check the shelves there. Enough work for the next 10-20 years! The Library welcomes expressions of interests – if any professional librarian would like to visit, please get in touch: heythroplibrary@jesuit.
org.uk. IP
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 43
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