Anna James reports on the Pusey House Library catalogue digitization project.

 

Pusey House Library has started on a major new project to make records of its 30,000 printed books accessible online. The Library is launching a Crowdfunding appeal to raise £2,200 which represents 5% of direct costs for year 1 of the two-year project.

Pusey House Library is a reference library in Oxford specialising in Church History, Patristics and Anglo-Catholic theology. The House and its Library are closely associated with the University of Oxford, but are an independent charity whose collections are open to all (charity no. 247627). The Library has 75,000 books and pamphlets dating from 1478 to the present day, and 12 miles of archives dating from 19th century onwards including the papers of theologians, parish priests, Anglican communities of monks and nuns, and the extensive papers of Dr Pusey himself.

At present, just over 5% of printed collections have records available on the University of Oxford’s printed books catalogue (http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/), with the remainder only accessible through a charming but impractical card catalogue which is housed in the Library itself. This means that in many ways, Pusey House’s rich collections are hidden from public view.

To improve access to the Library’s treasures as soon as possible, Pusey House has appointed two new members of library staff to work intensively on the project for two years, which will provide enough additional staff hours to create online records for the main collection of post-1800 books. Library Assistant Isobel Galek is a recent English graduate of Keble College Oxford, and began her new role in October, and Cataloguer Philippa Taney will come to Pusey House from the Bodleian Libraries in November.

The Library is launching a Crowdfunder appeal to help us by raising £2,200: 5% of one year’s direct project costs. The campaign runs from 5 October-9 November 2018.

Some key facts:

 

  • Pusey House was founded in 1884 as a monument to the life and work of Dr. Edward Bouverie Pusey (1880-1882), Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University and Canon of Christ Church Cathedral.
  • Unlike many research libraries in Oxford, Pusey House Library can be used for free by anyone interested in our collections.
  • The full project is expected to take two staff members two years’ work, with direct costs of £100,000.
  • Funding for year one of the project is in place thanks to generous grants from the Foyle Foundation, the Pilgrim Trust, The Chichester Theological College Trust, the William Delafield Charitable Trust and the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church.


Anna James is the Librarian at Pusey House. You can find out more about the project on the Library’s webpage at http://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/library.html or the project blog at https://phlcatalogueblog.wordpress.com/blog/. Regular updates on the Crowdfunder appeal will be published on

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/cataloguing-pusey-house-library,

and on the Library’s Twitter feed  https://twitter.com/PuseyHouseLib

and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PuseyHouseLib/.