Bodleian : An Ancient Bureaucracy

So I've just spent the last 2-3 hours, looking up sources for tutorial paper due Monday. In many ways, that sentence is telling of how I've had to adapt to life here at Oxford and the various constraints imposed on me by bureaucratic forces.

For those of you who haven't been at Oxford or know about how the Bodleian operates, let me take a minute to explain. The Bodleian is the central library at Oxford University that all enrolled students, faculty, and select others are allowed to use. Established sometime like 800 years ago or so, the Bodleian prides itself on two main points. The first is that it is a non-circulating library (i.e. no one can check anything out) and the second that it supposedly receive a copy of every book published in Englad/perhaps the U.K. On the first point of pride, the librarians love to share the story about how a servant of Charles II tried to check out a book on his majesty's orders and a librarian turned down, even the King. Why this would be a point of pride in the modern era, where than can fine someone's ass into the point of oblivion if they failed to return a book...I'm not quite sure.

Beyond the non-circulation bit, the other big pain in the ass feature of the Bodleian is that it has most of its books placed in stacks underneath its basement that no one has access to, other than the librarians. One, therefore, must request books ahead of time for perusal in one of the designated reading rooms. If one requests books too late in the day (read after about 11 am) then it is generally the case that you can't get the books till the next day.

Added onto this fun mix is that as a visiting student, I don't have permission to enter the library until after 4 (library closes at 10 M-F, 5 on Sat, and just isn't open on Sunday). Basically, this means that I have to do all my requesting of sources/research of what sources I need on tuesday/wednesday in order to have time to read by saturday and then write on the weekend for Monday. This has certainly caused me to have to improve my work ethic as procrastination just isn't feasible. *exhaustion*

All that complaining aside, I am enjoying the chance to studying information that I actually want to study. It makes all of the work a hell of a lot easier...and the workload makes working at Stanford seem like daycare.

Off to start reading my sources!

*for those who might be curious, my topic this week (which I picked) is : The breakdown of Anglo-Spanish relations during the reign of Elizabeth I