£1m benefaction to create humanities research library at York
Posted on 18 January 1999
The University has committed £1m in matching funds to enable the project to get underway. It will involve the construction of a new building next to the main J B Morrell Library on a high profile and prestigious site overlooking the campus. The Humanities Research Library will provide essential study facilities for York's researchers and for visiting scholars.
"Libraries are often considered the laboratories of the humanities, and it gives us enormous satisfaction to be in a position to invest in humanities research in this way", said Professor Ron Cooke, Vice-Chancellor. "We are enormously grateful to the Raymond Burton Charitable Trust for this timely and generous benefaction. The Trust has supported the University for many years through the sponsorship of concerts and, most recently, it has contributed to important resources for our new Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies."
The new Humanities Research Library will bring together the University's existing special collections, microform collections of primary sources and access to electronic information. The building is also expected to contain a suite of rooms to accommodate research workshops, advanced multimedia facilities, and environmentally controlled rooms for special collections. It is hoped to extend substantially the range of special collections.
"This most generous benefaction enables us to bring to fruition plans for a humanities research library and support centre much sooner than we could have hoped," said University Librarian, Elizabeth Heaps. "It is entirely appropriate that York as a prestigious research university should commit its own funds to supporting humanities research in this way. It is such an exciting project."
Notes to editors:
- The University of York is well-known for its interdisciplinary research in the humanities, particularly through its Centre for Medieval Studies and Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies; new developments in Twentieth Century studies are currently being launched. The University has a strong reputation for research: in the last official Research Assessment Exercise 83 per cent of its departments achieved the top scores of 4, 5 and 5*.
- Humanities research at York is undertaken in the departments of Archaeology, Educational Studies, English and Related Literature, History, History of Art, Language and Linguistic Science, Music and Philosophy; in the Centres for Conservation Studies, Eighteenth Century Studies, Medieval Studies and Women's Studies; the Institute of Railway Studies, the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit, and the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research.
- The University Library has excellent networked database access to humanities materials, but hopes to add substantially to the collections of primary sources through the establishment of the Humanities Research Library. The space and special environmental conditions which the new Library will provide will enable the University to add to its special collections through targeted purchasing and donations.
- Current special collections held in the University Library include: the Eliot collection of first editions of twentieth century literature, with books by and about T S Eliot, and others by and about Auden, Yeats, Robert Graves, D H Lawrence and Aldous Huxley; the 1,500 volume Dyson collection of 17th, 18th and early 19th century English literature (mostly poetry), featuring Dryden, Pope and the Romantic poets; the Mirfield collection on permanent loan from the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, which includes an edition of St Augustine's De civitate Dei published in 1475; the Milnes Walker collection of early medical books; the Copland collection containing all the works of Aaron Copland in print at the time of his death; and the Milner-White collection of English detective fiction.