Second report to the Radcliffe Trustees, on the progress of the Radcliffe Library at the Oxford University Museum / by Henry W. Acland.

  • Acland, Henry W. (Henry Wentworth), 1815-1900.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report to the Radcliffe Trustees, on the progress of the Radcliffe Library at the Oxford University Museum / by Henry W. Acland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    10/16 (page 10)
    the deficiencies which result from the curtailment of the Library Grant from £500 to £200 for twenty-one years will not be entirely remedied by a present restoration to its old income, yet the largest proposition which I venture now to submit to you is, that you should be pleased to restore to the Library the income it had prior to 1841. I might be tempted to represent to you, that on account of the great increase of Scientific Literature, this sum may now be insufficient—or I might urge that on account of the earnest endeavours of the University to make up for lost time in its Scientific Institutions, you might perhaps gi ant a large part of the deducted £300 a year for these twenty- one years. But neither of these do I feel disposed to jn'ess. Manv books in which the Radcliffe Library is deficient are at v %/ the Bodleian. Many which would have been bought in the above-named period are now useless, because recent works or newer editions have superseded them. Although I do not sav that the Library will meet all the wants of Professors and of Students without a special retrospective grant, yet it will be enough that thev be assured that vou so far appreciate the altered state of Scientific Education in Oxford, as to apply to it no longer the special punishment inflicted, it might almost be said, 011 our Academic fathers in 1841. I venture to make this proposition, because no persons have more steadily maintained the interests of Science in * Oxford than yourselves ; as the Annals of the Library, the Observatory, and the Infirmary, amply testify. The question therefore for your consideration is, whether a reasonable ground has been shown for a return to your old Grant. After what has been said little need be added by way of* argument. Oxford has undergone changes in the last few years, as a place of National Education, such as she had not undergone before. A few years since attainments in the Literae Humaniores and Disciplinae Mathematical