The Durham University Library is the centrally administered library of Durham University in England and is part of the university's Library and Collections department. Its two main libraries are Palace Green Library and the Bill Bryson Library. It was founded in January 1833 at Palace Green by a 160 volume donation by the then Bishop of Durham, William Van Mildert, and now holds over 1.6 million printed items. Since 1937, the university library has incorporated the historic Cosin's Library, founded by Bishop Cosin in 1669. Cosin's Library and the Sudan Archive held at Palace Green Library are designated collections under Arts Council England's Designation Scheme for collections of national and international significance; two collections at Durham University Oriental Museum (also part of Library and Collections), the Chinese collection and the Egyptian collection, are also designated.
The library is a member of the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL), Research Libraries UK and the Association of European Research Libraries. It partners with Durham Cathedral Library, Ushaw College Library and other Durham University collections in the Durham Residential Research Library.
History Cosin's Library
Cosin's Library was established in 1669 by Bishop John Cosin. The building was built in 1667–69 by the Quaker architect John Langstaffe specifically to house Cosin's collection of over 5,000 books. It was one of the first public libraries in the north of England and also one of the first libraries in England to adopt the new European style of having bookcases against the walls, leaving the central area of the library free for other uses. After the establishment of Durham University Library in 1833, a new gallery was constructed inside Cosin's Library to house them. Cosin's Library, and its collection of medieval manuscripts and early printed books came under the trusteeship of the university library in 1937.
Cosin's Library is a Grade II* listed building and an ancient monument, and is located inside the Durham Castle and Cathedral UNESCO World Heritage Site. The internal architecture and decoration are also of international importance. The original portrait panels located above the bookshelves were painted by Jan Baptist van Eerssell in 1668–1669. Further portraits hang in the library, including half portraits of English statesmen. Nearly three hundred years later, a former university librarian, David Ramage, completed Cosin's original plan for the library by painting further portrait panels for the smaller room added in 1670–1671.
Expansion on Palace Green The university library initially used the new gallery installed in Cosin's Library. However, after it received Martin Routh's library in 1855 this space proved insufficient and it expanded into the upper floor of the Exchequer Building next door. Additional donations came from Bishop Edward Maltby in 1856 and Thomas Masterman Winterbottom in 1859.
At this time the area south of Cosin's Library on Palace Green was a stable yard. An 1857 Ordnance Survey map shows two of the stables – one on Palace Green and one behind the Diocesan Registry (built 1822; now the Music Library building) had been converted into lecture rooms. Cosin's Library was used at the time for examinations and convocations, but by 1880 the university had outgrown this space. In 1882, the stable block fronting onto Palace Green between Cosin's Library and the diocesan registry was demolished and replaced with a new two-storey perpendicular Tudor building by Sir Arthur Blomfield with two large lecture rooms – now the University Library building.
In 1929 the continued expansion of the library meant that even with the Exchequer Building there was insufficient room, and the ground floor lecture theatre was taken over by the library. The space between the lecture block and Cosin's Library, which had provided access to the stable yard, was filled in between 1935 and 1937, with the arch to the stable yard being replaced by the main entrance to the library. A further infill extension in 1950 covered the remaining area of the stable yard, linking a remaining stable block at the rear (west) of the site with the University Library building.
A major extension to the Palace Green Library in 1968 designed by architect George Pace provided a reading room and new storage space for the university library; this is now known as the Pace Building. In 1978 the Diocesan Registry building was taken over by the library, becoming the Music Library. With no possibility of further expansion on the peninsula, the decision was taken to extend the library building on the university's science site, which became the Main Library in 1983.
Recent history
The university library introduced its first online circulation system in 1983. The Main Library won a SCONUL Library Design Award in 1988 and the online cataloguing of the library's stock beginning in 1990. In 1996 the Durham University Library joined Research Libraries UK.
The university library was expanded further with an extension of the Main Library in 1997, and in 1998 it became the first library to incorporate non-Roman scripts into its electronic catalogue system. In 2004, the Durham Cathedral Library became part of the university library's management system for circulation and lending.
In October 2005, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council designated the collections in Cosin's Library, along with the Sudan Archive in the Palace Green Library, as having "outstanding national and international significance" in the first round of the Designation Scheme to cover libraries.
In 2010, the university launched a refurbishment of the Palace Green Library, including the construction of two galleries in the University Library building, designed in consultation with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to meet the standards required under the National Heritage Act 1980 and thus able to host major national exhibitions as well as displaying rare treasures from the library's own collection. The refurbishment also saw the music and law books, the last 'ordinary' books in Palace Green Library, relocated to the Bill Bryson Library. An alumni appeal raised £4.7 million towards this refurbishment.
A further major extension of the Main Library was opened by former Chancellor Bill Bryson in 2012, and the building was renamed the Bill Bryson Library.
In 2012, the library was part of a formal partnership with Durham Cathedral and the British Library to acquire the St Cuthbert Gospel, the oldest intact book in Europe. Under the partnership agreement, this is displayed equally at the British Library and in the north east of England. The St Cuthbert Gospel was displayed alongside the Lindisfarne Gospels and other treasures of St Cuthbert at Palace Green Library in 2013.
In the final stages of the Palace Green Library refurbishment in 2013, a café was constructed in a courtyard between the George Pace Building and the Music Library. During this work, 28 sets of human remains were discovered in a mass grave. These were identified as Scottish soldiers captured by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 and subsequently imprisoned in Durham Cathedral. With estimates that as many as 1,700 prisoners may have died in Durham, and other skeletons having been unearthed during building works nearby in the 1940s, it is likely that many further bodies lie under the library buildings.
In 2014, the university's Museum of Archaeology (originally established in 1833) moved into a new gallery in Palace Green Library, open for free to the public.
Refurbishment of the 15th century Exchequer Building allowed out to be opened to public tours for the first time in 2017. Cosin's Library was also refurbished between 2020 and 2022.
In late 2022, the library launched the Legacies of Enslavement and Colonialism at Durham University research project as part of Durham's action plan under the Race Equality Charter (REC). This project, led by the University Archivist, is looking at potential historical links between Durham University and colonialism and slavery and whether the university derived any income from slavery. The library is also part of a second REC-linked project to assess how records and collections are cared for and curated.
In 2023, the library joined the SafePod Network, giving secure data access from a 'pod' installed in the Bill Bryson Library to sensitive datasets from the Office for National Statistics, the UK Data Service, the Health and Care Research Wales-funded Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank, the Scottish Government, and Health and Social Care Northern Ireland's Honest Broker Service. The same year, the School of Education relocated from Leazes Road to Lower Mountjoy, leading to the closure of the Leazes Road Study Space.
List of librarians 1832–1834 – Patrick George 1834–1855 – Charles Thomas Whitley 1856–1858 – Robert Healey Blakey 1858–1864 – Henry Frederick Long 1865–1868 – Francis Frederick Walrond 1869–1873 – Thomas Forster Dodd 1873–1901 – Joseph Thomas Fowler 1901–1934 – Edward Vazeille Stocks 1934–1945 – Henry Waldo Acomb 1940–1943 – Beatrice Thompson (Acting Librarian) 1945–1967 – David Goudie Ramage 1967–1989 – Agnes Maxwell McAulay 1989–2009 – John Tristan Dalton Hall 2009–2017 – Jon Purcell 2018–2023 – Liz Jane Waller 2023–present – Stuart Hunt
Heritage, research and special collections
As part of its collection, the library contains a wealth of printed and manuscript material with a particular wealth of material from the medieval period and the Middle East along with materials from the North East. These include: Middle East and Islamic Studies collections: One of the most important collections in the UK, it contains over 50,000 monographs and over 2,500 periodicals covering the Ottoman Empire to ancient Mesopotamian archaeology to modern Persian literature. The Sudan Archive: founded in 1957, the year after Sudanese independence, to collect and preserve the papers of administrators from the Sudan Political Service, missionaries, soldiers, business men, doctors, agriculturalists, teachers and others who had served or lived in the Sudan (now Sudan and South Sudan) during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1898–1955). There is a significant amount of Mahdist material as well as papers relating to the military campaigns of the 1880s and 1890s, while in recent years, the scope of the Archive has extended to the period after independence and now contains material up to the present day. The Archive also holds substantial numbers of papers relating to Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria, and African states bordering on Sudan and South Sudan. Most of the material is in English, with a small amount in Arabic. In 2005 the collection was accorded with designated status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. Abbas Hilmi II Papers, Khedive of Egypt 1892–1914. Bamburgh Library Collection: Created in 1958, the collection holds some 8,500 manuscript and print titles, with 16 incunabula across a variety of subject areas. The collection was largely acquired during the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries by the Archbishop of York, John Sharp (1644–1714), along with three generations of the Sharp Family. The collection contains the 1533 edition of the Psalms from Freiburg and Joannes Guinterius's Anatomicarum institutionum libri. Bibliotheca Episcopalis Dunelmensis (Cosin Collection): Founded in 1669 by the then Bishop John Cosin. The collection contains over 5,000 titles, including nine incunabula, over 600 foreign 16th-century titles. The collection is largely in French or German and based on theological issues such as Canon law and liturgy. The collection contains Cosin's 1568 Zürich edition of Heinrich Bullinger's De origine erroris.