From Cambridge we’re off due West and into Wales as today #RLUKCollections comes to Cardiff

Items enter collections in a variety of ways and in different quantities, but there can be few recent examples as extensive and magnificent as the 14,000 books that came to Cardiff University in 2010. https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/special-collections/explore/collection/cardiff-rare-books

For over a century, Cardiff City Council had built up a significant collection at the Central Library, ranging from incunabula, through bibles, restoration drama, and atlases. However, over time the collection had become rather hidden and under-used

The Council had decided by 2006 to dispose of the collection. I can only imagine that the 2008 financial crash and subsequent austerity gave added strength to the argument that this was not an asset the Council should retain

Former University Librarian, Janet Peters, writing at the time gave a glimpse of the hard work and complex politics involved in creating a coalition of funding to allow the collection to transfer from the Council to the University - https://www.sconul.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/19_7.pdf

I’m particularly struck by the private press collection with volumes from William Morris’ Kelmscott Press onward. This feels as if it was a passion, an obsession perhaps, of a somebody within the library who built up the collection

With the cruel defunding of public libraries in the UK over the last decade it is hard to conceive of such passions being indulged in today. (Although I would love to hear that I am wrong!)

The determination of a wide range of people in Cardiff a decade ago ensured that a collection that had been built on behalf of the people of Wales remained intact and in Wales. It so easily could have been dispersed around the world, but the collection remains in its home city

I forgot to add the twitter accounts from Cardiff to follow - @CardiffUniLib and @CUSpecialColls