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#16 The Inner Sanctum

From 1967 up until 2002, when entering the Berkeley’s foyer, to your right was the Librarian’s Office, and that of the Deputy Librarian, behind a wall and door. Before the Berkeley was built, the Librarian’s Office was in the west end of the Old Library, in what is now called the Henry Jones Room. We saw this in the video of students swearing the Library oath in the last post.

There are very few images of the interior of the Librarian’s Office, but former Librarian Peter Fox took a video of it before he left in 1994 to become Librarian of Cambridge University Library:

Here’s the outside of the Librarian’s Office in 1967:

…you can see the steps we discussed in a previous post, bottom-right.

Going through that door would have brought you face-to-face with the two secretaries for the Librarian and Deputy Librarian. To the right was the Deputy Librarian’s office, with himself and another member of staff to look after accounts. After the construction of the new Librarian’s Office area in 2002, including a new office for the Deputy Librarian, this was taken over by the Keeper of Readers’ Services, Trevor Peare. The Librarian’s Office was completely removed and opened out into a new Admissions Counter and a staff area for our admissions staff.

So it remained until Trevor’s retirement in late 2015, and the space being redesigned again. The Admissions Counter was moved back over to the left of the foyer, as we discussed a few posts ago.

This area now looks like this, and is part of the entrepreneurial Blackstone LaunchPad space.

 

Here it is in close up:

Image: Gill Whelan

Main image: Gill Whelan

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