1 00:00:01,220 --> 00:00:13,760 There is. Hello and welcome to Booklist, a podcast about artist books brought to you by the Library Centre for the Study of the book. 2 00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:19,300 I'm Alice Evans, assistant book conservator and on dramatics, assistant curator of rare books. 3 00:00:20,210 --> 00:00:26,300 And Over the Coming Podcast series, I'm going to be delving into one of our favourite, possibly less well known collections here at The Guardian. 4 00:00:26,780 --> 00:00:28,310 We'll look for books in detail, 5 00:00:28,580 --> 00:00:34,550 talk to the creators and ask the questions that interest is most about the materiality and the intentions of the artist. 6 00:00:35,480 --> 00:00:40,460 So Joe, you are responsible for acquiring and cataloguing a lot of these artist books. 7 00:00:41,150 --> 00:00:45,890 But what is an artist book? Thanks, Alice. That's a really tricky question. 8 00:00:47,160 --> 00:00:52,320 I suppose like any type of creative practice, artist books get harder to define the more closely you look at them. 9 00:00:52,950 --> 00:00:55,980 So the Library of Congress has one of the broadest definitions that I found, 10 00:00:56,490 --> 00:01:01,620 which is the artist books are books that are produced by artists and intended as visual art objects. 11 00:01:02,550 --> 00:01:09,630 So they might be unique items or multiples. They might be published or unpublished works, but then made by an artist and a visual art. 12 00:01:10,170 --> 00:01:15,060 But if you listen to the series, you'll find that not all of the books we cover are intended as visual art. 13 00:01:15,150 --> 00:01:20,430 And you don't have to look very much further into the collection to find artist books that aren't made by artists. 14 00:01:20,730 --> 00:01:28,500 And so arguably in books thanks to you, that's quite confusing still, but good stuff. 15 00:01:28,950 --> 00:01:35,580 You're welcome. So then let me ask you, what is it that you do at the library and how do you encounter artists books as you went? 16 00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:41,610 So I'm a book conservator, and I work in the conservation and collection care team here at the Body. 17 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:44,940 And our role is to care for and preserve the library's collections, 18 00:01:45,270 --> 00:01:49,560 which might be through monitoring and maintaining a good environment in all our library spaces, 19 00:01:49,980 --> 00:01:54,480 checking for any pests and of course, the practical treatment and repair of objects. 20 00:01:54,630 --> 00:01:56,460 So what kind of objects do we welcome? 21 00:01:57,030 --> 00:02:04,470 My team work on objects from around the world, which could be an early printed book on how may paper an illuminated parchment manuscript, 22 00:02:04,710 --> 00:02:07,850 a Chinese hand scroll, a collection of early photographs. 23 00:02:08,130 --> 00:02:14,010 Or it could be a complicated, mixed media object, like some of the artist books we will be discussing in the series. 24 00:02:14,850 --> 00:02:20,040 And these have certainly caused our team to scratch our heads quite a bit when we've been thinking about how we should best work off them, 25 00:02:20,460 --> 00:02:24,240 particularly those that are made of unusual materials that might be susceptible to change 26 00:02:24,480 --> 00:02:28,880 or are particularly fragile or within themselves a deliberately self-destructive. 27 00:02:28,890 --> 00:02:33,240 And we have to weigh up the options for that treatment with both access and preservation in mind. 28 00:02:34,210 --> 00:02:37,300 So now you've heard a bit about us. Let's get on with the podcast. 29 00:02:37,900 --> 00:02:40,930 First up, we grabbed Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, 30 00:02:41,350 --> 00:02:45,319 who gave us a whistle stop tour of some of his favourite artist books and an idea 31 00:02:45,320 --> 00:02:48,610 of what it's like to be the holder of the Special Collections purse strings. 32 00:02:49,540 --> 00:02:52,300 Welcome, Chris. Thank you for joining us this year. 33 00:02:52,510 --> 00:02:58,240 We thought we'd just start by asking you to introduce yourself and what your role here at the board in this. 34 00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:01,629 Okay. So my title is Keeper of Special Collections, 35 00:03:01,630 --> 00:03:11,710 which means I'm responsible for staff about 80 people and they are all committed to building our collections, 36 00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:19,000 looking after the collections, describing the collections, and then doing things with those collections. 37 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:25,200 So either helping readers look at them in reading rooms or supporting projects, 38 00:03:25,240 --> 00:03:32,070 exhibitions, so and so, thinking about artists books in the collections of the building. 39 00:03:32,140 --> 00:03:36,580 How do you go about building a collection of pieces like the one here? 40 00:03:36,970 --> 00:03:41,170 That's a very good question and a difficult one to answer. 41 00:03:41,830 --> 00:03:48,640 The collections of the problem are encyclopaedic, kaleidoscopic, never ending. 42 00:03:49,180 --> 00:03:54,340 In a sense. It's always a question where or how do we how do we build? 43 00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:58,250 Do we just keep in the same traditions enhancing what we've got? 44 00:03:58,390 --> 00:04:08,830 Do we strike out in new areas? So perhaps a bit of both. And certainly in the case of artist books, I feel and contemporary artists books I feel, 45 00:04:08,830 --> 00:04:20,979 it's a way in which we can really be free to go after things that reflect the whole interesting diversity of views, 46 00:04:20,980 --> 00:04:25,000 geographical locations, techniques and approaches. 47 00:04:25,630 --> 00:04:30,940 It's a way we can really spice up the mix of our collections. 48 00:04:31,390 --> 00:04:38,620 It sounds rather old fashioned, but you will never going to acquire anything unless you have curatorial permission. 49 00:04:39,430 --> 00:04:50,380 People who are looking at keeping that is to the ground, who identify interesting things, have a hunch, take a punt sometimes. 50 00:04:52,540 --> 00:05:03,790 I think for me as well, we do quite a bit of teaching in our in the pocket from our collections, particularly to graduate students. 51 00:05:04,570 --> 00:05:13,030 And I've noticed over the last few years that of course they respond to the world's most expensive folk or beautiful illuminated manuscripts, 52 00:05:13,990 --> 00:05:26,710 an unpublished letter by a significant writer. But students responses to us as folks has been really arresting. 53 00:05:27,070 --> 00:05:33,250 To me, it's something about the beauty, 54 00:05:33,730 --> 00:05:46,060 the technical facility and ingenuity with which that produce and some of the issues that they speak to really galvanise students who, 55 00:05:46,870 --> 00:05:52,359 like the rest of us in it, in a digital world and so much text, 56 00:05:52,360 --> 00:06:03,250 so many publications come to us digitally that I think suddenly confronting the analogue form. 57 00:06:04,450 --> 00:06:09,370 Pull them up sharp would you say when you're collecting, 58 00:06:09,910 --> 00:06:16,690 is there a deliberate attempt to push the boundaries of what people might expect of the Bohemian and what the book is in general? 59 00:06:17,910 --> 00:06:29,010 I mean, I think I one of the collections that I helped to acquire early on in my career was the Archive of the Gripper, 60 00:06:29,550 --> 00:06:37,080 which was a book published in 1992, programmed to self-destruct and stop plays with the no shoes. 61 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:43,710 The typographical format mimics the Gutenberg Bible, which, of course, we have copy. 62 00:06:45,510 --> 00:06:57,940 And the book was really designed to mess with the minds of people like me and conservators and raises questions about longevity and value. 63 00:06:59,400 --> 00:07:05,540 And it's a gloriously ironic acquisition, in a way, because this was a book that was never meant to last, 64 00:07:05,540 --> 00:07:15,390 that here it is, enshrined in the body and carefully looked after by conservatives, seriously studied in our region. 65 00:07:16,440 --> 00:07:19,769 I guess that got me thinking about books. 66 00:07:19,770 --> 00:07:26,720 The question I don't see as books and questions or assumptions about what a book is. 67 00:07:26,730 --> 00:07:33,690 So yes. In short, I am very keen to acquire things that are provocative in that way. 68 00:07:34,500 --> 00:07:41,880 An addition of Fahrenheit 451 that can't be read unless you expose flame that will never be read in the book. 69 00:07:43,350 --> 00:07:47,610 Or at least librarian glossary check. Hello again. 70 00:07:47,910 --> 00:07:52,530 Thanks there to Richard Open Bodies Librarian who has jumped into glossary check this reference 71 00:07:52,530 --> 00:07:57,479 that the body the body knows is set by all new members of staff and readers who swear, 72 00:07:57,480 --> 00:08:04,710 among other things, not to kindle a flame or fire in the library. One reason why this particular book will never be read back to Chris, 73 00:08:05,220 --> 00:08:18,410 a book whose Endless Sleep by Steve Anderson that is actually made of three layers or pages, if you like, of wasps. 74 00:08:18,420 --> 00:08:21,780 And that's very, very difficult to handle. 75 00:08:22,320 --> 00:08:41,970 And of course witty because he was paper notoriously I guess this keeps coming up is a book by who 20 slices which is 20 slices of encapsulated 76 00:08:42,510 --> 00:08:58,360 crossed cheese of which I think only ten copies were made again playfully is Elise this is a is a slice of prop cheese the leaf of the book. 77 00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:07,590 It is it is bound up and it has a ton to. So it really seems that you are drawn to books that use unusual materials and processes. 78 00:09:07,620 --> 00:09:11,079 Could you speak a bit more about that? Yeah. 79 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:19,850 Very much material and technique that speaks to the meaning of the word or enhances subversive in some respects. 80 00:09:19,850 --> 00:09:31,720 So when we acquired recently was a short story by Jane Bowles not completed Andrew and 81 00:09:31,810 --> 00:09:41,020 it deals with outcasts and ephemeral characters and Nancy Loba the maker of this book. 82 00:09:41,860 --> 00:09:48,580 Give some gives them a life in a very beautiful coloured book. 83 00:09:50,200 --> 00:09:54,880 And the technique she uses is is one of good cost reduction. 84 00:09:55,000 --> 00:09:58,000 So in creating images of the characters, 85 00:09:59,170 --> 00:10:09,460 she prints from the block and then she cuts the block down to plan on the colour prints from the cut, sit down again, so on and so forth. 86 00:10:09,850 --> 00:10:17,350 And I love the fact that in creating these colourful characters, 87 00:10:18,100 --> 00:10:27,670 she is actually turning the source of the origin, the law, into something that ultimately is destroyed. 88 00:10:28,630 --> 00:10:32,370 And that. Resonates with the story. 89 00:10:32,450 --> 00:10:37,050 So the impermanence of these these characters, that vulnerability. 90 00:10:37,800 --> 00:10:41,760 Of course, that book also comes in a beautiful box, 91 00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:54,450 which includes two marionette puppets with embroidered tunics that Nancy made herself, and a set of sparkles that relate to the story. 92 00:10:54,450 --> 00:11:00,690 But of course, something else that can never fulfil its promise in the book, it will never be allowed to light. 93 00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:06,960 Do you think there are any materials that you wouldn't consider acquiring? 94 00:11:06,980 --> 00:11:09,150 Is there anything that would be pushing the limits too far? 95 00:11:10,240 --> 00:11:22,750 We wouldn't take a vote that takes with the common sidewalk that I think we like to push boundaries. 96 00:11:22,750 --> 00:11:30,070 But I think you still these folks, they still have to have an intellectual integrity. 97 00:11:30,730 --> 00:11:39,520 They have to have some sort of aesthetic value, and they have to be technically clever. 98 00:11:41,170 --> 00:11:46,360 They have to be intelligent and meaningful and. 99 00:11:47,710 --> 00:11:53,910 I guess anybody could do anything that was provocative and just say, well, this is this is a vote that. 100 00:11:54,430 --> 00:11:59,110 It has to have some. Combination of those things. 101 00:11:59,110 --> 00:12:06,170 And I think it also has to speak somehow of. Books or bookshops or a library. 102 00:12:06,690 --> 00:12:13,610 After all this and then I guess it's a collaborative conversation between the departments about how to preserve and how to go. 103 00:12:14,230 --> 00:12:24,560 This is actually, in a sense, the things Cheezburger has so far lost to get pretty well well looked after. 104 00:12:25,670 --> 00:12:37,150 If you I mean, we we have legal deposit books that come in as a matter of course and anyone is for cheap to produce paperback and 105 00:12:37,160 --> 00:12:45,380 discovered it falling apart in their hands as they try to read it will understand that any book can be can be vulnerable. 106 00:12:45,710 --> 00:12:52,250 Yeah, definitely. And we were wondering, do you have a particular favourite in the Oscar collection? 107 00:12:53,300 --> 00:12:57,230 And it depends. It depends. 108 00:12:57,230 --> 00:13:02,930 I mean, it changes. Gosh, everyone is favourite. 109 00:13:02,930 --> 00:13:16,840 I loved quite a modest book by Charlotte called Little Book of Books, which is Wood Engravings of of Birds. 110 00:13:17,870 --> 00:13:28,310 But he has deliberately not cut the pages of the book, so you're forced to disappear into them because you're looking at a hiding in a hedgerow. 111 00:13:29,120 --> 00:13:32,950 And again, I think I was talking to him about scene. 112 00:13:34,620 --> 00:13:44,200 He is generally provocative. Does a library understand that as a concept or does it come out? 113 00:13:44,310 --> 00:13:53,600 Pages. There's only one of the Christians on the list, and he already answered it. 114 00:13:54,030 --> 00:13:59,810 If you'd like to say anything else about how the collections are used in teaching and. 115 00:14:02,550 --> 00:14:08,490 So yes, the collections event for anyone to come up to the reading room. 116 00:14:10,170 --> 00:14:15,930 That's a very good form of research is what we do, but it's quite passive. 117 00:14:16,530 --> 00:14:27,390 So I love to see things in teaching and. So for example, every year Andrew Carney and some fellow conservative. 118 00:14:28,990 --> 00:14:34,300 Show me some chart corrections and. 119 00:14:35,670 --> 00:14:41,280 We didn't ask them to prepare for that. We want them to react to what they see on the table. 120 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:47,710 And we always includes those as part of. 121 00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:53,040 And it's wonderful to see see their responses once again. 122 00:14:54,240 --> 00:15:08,550 I'm very fond of is by somebody called Shammy and the title is it is this if you leave your home a true story depicted in topographical images. 123 00:15:09,330 --> 00:15:19,320 And it's a book about the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the implications of that. 124 00:15:21,140 --> 00:15:30,260 It's very, very easily printed using typographical devices to create recognisable images. 125 00:15:31,330 --> 00:15:36,310 And it's obviously a very, very profound, very heavy subject, 126 00:15:36,760 --> 00:15:45,910 which is contrasted by physical formats of the book itself, which is actually printed on kitchen paper. 127 00:15:47,380 --> 00:15:51,550 And what I love to do with that book is and it looks like a solid, 128 00:15:51,790 --> 00:16:02,080 heavy book is actually just passing to one of the students and see their reaction when they feel how incredibly light is. 129 00:16:03,150 --> 00:16:13,110 That's the sort of thing that gives me a kick. And the number of these shoes belongs to the films. 130 00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:18,720 Some of them are interested is about pursuing a career in curation. 131 00:16:19,680 --> 00:16:26,520 Some of them even go into the book trades and then end up selling these books at a premium price. 132 00:16:27,450 --> 00:16:35,740 But there you go. That's sometimes the cost of a success in getting people interested in a biographical matters. 133 00:16:36,910 --> 00:16:40,840 We also caught up with Professors Emma Smith and Adam Smith here at the Western Library. 134 00:16:41,080 --> 00:16:46,600 But they spoke to me, to them and how they use them in their own thinking about books and their materiality. 135 00:16:47,470 --> 00:16:53,950 Emma teaches English here Oxford University, specialising in Shakespeare and is one of the curators of the Sensational Books exhibition, 136 00:16:54,160 --> 00:17:01,060 which is on the Western Library in Oxford until the 4th of December 2022, which features many wonderful examples of artist books. 137 00:17:01,990 --> 00:17:07,710 Adam also teaches English here at Oxford, particularly the honeymoon period, and is an editor of Inscription, 138 00:17:07,720 --> 00:17:13,450 The Journal of Material Text Publication, which explores mark making and materiality in all different ways. 139 00:17:14,560 --> 00:17:18,430 We started by asking them both how they use artist books in their work and teaching. 140 00:17:19,910 --> 00:17:26,090 Well I. So I've come really late to find so some advantages for them right now. 141 00:17:26,090 --> 00:17:36,740 Not, not super knowledgeable, but starting to think how they can be peaceful objects that can really do some questions about more ordinary books. 142 00:17:37,550 --> 00:17:42,920 They engage with book practices and book handling in some really fabulous ways. 143 00:17:42,920 --> 00:17:47,930 And I can do that really because of this exhibition that we've just been doing such additional books where lots of 144 00:17:47,930 --> 00:17:56,390 the ways in which books appeal to the different senses are really played with and amplified in an artists book. 145 00:17:56,400 --> 00:18:03,680 So I am definitely thinking that these are objects, beautiful objects that open up really interesting teaching questions. 146 00:18:04,250 --> 00:18:11,000 I think I do use of sometimes particularly credit teaching as teaching when we're thinking 147 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:17,390 about the affordances of a way of book has a particular logic or how we might move through it, 148 00:18:17,690 --> 00:18:21,469 what a book can and can't do. I think sometimes some of the uses for lots of reasons, 149 00:18:21,470 --> 00:18:29,930 but one of the ways that very explicit is the drawing out the potential of books to do interesting things, to work in surprising ways. 150 00:18:30,260 --> 00:18:35,870 Yeah, there's sometimes like explicit you can use it or otherwise, but then you can go back to as it normal, 151 00:18:36,530 --> 00:18:41,359 such a normal thing as a normal book and that maybe that makes the normal book seem a bit less sensitive. 152 00:18:41,360 --> 00:18:46,560 I think that divide between regular books and that's not that's a permeable wall. 153 00:18:46,660 --> 00:18:50,340 And we go back into that very good definition of afterschool like I want to draw. 154 00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:56,720 Participants are self-conscious about the form of the book that kind of reflecting on the self always how do I work? 155 00:18:56,870 --> 00:19:00,770 What does it mean to have pages in sequence, to be in the code, explore it? 156 00:19:00,790 --> 00:19:07,720 Really good studies in this question is a. One of the things that you talk about in your book Before Magic, 157 00:19:08,090 --> 00:19:13,990 is you say dependence is what combined school and context so completely that they are identical. 158 00:19:14,380 --> 00:19:19,660 Could you talk a bit more about all the content and how they contribute to what we think? 159 00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:27,830 Yeah. So I think one of the ways that artists books reflect on book booklets and the kind of 160 00:19:27,830 --> 00:19:32,080 metal books that books about books in some way that they're about the book for them. 161 00:19:32,090 --> 00:19:34,760 That's one of their purposes, and I think so. 162 00:19:34,820 --> 00:19:43,610 So then Danza's book Made of Cheese has a new writing on it, apart from all this on the spot where it has the title to American Cheese. 163 00:19:44,990 --> 00:19:48,480 So, so there's no content apart from form. 164 00:19:48,500 --> 00:19:53,660 I mean, it's made of cheese. Well, one argument would be it's about cheese. 165 00:19:54,590 --> 00:19:59,090 That's would be its kind of subject. I mean, really, it's about being a book, isn't it? 166 00:19:59,090 --> 00:20:02,950 And what whether how far you could put, you could push that. 167 00:20:02,970 --> 00:20:12,620 Then just got loads of different books off in a dollar bills and books of ketchup sachets and books of sweeteners and all kinds of stuff. 168 00:20:12,620 --> 00:20:20,180 And it's is almost a it's a kind of challenge kind of to see how come you go with me on this? 169 00:20:20,330 --> 00:20:23,600 Is this one syllable? Is this one syllable? Is this one syllable. 170 00:20:23,840 --> 00:20:30,630 So. I think form and content are the same in Denis's Cheese book. 171 00:20:31,630 --> 00:20:34,630 But I think it is not quite true to say full on content. 172 00:20:34,630 --> 00:20:37,840 All cheese people reform and content are both. 173 00:20:39,590 --> 00:20:42,810 And he recently said the book is No Hundred is not really. 174 00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:47,600 But I wonder if you have any thoughts on this in relation to autistics and the 175 00:20:47,600 --> 00:20:51,230 tension that they might create between access and preservation in the library. 176 00:20:52,290 --> 00:21:04,060 I think that tension between those visions so fascinating and that is a brilliant thing that some of those conceptual artist books really, 177 00:21:04,080 --> 00:21:14,850 really engage with. I think I would be on the side of access, partly because constitutionally I am a bit overwhelmed by presentation. 178 00:21:15,120 --> 00:21:22,100 I feel as if somehow in our urge to keep everything, we are just completely overburdening the people of the future. 179 00:21:22,110 --> 00:21:30,569 And I know that's a very wrong thing to say in a library, which is being dedicated to preserving that heritage in some ways. 180 00:21:30,570 --> 00:21:34,910 But I would be about access. The books are not. 181 00:21:36,210 --> 00:21:40,340 They're not reverential objects. They're not relics so that you can have something. 182 00:21:42,150 --> 00:21:45,000 So, I mean, I would be about access. And yet, 183 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:53,730 rather than preservation of I am interested in why I'm actually really genuinely interested in why book destruction has become the red button. 184 00:21:54,850 --> 00:21:59,470 Kind of image of liberalism and fascism and all those. 185 00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:05,230 So interestingly, located in in books, books as objects. 186 00:22:06,430 --> 00:22:12,070 So not not less not necessarily inevitable masses of cultural toys. 187 00:22:13,820 --> 00:22:19,250 I'm definitely on the side of access, partly because books are things that need to be written. 188 00:22:19,250 --> 00:22:25,340 And that's important, partly because one of the amazing things about books is that they do enjoy through time, 189 00:22:25,340 --> 00:22:29,530 that the books that are around us now will be centuries time. 190 00:22:30,050 --> 00:22:33,709 They'll have marks of that time and those moments of use. 191 00:22:33,710 --> 00:22:39,500 And that's good. But also because of all of this, I mean, a crucial moment in that genre, I think, 192 00:22:39,500 --> 00:22:44,930 is that it was the sixties in America, wasn't it, with people like Ed Ruscha. 193 00:22:44,930 --> 00:22:50,090 They were making those books like In the Streets of Sunset Boulevard, the photo book. 194 00:22:51,280 --> 00:23:01,660 And they were deliberately printed in high performance, basically the physically unremarkable stuff in some ways. 195 00:23:01,870 --> 00:23:05,610 We didn't have the biggest library. So precious. 196 00:23:05,660 --> 00:23:14,650 This is a very massive economy. And so in Origin is a strong group that were very committed to being democratic and to be multiple and cheap. 197 00:23:16,300 --> 00:23:20,330 Now there are obviously lots of complications with that as they become collective and institutionalised. 198 00:23:20,330 --> 00:23:24,430 And of these, these things become much more expensive to the complex collectable, 199 00:23:24,910 --> 00:23:34,730 but in that they are about their way of using information and ideas that might be gathered in cheap books to the world. 200 00:23:35,470 --> 00:23:42,850 So the things that people have access to. So yeah, I think it's been very you making this podcast and talking to a lot of the artists. 201 00:23:42,850 --> 00:23:46,649 It made these books that I think that very much on that side as well. 202 00:23:46,650 --> 00:23:54,430 And Mendoza even said the word co-authorship about the reader and changes that occurred to his works. 203 00:23:54,430 --> 00:24:00,430 Once they become part of a collection like this where they're teaching, when they're being called up and read by a reader, 204 00:24:00,520 --> 00:24:08,680 a researcher, and they seem very interested and on board with the changes that occur. 205 00:24:09,430 --> 00:24:12,430 And some of these books that we're talking about all my life, 206 00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:19,890 but don't describe the cheese because a lot is ever changing now that I can realise that it's true. 207 00:24:19,970 --> 00:24:28,990 It's only when we have the conversation to this episode to give you a taste of the collection here at the Bodleian, 208 00:24:29,260 --> 00:24:35,440 and that you'll join us for the next four episodes of Witness What We will be looking more closely for objects from the collection. 209 00:24:36,750 --> 00:24:41,850 Thanks again to Chris Fletcher, Adam Smyth and Emma Smith for chatting to us in this episode and the team at 210 00:24:41,850 --> 00:24:44,490 the Centre for the Study of the book for helping us put together book ness. 211 00:24:45,130 --> 00:24:50,310 Back to Emma for a final thought about books and art and their changing place here at the library and in Oxford. 212 00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:56,070 I love thinking about that moment when the Bodleian and the other museums in 213 00:24:56,070 --> 00:25:01,350 Oxford divvied up what was their sphere of expertise and books became a category, 214 00:25:01,350 --> 00:25:05,580 and fossils themselves became an art became a category. 215 00:25:06,060 --> 00:25:10,110 And it's kind of really you see why that happens. It's the importance of intellectual. 216 00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:20,250 It's a political moment and stuff, but it feels really good. So get away from that now and sort of push up the book as a more inclusive and say.