Hartley Library is the beating heart of Highfield Campus, attracting students, staff, and visitors from a variety of academic disciplines that range from archaeology to zoology and everything in-between. Although the building is renowned among students for all-nighters to (un)productive work sessions, Hartley Library forms a significant part in the daily life of all layers of the UoS community and broader academic world.
Being a more modern university and perhaps not holding the same historical aura as your Oxfords and Cambridges, Highfield Campus and Hartley Library probably won’t ever be a film set or a tourist attraction (although, later this year, the Library will feature in a piece on CBS News in the USA about the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth – the Library holds a manuscript poem in her handwriting). However, its history is representative of one of extraordinary growth and a thriving academic culture of which we are privileged to be a part of.
Whether it is a group study session, a silent essay writing day, accessing the special collections for research, or simply reading out of academic exploration, the vast majority of students and staff have interacted with the Library. As we regularly utilise Hartley Library, its enormity as an academic resource often goes underappreciated. So, here’s a delve into the library’s 162-year history, its iconic design, and how students have engaged with this resource in recent years.
Every time that you walk through those automatic doors, perhaps begrudgingly withdraw your student ID from your pocket, and pass through those all too familiar turnstiles for another study session, you are passing through Highfield’s oldest building. This entrance dates back to 1935, designed in part by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott who is famous for perhaps one of the UK’s most iconic symbols: the red telephone box; as well as this, he designed the recently re-developed Battersea Power Station. The wings of the entrance were the University’s very first footprint on the Highfield Campus.
However, Hartley Library’s history goes back further than its recognisable redbrick entrance and even the foundation of the sprawling Highfield Campus where it is located today. On the 15th of October 1862, Hartley Library was launched by Lord Palmerston as part of the Hartley Institution. Its name is taken from its Victorian benefactor Henry Robinson Hartley and was housed in a building below the Bargate on the high street prior to its move to Highfield in 1935.
This move in 1935 occurred just a year before the founding of Wessex Scene in 1936. What may seem like a coincidental crossover in the history of these two organisations is perhaps symbolic of the foundations of a thriving academic community primed for rapid growth. In 1952, the University of Southampton was granted a royal charter, being the first of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, giving it formal recognition and enabling it to function as a university.
The building as we know it today is a patchwork of the university’s century old foundations and its more modern extensions and interiors, with the Hartley Library team writing that “the library’s growth has mirrored the expansion of the University itself”. The five-floor building is a measuring stick for an extensive and rapidly growing community that we all form a part of.
This becomes obvious through the current statistics of the size and the use of the library we have become familiar with:
- Hartley was visited 650,000 times by 138,000 people across the 2023/24 academic year
- Students and staff have access to roughly 1.6 million eBooks and close to 150,000 electronic journals
- There are 925,000 physical items in the library’s collections, covering a total of 100 different subject areas
- Students and staff accessed a total of 6.3 million journal articles in the 2023/24 academic year
- There are a total of 1,900 study spaces, ranging from group spaces to silent zones
- Hartley’s archives and special collections contain around 7 million manuscript items and 50,000 printed books
What is perhaps more impressive than the enormity of this resource are the logistics required to maintain its vast collections and ensure their extensive and continuous student and staff engagement:
- At around 17,000 square metres, it’s one of the biggest and busiest building on the Highfield Campus
- The library is open 24 hours a day for students during the 32 weeks of term time per year, keeping its doors open from 8am-Midnight outside of this period
- The library is open for 361 days a year, closing only on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, and Easter Sunday
- Hartley Library is also just one of the University of Southampton’s libraries, with three further library’s at Southampton General Hospital, National Oceanography Centre in the Southampton Dock area, and the Winchester School of Art Library.
So, next time you inevitably pass through those automatic doors equipped with a meal deal and a coffee, with a 3000-word essay pending, take a moment to appreciate the history and enormity of Hartley Library, the importance it holds in our academic careers, and how it has symbolised, and continues to symbolise, the lifelong community we are all a part of.
All of the information and statistics used in this article were kindly provided by the Hartley Library Team.
