by Catherine Birch
The Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO) is a bit of a hidden gem – you might walk right past without knowing it’s there. It’s only twenty minutes’ walk from the city centre, and a short distance away from various university buildings, but most people aren’t aware it exists. I certainly wasn’t, until our trainee cohort got in contact with the librarian, who was kind enough to offer us all a tour.
We met Janet (the librarian) in the lobby, where she began our tour by giving us a brief overview of the MFO’s history and purpose. The Maison Française is a residential research institute at the heart of the university’s inclusive culture. It hosts an ever-changing cohort of international students and external academics, whose stays might last anything from six months to three years. It’s also open as a public library, and it frequently hosts exhibitions, conferences, and other events. It’s governed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the Universities of Paris and Oxford, making it a unique space among the rest of the university’s facilities. Notably, the Maison Française is not a Bodleian library, and it’s not associated with any particular college; it’s something all its own.
Initial plans for a French cultural centre in Oxford date back to the start of the twentieth century, but it was only following WW2 that the project actually became feasible, and the MFO was founded in 1946 to consolidate British-French relations and to promote research collaborations across the Channel. These were humble beginnings: the original building was a tiny house rented from a college, there was only one British resident, and the library only had seventeen books in the collection! The project persisted, though, and a cohort of long-term residents and loyal readers slowly built up. The space slowly took on a unique role as a small French enclave in the middle of England, designed to emulate a Parisian bookshop in its atmosphere and its holdings. The early collections were mostly contemporary French literature, newspapers, and journals, although this began to diversify over time. This modern collection was very carefully curated to avoid overlapping heavily with the Taylor Institution, as the Maison Française wasn’t designed to be a subject library or teaching space, but a cultural hub. After two decades the collection had grown to over 17,000 items and the MFO moved to its current purpose-built location at 2-10 Norham Road.
Even having outgrown its unusual origins, the library is still a small operation, staffed by one librarian part-time. It’s far from the chaos of a college during term! Despite this, the main reading room has a friendly and comfortable vibe, full of quiet chatter. The little ‘open’ sign outside reminded us all of a bookshop, and that energy moves inside with you as you spot the new book display by the entrance and see what’s come in recently. Janet introduced us to the collections, showing us some examples of the original collection and highlighting how the range of material has evolved and shifted over time. While it’s a foreign language library, the collections aren’t limited to language and literary studies, and there’s books on just about every subject under the sun. This includes children’s fiction, and a few trainees were delighted to spot some of the Asterix books in the collection!
Janet then took us to the basement, where some of the lower-use items are kept. These include back issues of journals and newspapers, fragile books, and oversized items. There’s also a small archive collection tucked away in the basement, which mostly consists of institutional records and documents related to the institute’s past, but also some more unconventional objects. As part of its role as a cultural centre, the Maison Française holds a few patrimonial items on permanent loan, helping preserve aspects of Anglo-French culture and heritage. These items aren’t often brought out but can make for some very fun displays when they are – this death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte caught our attention. It’s not every day you come across an old French emperor behind the enquiry desk!
As mentioned, the Maison Française operates as a public lending library. It’s open to all readers equally, differentiating it from college and subject libraries, with a threefold user base of university members, external researchers, and the general public. Contending with the different needs of these groups is a careful balance, and the library really makes the most of the space and resources it has to keep readers coming back.
The MFO does have a collections development budget, and pretty much all the books they buy are ones that readers have specifically asked for (the list of requests gets longer every year!). In addition to this, a lot of their new material is also donated by academics, benefactors, or members of the public, which has really diversified the collection from its original focus on contemporary news and fiction. On average the library currently receives somewhere between 300-500 acquisitions a year – an impressive amount to process for such a small institute.
Janet also took us through some of their ongoing projects. Alongside the regular events, exhibitions, and seminars run by the wider MFO, the library is working to build links with schools and organisations around Oxford, to encourage language learning for children. The library has a wealth of children’s books and DVDs available to borrow, and they’re enthusiastic to share these resources more widely with the community. There’s also a long-term reclassification process happening, designed to rationalise at least six outdated in-house shelfmarks into one cohesive system (Dewey decimal, for anyone curious). This is a tricky process as there’s a lot of books to get through, and some items need their catalogue records amended during the process. The perils of accepting those large donations…
Speaking of donations, there’s good and bad news. The bad news is… some donated items never make it to the open shelves. In a small library like this one space is a constant issue, so weeding and careful stock intake is really important, because it ensures the open shelves are kept accessible and stocked with books readers actually use. While librarians would love to keep everything given to them, a lot of the time it’s just not feasible, and donated items might not enter the collection. (This applies to pretty much every academic library, not just the Maison Française.) The good news is… they’re free to a good home! The library has put together a free book table stocked with all the books removed from the collection, so that these items can find a new life somewhere else. According to Janet, it’s a very popular feature of the library, and even the most niche books end up being claimed.
With our tour finished and our libraries calling us back to work, the only thing left for the trainees to do was thank Janet for showing us around, register as readers ourselves, and pick out some books to borrow. Reading in French can be a bit of a challenge, but with a dictionary, a translate app, and a lot of determination, we’ll make it work.
The MFO’s collections are searchable on SOLO (although if you want to borrow anything, you’ll have to register specially), and they’re always ready to welcome new readers. For more information about the library and the institute in general, you can have a look at the Maison Française d’Oxford website, or head to Norham Road and take a look for yourself.
P.S.
We’re aware that trainee interviews are coming up next week, and some of you might be last-minute prepping by looking through the blog. We hope this post gives you a good idea of the sort of opportunities you can arrange for yourself as a graduate trainee in Oxford! For more insight into the training, shadowing, and tours you have access to through a library traineeship, have a look at our ‘Training Sessions’ page. If you want to know more about what you’ll be doing day-to-day as a trainee, look at our archive of ‘Day in the Life’ posts from over the years. Finally, if you want some guidance on how the interview might go, look at this post on Library Interview Tips and Techniques from a few years ago. Good luck!
