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Let’s Talk About Toy Books!

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As we move into December, it feels like the festive season has finally begun to settle over Oxford. But while the joys of the season limit themselves to one month a year for most of the Bodleian libraries, Osney One has the unique ability to retain a little Christmas spark throughout the entire year. This is all down to the presence of one of my favourite collections at Osney: the Toy Books.

What are Toy Books?

Despite the slightly misleading name, Toy Books are not always toys. Instead, they are books from our Legal Deposit intake that require special treatment for the sake of conservation. A book could fall into this category for multiple reasons, but broadly speaking it’s because they have the potential to either damage or be damaged by other books as they are moved around and/or start to deteriorate. We therefore handle this kind of material with slightly different processes to better ensure that they are available for reading and research in perpetuity.

What kind of books ‘require special treatment’?

There are many factors that could transform a regular old Legal Deposit book into a Toy Book. In fact, there are so many heavily contextual reasons that it would be immensely tedious to have to slog through a paragraph or two of reasonings and caveats. So, for your viewing pleasure, I have instead picked out a selection of seven Toy Books that represent a range of conservation concerns. Some of the books could pose threats to others, some could be threatened themselves – but all of them are an absolute joy to look at!

 

A collage of three images of books. The left-hand image shows a yellow toy dog and blue ‘Spot Says Goodnight’ book inside a light blue box. The central image shows a furry blue-and-yellow striped book titled The Yuckiest and Most Fun Counting Book in the World. The right-hand image shows a book made up of multiple differently-sized pages that layer together to form a jungle-scape with monkeys when the book is closed.

First up we have the triple threat of Spot Says Goodnight: Box and Toy Gift Set, The Yuckiest and Most Fun Counting Book in the World, and Exploring the Adventurous World of the Jungle.

Spot, despite its innocent looks, poses some of the most varied risks of any Toy Book on this list. We have no idea how the degradation of its (adorable) toy might affect any books located nearby, and its box could easily be damaged by the pressure or sharp corners of other books around it. Furthermore, its plastic window may eventually become brittle and shatter with age, creating further possibilities for damage down the line. Similarly, The Counting Book’s fluffy exterior could degrade strangely or leave loose fibres on the covers of other books. Finally, the layered pages of The Jungle could easily catch on other books when being moved around on shelves, causing damage to itself or the other books.

 

A collage of three images of books. The left-hand image shows a black book titled Chinese Proverbs Illustrated that has been bound using red string. The central image displays a book called Dior: Style Icon, which features a fashion illustration of a woman in a white dress on its pale pink cover. The right-hand image shows a book called Play Along Humpty Dumpty, which features an illustration of the titular egg-shaped character wearing a red and blue outfit whilst sitting on a brick wall. Attached to the bottom of this book is a small, playable keyboard.

Moving on to our next selection, we have Chinese Proverbs Illustrated: The Wisdom of Cheng-Yu, Dior: Style Icon, and Play Along Humpty Dumpty & Other Songs.

Chinese Proverbs Illustrated is difficult to deal with because of its binding. Although it is a wonderful example of stab binding, the threads could end up fraying or damaging other books were they to end up catching on anything in their surroundings. Moving on, a quick test performed on Dior’s gilded edges revealed that the gilding is liable to come off when rubbed against other bits of paper – which is an issue for a book that could see high use in a library setting. Last but certainly not least, Humpty Dumpty not only comes with a protruding, difficult-to-shelve keyboard, but with one of Osney One’s most feared enemies: a battery. Were we to miss this battery in our initial check of the book, it could end up quite literally exploding right in the centre of the Bodleian’s offsite book repository. This would be (to put it mildly) an absolute disaster.

 

A collage of two images that show the same book open and closed. The right-hand image shows the book closed and directly facing the camera. It is titled ‘Calligraphy Manual’ and displays a sample of calligraphy in a rectangle at the top of its otherwise plain brown cover. The left-hand image shows the book opened and at an angle. Its pages are made up of one long sheet of paper that has been folded many times to fit within the book’s covers.

Finally, rounding out our selection with an image all to itself, is Sun Guoting’s Calligraphy Manual. The source of this beautiful handbook’s conservation concerns is its form; its concertinaed pages have no protective spine to cover them from the sharp corners of other books or the stressors of handling and time. Whilst this might not be a concern for a more specialised library, the regular shelving methods of the Bodleian may expose this handbook to more wear and corrosion than is warranted.

How could you get hold of a Toy Book?

Once we’ve finished the fiddly process of cataloguing a Toy Book at Osney, we place it in a conservation box and send it to the Collections Storage Facility like we would any other book. After it goes through the intake process there, it would become possible to request delivery to Rare Books for in-library use only.

So, if your research endeavours require you to one day meet Spot in-person, it is very much possible to do it through the Bodleian! You would just have to live with the tragic knowledge that you cannot take him home with you – no matter how much you might want to.