History of the Geography Collection
The Geography Library was originally founded with the School of Geography in 1899, moving to 3 Mansfield Road in the 1920's. A purpose-built extension to house the growing collections was constructed in 1969. In 2005 the School of Geography relocated to the former Dyson Perrins chemistry laboratory in South Parks Road, combining with the Environmental Change Institute and Transport Studies Unit to form the new Oxford University Centre for the Environment. That building was not however suitable for housing the library, and the decision was made to transfer the collections to the Radcliffe Science Library as soon as possible. In the event this took 2.5 years, duirng which the collection was completely catalogued on OLIS, reclassified by the Library of Congress scheme to permit interfiling with RSL collections, and rearranged to fit the avialable spaces in the RSL. Meanwhile space for it was created in the RSL by moving selected low-use materials to remote storage.
The main Map Collection transferred to the Bodleian Map Room and integrated with the collections there; some report literature was transferred to the Radcliffe Camera or Rhodes House, Vere Harmsworth, Indian Institute or Social Social Science Libraries where they had related holdings, but the vast majority of books and periodicals transferred to the RSL.
In 2009, during the next phase of reogranisation at the RSL, many more books were transferred from the stack to the open shelves, and a programme of e-book acquisition was instituted to improve access to key texts.