David Vaisey, head librarian who steered the cash-strapped Bodleian into the digital age

David Vaisey in 1995, outside the Bodleian Library in Oxford: he was the first in his family to go to university
David Vaisey in 1995, outside the Bodleian Library in Oxford: he was the first in his family to go to university - Keith Waldegrave/ANL/Shutterstock

David Vaisey, who has died aged 89, was Bodley’s Librarian at the University of Oxford between 1986 and 1996, a febrile period when the Bodleian Library was on the cusp of modernisation but struggling to stave off a funding crisis; in 1991 he raised £21,000 towards the £10 million target by running the London Marathon in the respectable time of four hours and 15 minutes.

When Vaisey took the Bodleian’s top job in 1986, having risen through the ranks from lowly postgraduate archivist to Keeper of Western Manuscripts, the library was facing what seemed the impossible task of computerising the catalogue of its holdings of six million books, on top of endless journals and documents, while at the same time finding savage cuts in its spending.

The sharp dip in funding since the mid-1970s meant that the library had also fallen behind in repairing its rare collections, some of which were in a parlous state. Even the less precious books, published since 1870, were growing dry and crumbly without air-conditioning.

“I am probably the first of the Bodleian’s head librarians who has to spend a great proportion of his time raising money rather than putting aside moments for scholarship,” Vaisey told The Times in 1989. He claimed he had not read a book in the three years he had had the job.

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But he embraced his mission, taking the Bodleian’s metaphorical begging-bowl around Britain and America, and becoming a public champion of the library in an age that was rushing headlong (and, he thought, heedlessly) towards the new possibilities offered by the “World Wide Web”.

Vaisey surveying Duke Humfrey's Library in the Bodleian
Vaisey surveying Duke Humfrey’s Library in the Bodleian - Keith Waldegrave/ANL/Shutterstock

Vaisey predicted, correctly, that some reference works, like the telephone book, belonged online – “The plot’s too difficult to follow, and it has way too many characters” – but that it would be a long time before the book in general ceased to have any value for humankind. The real threat, he observed, was that “the electronics will gnaw away at the budget until we can’t afford books any more.”

He also defended the costly business of maintaining libraries as physical spaces, rather than turning them virtual. “It used to be said that if you stood for long enough on the steps of the Old Library [of the Bodleian],” he observed, “you would meet everyone in your subject who mattered.”

The first in his family to go to university, David George Vaisey was born at Tetbury in Gloucestershire on March 15 1935 to William Vaisey, a gardener, and his wife Minnie, née Payne. He won a scholarship to Rendcomb College, and after National Service with the Glosters then with the King’s African Rifles in Kenya, he went up to Exeter College, Oxford, to read modern history as an exhibitioner, graduating in 1959.

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He then spent three years as assistant archivist in the Staffordshire Record Office (1960-63), telling his undergraduate friend Alan Bennett that “he was clearing out a storeroom… dirty work… and in the gloom, he saw a box on a top shelf. Climbing the ladder he opened it and nearly fell off. There, staring him in the face, was the death mask of Palmer the poisoner.”

As Bodley’s Librarian, Vaisey was drawn into controversy when he would not let Eric Jacobs, a biographer of Kingsley Amis, see the Bodleian’s trove of 500 letters from Amis to Philip Larkin, even though Amis had given his blessing.

Jacobs complained of censorship but Vaisey refused to budge, citing his responsibility towards people mentioned in the correspondence “who are not protected by copyright legislation and who had no say in the letters being in the library, let alone in the public domain”.

Diary of Thomas Turner
Diary of Thomas Turner

As a historian, Vaisey was best known for his edition of The Diary of Thomas Turner: 1754-1765 (OUP), an engaging account of mid-18th-century daily life written by a shopkeeper, undertaker and schoolmaster in East Hoathly, Sussex. In 1971 with John Betjeman he published Victorian and Edwardian Oxford from Old Photographs.

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He was also Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University (1995-2000), a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and president of the Society of Archivists (1999-2002). In 1996 he was appointed CBE, and became Bodley’s Librar​ian Emeritus.

In 2017, to encourage literacy in his native Gloucestershire, he founded the David Vaisey Trust and an prize for outstanding library initiatives, the first of which was presented by Alan Bennett. As another favour to his old friend, Bennett also bequeathed his entire literary estate to the Bodleian free of charge, in an era when it had become the norm for leading British writers, including Ted Hughes, Salman Rushdie and Tom Stoppard, to sell their archives to American universities for millions.

In 1965 David Vaisey married Maureen (Mo) Mansell, with whom he had two daughters.

David Vaisey, born March 15 1935, died January 8 2025​