Somerville College was named after the renowned mathemetician, astronomer and scientist, Mary Somerville (1780-1872). The College is fortunate to own her papers which were given by the descendents of Mary Somerville, the Fairfax-Lucy family. The papers are held in the Bodleian Library and for many years access to their contents has been via a typewritten list available only at Somerville College or at the Bodleian itself. This year, thanks to a generous grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the College has been able to begin the task of updating the listing to 21st Cenury cataloguing standards and transferring it to the Bodleian’s Online Special Collections catalogue so that scholars all over the world will be able to search the catalogue for items of interest. The project is due to be completed in the Spring of 2013. Staff working on the project will be going through all the papers and items in the collection, reboxing and refiling where necessary, noting items of interest discovered along the way (and updating this blog with them!)
Phase 2 of the project will be to digitise the papers once they have been curated and catalogued. We are currently looking for ways of funding this part of the project – all suggestions gratefully received!