National Trust libraries: an untapped resource. A pilot study of Italian holdings at Belton House, Lincolnshire

The National Trust owns and manages over 150 properties in the United Kingdom that contain collections of books, the majority still housed in the buildings where they were assembled and read by their original owners. Between forty and fifty of the libraries in National Trust properties have been described as being of 'major national significance' (Purcell and Shenton, 2005). The contents of these libraries constitute an unparalleled resource for the study of the history of private book ownership in the United Kingdom. To date, comparatively little work has been done on most of these collections, although the process of cataloguing the major libraries is underway and ongoing, the results accessible to researchers on the Copac Catalogue as they become available.

This network project will function as a pilot study, in order to showcase future research potential in these exciting collections, which form an intrinsic part of our national cultural heritage. The network will bring together interested parties from a variety of backgrounds to discuss initial findings and collaborate on the way forward in future.

The pilot study will shed light on one aspect of the long and intricate history of these various libraries, by examining the place of Italian books in an English great house library in the wake of the Reformation. The relationship between Italy and England in the early modern period is particularly rich and complex. On the one hand, Italy acted as a cultural reference point for English writers, dramatists, artists, architects, who looked to that country for models and inspiration, while at the same time religious differences divided the countries of Catholic and reformed Europe. How far do the Italian books in an English library from this period reveal the tensions inherent in the relationship between the two countries, and what can they tell us about the reception and understanding of Italian culture and history in England in the early modern period?

The pilot study will take place at Belton House in Lincolnshire. Belton houses the Trust's second largest library (over 11,000 titles), assembled by successive generations of the Brownlow family, and the collection has been fully catalogued. Within this rich and varied library are 229 works in Italian published between 1500 and 1800, across a variety of genres and subjects. A full analysis of these Italian holdings (conducted by the PI, a specialist in Italian literary history of the early modern period, and a research assistant specialising in book history and provenance), including a careful search for signs of readers' interaction with the books, will form the basis for the workshop presentations and initial discussion.

Two themed workshops will follow the initial analysis. The first workshop (at Belton House) will explore the theme of 'Cultural mobility in the early modern library', considering the passage of continental books into English collections, and the social and cultural history contained in these texts. This event will rely on direct access to texts from the Belton collection to guide discussion, and will aim to map the various ways in which the books in National Trust libraries can and should be drawn into the narratives that these houses tell about the families that owned them. The second workshop, hosted by the Centre for Material Texts at the University of Cambridge, will explore the theme of 'Great House libraries: an assessment of impact', and will seek to advance new ideas about the curatorship of great house libraries, in discussion with the curators themselves. An exhibition will be held at Belton House showcasing the connections between book and place for a general audience. Finally, a planning meeting will put in place the framework for a larger project, spanning major European languages, and looking at the acquisition and reception of continental books in a number of English great house libraries after the Reformation.

Alongside the academic beneficiaries outlined above in a separate section, this project aims to have an impact that reaches beyond the academy to those working in curatorship and collections management in great houses across the United Kingdom, as well as to a significant section of the general public who regularly visit National Trust properties.

A broad aim of the project is to think in creative ways, from a collaborative and cross-disciplinary platform, about how to integrate the fascinating library collections in these properties more centrally into the general narratives related to visitors about the houses, their histories and the stories of the people who occupied them. This involves thinking both about how visitors are able to interact with and move around the library spaces themselves, and about how to draw the books off the shelves and into the stories being told in each property. As recent research in material textual culture has shown, texts need not be perceived only as pristine 'mental encounters', but are worthy of consideration as material objects in their own right, objects that reflect the lives of those who come into contact with them, often in casual, informal and surprising ways. Our tendency, in a contemporary 'great house' context, to expect to find books neatly arrayed on shelves within a formal library setting, indeed not to glance beyond the pristine leather bindings or ask ourselves what they contain as we pass through the room, ignores the capacity of these objects to convey a real social history, developed through the books that have over the centuries been messily and directly engaged with the lives of the people who lived there. The acquisition of books, adding new layers and depth to a library collection over time, reflects the passage of new people into a household, the traffic of ideas, the influx of outside influences. Thus books perform an archaeological function in permitting us to chip away at the accumulated cultural layers of the centuries. Books are mobile, passed from hand to hand, from owner to reader, and as they move they gather markings and annotations that reflect responses to them, or to unrelated events taking place simultaneously to the act of reading (a shopping list scrawled in a margin, a poem on a flyleaf). Books also interact with the objects that surround them in a home, with the paintings on the walls, with furnishings and other objects.

An opportunity for those working in the field of material textual culture to talk to those with responsibility for the curatorship of properties containing important libraries will allow new ideas to be aired concerning the potential display and use of these books, as well as ways to exploit the new research being done on them, as integral features of a National Trust visitor's experience of a great house. The exhibition at Belton House will be an opportunity to test out new ideas and advance current thinking in curatorial studies, by allowing visitors to interact with key Italian books from the collection and to witness the books' interaction with other objects in the house.

The National Trust recorded 17.2 million visitors to its pay-for-entry properties last year (Annual Report, 2009/10). These end users will benefit from the project directly as they come into contact with the books and their histories, and as the libraries are placed more centrally in their visitor experiences. Information about individual works in the libraries can be integrated into visitor guides and new research highlighted in the Trust's newsletters and magazine, as well as on their website. Clearly, impact on visitor experience across a range of National Trust properties is a long-term and ambitious aim linked to plans for a large-scale project in the future, with Belton House acting as a test case on a smaller scale in the shorter term.