Librarian

The office, with a salary of £10, was created in 1577. From 1581 this salary was augmented by fees payable on graduation, and in the following year his salary was set at 5 marks (£3 6s 8d) a year. In 1669 this was fixed at £35, in addition to the fees, but was supposed also to cover the cost of payment to a deputy. In 1721, a new office of Principal Librarian, Protobibliothecarius, was created, initially for Conyers Middleton as a mark of sympathy with him in his opposition to Richard Bentley. This office was continued until 1828 when the two offices of Bibliothecarius and Protobibliothecarius were merged. Until 1909 appointment was by nomination and election, as for the Orator and Registrary, but since then has been by a Board of Electors. The early regulations are printed in the Historical Register, but full accounts of all holders of the two offices up to 1900 may be found in Cambridge University Library: a history, Vol. 1, From the beginnings to the Copyright Act of Queen Anne, by J. C. T. Oates; and Vol. 2, The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, by David McKitterick (CUP, 1986).