A narrative on the codebreakers’ library at Bletchley Park

Abstract

This article presents the first results of an investigation into the reading library that was available to codebreakers and other staff at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, between 1940 and 1946. It describes the historical context and the first findings, underlining the equal status of all formats of documents as substitutes of lived experience, from material objects to oral history sources. The study was prompted by a research visit to Bletchley Park Museum in 2021. The story of this library, in the middle of wartime secrets, constitutes a case of library history and a pretext to reflect on the identity of the professions of librarians and other information workers, and their position in the larger history of computing and information science.

Keywords

Bletchley Park library oral history librarians libraries in the Second World War library history history of information science‌documentation

Introduction

The purpose of this article is twofold. The main, tangible goal is to tell the story of the reading library for staff at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire (UK), between 1940 and 1946, when the estate was a centre for intelligence activities. The second goal is to reflect on the role that librarians and other information workers play in preserving, collecting and managing documents in multiple formats. Documents can be used to narrate history, drawing the listener into the stories of real people, thereby making history more accessible and more actual. The Bletchley Park Museum is an example of this approach.

The investigation was sparked by a visit to the museum during a research stay at the University of Oxford in 2021. A ‘Library’ sign on a door and an interpretation panel in the room raised the question of whether there actually was a library at Bletchley Park.

The concrete facts that this article narrates regard the story of a library in wartime, in an environment bound by secrecy. The results were first shared at an IFLA satellite conference organised by the Library History Special Interest Group, where they were presented as a case of library history, and an opportunity to reflect on the identity of the professions of librarians and other information workers.¹

This article discusses the research question and the circumstances in which it emerged, how the research was conducted, and the findings. But first, it presents the historical context, providing information on libraries in wartime and a description of what Bletchley Park was like at the time and what it is like today.

Libraries in wartime

In modern wars, books and libraries are all but neglected; on the contrary, they are tools for propaganda, directed at civilians and soldiers alike. The expressions of authoritarian regimes, such as Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, stories of censorship and book burnings were used to increase motivation among the Allied troops. Campaigns to collect books for soldiers (e.g. Books for Victory in the USA in 1942–1943) and the initiatives coordinated by the Lord Mayor of London's service libraries and books fund had the side-effect of involving citizens in the war effort. The armed forces considered books as commodities to raise troops’ morale and serve as a pastime to alleviate anxiety and boredom, books were ‘as popular as pin-up girls’ (Scutts, 2014). For soldiers who were making plans for what jobs they would do after the war, books were excellent tools to improve their education and learn new skills. From the First World War, in the US armed forces, ‘camp libraries popped up everywhere at military bases … all over Europe, stretching as far east as Siberia’ (Bennett, 2017) – a circumstance that was much admired by the Library Association in Britain (Hung, 2008: 170).

Enough literature has been devoted to these topics to merit a separate piece of research (De Franceschi, 2019; Manning, 2014; Monger, 2012; Ribeiro et al., 2019; Trautman, 1945), yet, to put the library at Bletchley Park in perspective, a brief overview is necessary. For the armed forces, books went under the heading of ‘welfare’; they were considered comforts, like cigarettes (Hung, 2008: 169), therefore popular titles could be distributed as well: ‘“unsuitable literature” to the War Office meant “undesirable propaganda”, not No Orchids for Miss Blandish’ (Hung, 2008: 174). But the hierarchy of the Library Association at the time believed that the purpose of books was educational and informational, a way for students in uniform to keep up to date and for less educated soldiers to climb the social ladder (Hung, 2008). This led to litigation, as the Library Association was opposing to distributing to troops books that were considered trashy, vulgar or badly written (Hung, 2008: 169). The Library Association lost, however, proving that it was out of touch with both the seriousness of the international situation and the realities of military life. It was a demonstration of paternalistic and cultural conservatism (Hung, 2008: 183).

There is no evidence that this litigation reached Bletchley Park (after all, its secrecy disconnected the site from the outside world), where the library was ‘recreational’, like the club it stemmed from (described below). No information can be found on the titles in the library, but since the staff at Bletchley Park were generally well educated, even deemed ‘highbrow’ (McKay, 2011: 348), it seems less likely that low-quality literature was found on the shelves. The presence of a library, however, confirms that libraries were perceived as useful even in a warfare context. For its collections the library took advantage of public book campaigns, although some funds were allocated as well.

From the Bletchley Park estate to the Bletchley Park Trust

The film The Imitation Game (2014) made people around the world aware that, during the Second World War, an intelligence task force had operated at Bletchley Park. The film was released in 2014, but the veil of secrecy on the story of Bletchley Park had been lifted in 1974, with the publication of Frederick W. Winterbotham's memoir The Ultra Secret (Winterbotham, 1974). The film, which was based on Alan Turing: The Enigma (Hodges, 2014), popularised above all the figure of the mathematician who is considered to be the father of artificial intelligence.² Yet much more happened between 1939 and 1946, when the Government Code and Cypher School moved its headquarters to this estate in Buckinghamshire in order to work on breaking the codes of the enemy. ‘Station X’, as it was called, was the centre of an intelligence network with many outstations, whose main task was to intercept and read the messages exchanged among the military forces of the Axis (Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan). All messages converged there for decryption; not just the Enigma but also the Lorenz cipher machine was broken into at Bletchley.³

Bletchley Park, 1938 to present

In May 1938, the then Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Admiral Hugh Sinclair, purchased part of the vast Bletchley Park Victorian estate ‘for the use of SIS and GCCS [Government Code and Cypher School] should war break out’ (Bletchley Park Trust, 2009: 2), aligning with numerous other London-based institutions and businesses in evacuating from urban areas.

The location was ideal. Bletchley Park is almost equidistant (65 to 80 kilometres) from Oxford, Cambridge and London, at a junction between academia and the site of political power. It was conveniently connected via rail, road and, above all, ‘a major artery of [the] telephone network’ (Smith, 2015: 18). Milton Keynes, one of the New Towns, was only built in 1967; at the time of the Second World War, the area was countryside, providing more safety against air attacks than the city of London. The estate offered plenty of accommodation: the mansion, some cottages and 60 acres of land, where new ‘huts’ were soon built.⁴ Much of the work took place in these huts.

The Government Code and Cypher School moved to Bletchley Park in August 1939, under the lead of Alistair Denniston, former de facto head of Room 40, the Admiralty's cryptanalysis section. Due to the downscaling of military expenditure after the Armistice,⁵ at its foundation in 1919 the School counted just 53 members of staff (Smith, 2015: 40). When it moved to Bletchley Park, this number had risen to around 200 (Smith, 2015: 61). New analysts were recruited from academia – not only mathematicians, physicists and other scientists, but also linguists, anthropologists, historians and classicists. In other words, the work carried out at Bletchley Park was the fruit of an interdisciplinary effort by the ‘products of Britain's ancient universities’, with the predominance of King's College, Cambridge (Smith, 2015: 45), Alan Turing's alma mater.

Apart from academics, there was an ever-increasing need for clerical staff. As the community grew, all kinds of positions opened up – for cooks, drivers and mechanics, for example. All staff had signed the Official Secrets Act on entering service – a commitment not to share details of their work with anyone, not even their families. The number of staff was growing quickly, especially after Winston Churchill issued in his ‘Action This Day’ the order that at Bletchley Park they be given anything they asked for.⁶ As an example, Wrens (members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service) were hired to operate the Bombe machines. At their peak, in the winter of 1944–1945, they numbered 2546.

As Bletchley Park was growing into an information factory, effective organisational and managerial skills were needed to deal with the vast amount of messages that were received, decrypted, evaluated and sent on each day, as well as the volume of information that had to be filed away. It was for this reason that, in February 1942, Commander Edward Travis replaced Commander Alistair Denniston as head of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (Smith, 2015: 34).

Table 1 displays figures collected from the digital exhibition at Bletchley Park Museum. The staff comprised both civilians and members of the armed forces, although the number of armed forces personnel grew more quickly than that of civilians. Interestingly, women made up almost 80% of the staff, although this percentage was different in the top positions.

Table 1.

A synthesis of the data on staff on exhibit at Bletchley Park Museum.

	22 March 1942	31 December 1942	31 December 1943	31 December 1944
Total number of staff	1576	3116	6864	8854
Armed forces Men Women	526 168 358	1727 386 1341	3796 911 2413	5448 1362 4086
Civilians Men Women	1050 281 769	1389 389 1000	3066 653 2413	3406 732 2674

Figure 1, offered by Christopher Smith (2015: 64), highlights the trends in the number of staff and gender distribution before and after the peak point in December 1944.

Figure 1.

‘The number of men and women at Bletchley Park, 1942–1945’ (Smith, 2015: 64).

The mansion and its grounds were too small for 9000 people. The first to arrive had stayed at the mansion and local inns.⁷ Later, many were billeted in private houses and army staff lodged in temporary barracks that were built in the countryside outside the boundaries of the Bletchley Park Estate.⁸ Staff were working round the clock, therefore a system of transportation had to be organised to meet their needs.

Maybe because of the large number of civilians, the atmosphere at Bletchley Park was informal: there was no military saluting and, although nobody spoke about their work outside their unit, staff could chat with anybody else in the café, regardless of their rank (Thirsk, 2014).

The number of staff decreased rapidly after the end of the War (Figure 1) and, in 1946, the Government Code and Cypher School became the Government Communications Headquarters and relocated to Bletchley Park’s old outstation of Eastcote in North London (Smith, 2015: 158). Even after they returned to their everyday lives, they were, in the words of Winston Churchill, like ‘the geese who laid the golden egg and never cackled’ (Hill, 2004: 7): they kept the secret until the publication of The Ultra Secret (Winterbotham, 1974), almost 30 years after the end of their service at Bletchley Park.

On its departure, the Government Code and Cypher School stripped the buildings and grounds of any evidence of the work that had been carried out there. Later, the mansion was put to various uses, until, in 1991, it was at risk of demolition to make way for a prospective estate development. Before it was demolished, however, on 21 October 1991, the Bletchley Archaeological and Historical Society organised a farewell party, where over 400 veterans told their stories. The episode sparked a desire to try and save the site and its memories. The Bletchley Park Trust was founded on 13 February 1992, just after Milton Keynes Borough Council had declared most of the park a conservation area. The site was first opened to visitors in 1993; the museum opened officially in July 1994. On 10 June 1999, a deal secured the future of Bletchley Park in the hands of the Trust, with an initial 250-year lease (Bletchley Park Trust, 2009).

Today, Bletchley Park is a vibrant museum, offering an immersive experience thanks to the diversity of items on display (from printed documents and objects of the time to Enigma machines, suitcases, clothes, and so on) and interactive installations that enable learning by doing. The sensory experience turns the museum into a sort of time machine, where the narration is set up not just for the historian. In an effort to popularise the history of science, the museum has facilities that are aimed at families, in addition to dedicated learning paths, such as the Teddy Bear Track and other child-focused initiatives.⁹ As well as curating the exhibition, organising the museum and popularising history and science, the Trust fosters research: the memories it has collected from veterans through its Oral History Project are part of the exhibition and comprise the Roll of Honour. The symbolic importance of the site was confirmed when, on 1–2 November 2023, it hosted the world's first Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit.

The Oral History Project and Roll of Honour

The Oral History Project has been running since 2011. By 2021, volunteers and staff had interviewed more than 450 veterans and listed the details of the wartime service of over 13,000 veterans. An Oral History Officer runs the project, leading a team of volunteers who collect veterans’ stories from across the UK. The recorded interviews are then transcribed, rigorously checked and attached to individuals’ entries in the Roll of Honour.

At Bletchley Park, there was no unified directory of staff, who came from different sectors (the Army, the Navy, the Government Code and Cypher School and the Foreign Office, among others). Records were only kept by the armed forces and are held today at the National Archives in London. They are the source of about half the names in the Roll of Honour. As most of the records regarding civilians were destroyed, ‘the most informative source is the veterans themselves’¹⁰ or their families.

The main goal of the Roll of Honour is

to list all those who worked in signals intelligence for the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries during the Second World War … it does not list those who served in SIS/MI6 (apart from the very small number who were at Bletchley Park), SOE [Special Operations Executive], MI5 or other intelligence activities separate from signals intelligence. (Bletchley Park, n.d.a)¹¹

The Roll of Honour is both a catalogue and a digital collection; it is a database of staff, offering direct access to materials (audio interviews, transcripts, obituaries, etc.). It can be searched by surname; service, rank or grade; gender; building, section or location; keywords (including first names). The records can be filtered by the presence of a transcript. Typical individual records are populated with a summary of service (start, end, position held), education (e.g. the university they attended, if any). Further information may include the name of their partner (in case the latter was at Bletchley Park as well), particular individual skills (Hugh Alexander was a champion chess player, for example) and external references (e.g. to obituaries).

Was there a reading library at Bletchley Park?

As hinted at earlier, the question ‘Was there a reading library at Bletchley Park?’ was prompted by a visit to Bletchley Park Museum, but the Roll of Honour and Oral History Project were crucial in conducting the ensuing research. The literature on Bletchley Park is rich, but, understandably, little attention has been paid to the existence of a reading library, which would have been used by Bletchley Park staff in their free time. This research found evidence of such with the help of staff at Bletchley Park Trust, who answered general enquiries and redirected questions to the Head of Programmes and later the officer in charge of the Oral History Project. They both shared digitised materials and evidence from the archival records, and pointed to relevant interviews in the Roll of Honour.

As mentioned above, the exhibition is based on documentation and artefacts of the time, which are used to reconstruct a credible version of the Bletchley Park mansion and huts. They include all sorts of materials: Enigma machines; leaflets explaining how to use gas masks or how to screen windows in the event of an air attack; wartime ration books with food coupons; posters reminding that ‘The Enemy's Listening’; desks and typewriters, and the like. Many of the rooms in the mansion and huts are furnished to give the impression that staff have just left. In Turing's office, a pair of white canvas running shoes is on display in a cabinet.¹² Physical recreations of objects of the time are there to be touched, along with interactive digital tools so that one can learn about ‘cribs’ or ‘banburism’ (different strategies for the process of codebreaking), and there are holograms, giving the impression of the presence of people in the rooms. The use of documents as ‘substitutes of lived experience’ (Briet, 1951: 7, 2006: 31; Briet et al., 2022: 122) makes history come alive. Documents have the power to break down History (with capital ‘H’) into the stories of real flesh-and-blood people. The overall impression is reinforced by the results of the Oral History Project, which are showcased in the ‘Veterans’ Stories’ exhibition. The environment sparks curiosity.

The library at Bletchley Park

There is a room in the mansion with a ‘Library’ sign on the door and lots of books on the shelves. The research question started there: did a library actually exist, to serve the individual needs of those who lived and worked at Bletchley Park? The room looks more like an intelligence office, and the ensuing correspondence with Bletchley Park Trust confirmed that the books on the shelves are fakes, recreated on the basis of photographs taken in 1940, because when the Government Code and Cypher School left Bletchley Park no original furniture or items were left behind.¹³

The first piece of information comes from the interpretation panels in the room itself: the sign on the door refers to the library of the original owner of the Estate, Sir Herbert Leon, built in 1906. After 1938, the room was initially used by the German and Italian naval subsections, but it was too small. As soon as Hut 4 was built, in autumn 1941, the German section was moved out. Later in the war, the room would be occupied by the typing section.

In the room today, another panel reads:

Did you know?

During the war Bletchley Park operated a library entirely set up and run by a handful of dedicated staff.

‘With several other librarians whom I knew, we helped to organise a recreational library open to anybody working at Bletchley Park … our library operated in a ground floor room in the mansion although I can’t remember which one’.

James Thirsk, Hut 6 Traffic Analyst (SIXTA)

James Thirsk is the first and main witness of this story. As a civilian, he had been a librarian in public libraries. When the war broke out, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery. Being a librarian influenced his army career. In fact, he was offered certain tasks because he was presumed to be proficient in organising information – a fact that also determined his admission to the Intelligence Corps. He was 28 when, in 1942, he arrived at Bletchley Park; he died in 2018 at the age of 104. His formidable memory allowed him to write a memoir (Thirsk, 2008) and give interviews (Smith, 2015; Thirsk, 2014). According to the Roll of Honour, James Thirsk was at Bletchley Park between May 1942 and 10 January 1944. He was later transferred to Shenley Camp, where he established another library. But what about the library before his arrival and after his departure? And why did he define it as ‘recreational’?

Further evidence shows that the library was but one of many activities offered by Bletchley Park Recreational Club, which was originally housed in Hut 2.¹⁴ The latter had been constructed in 1939 specifically for the welfare of Bletchley Park staff and initially served as a tea room, providing hot beverages, sandwiches and lunch vouchers.

Since the staff at Bletchley Park had practically abandoned their lives on the outside and worked long hours, the recreational club, which offered many leisure activities, was an immediate success: it had 50 subscribing members by November 1940 and 340 by January 1941, which, at that time, was almost half the total number of staff (McKay, 2011; evidence and data from Smith, 2015: 126–127). Yet, running the club was very time-consuming, especially considering that it added to staff's already heavy workload. For example, collecting the fees was a challenge. When both the first treasurer and secretary resigned, ‘the wife of a staff member was recruited on a voluntary basis’ (Smith, 2015: 127). The latter may have been Mrs Diana Marchant, who, according to the Roll of Honour, was secretary of the Bletchley Park Recreational Club. But there was also Mrs Mary Primrose Vivian, who ran the lending library in Hut 2 (Smith, 2015: 126). Mrs Vivian was the welfare officer and wife of the deputy director of MI6, Colonel Valentine Vivian. She and her husband lodged at the mansion. When SIS/MI6 left Bletchley Park in May 1942, the rooms they vacated were occupied by the library and the club.

The library was most likely run by Mrs Vivian in Hut 2 until April 1942. James Thirsk arrived in May 1942 and was involved in the library when it was located in one of the ground-floor rooms in the mansion. The question is: who came in after January 1944, when Thirsk left for Shenley Road Camp?

There might have been someone else in between, yet the next attested name is that of Mrs Edna Owen (Rose, 1944). She might have been working jointly with James Thirsk, who, after all, mentions ‘several other librarians’. According to the Roll of Honour, Mrs Owen was a Foreign Office civilian and librarian of Bletchley Park Recreational Club – a piece of information that is confirmed by an unpublished club leaflet (Rose, 1944), which also describes the whole range of club activities.¹⁵ Subscription was 1 shilling per month or 10 shillings per year; the secretary and treasurer was Mrs MA Rose, who could ‘usually be found in the Club Room from 9 to 5 each day’ (Rose, 1944), indicating that the club secretary’s position at the time may have been full-time.

The leaflet describes the library as follows:

Library. Librarian, Mrs. OWEN. In the Outer Club Room, open daily from 1.00 to 4.30. 1500 books. 1200 permanent stock and 300 from the Times Library, some of which are changed every week. One book may be taken out for a fortnight at a time. Fines 6d. [6 shillings] per week. The Librarian will be pleased to take ‘book lists’ and will make every endeavour to procure readers’ requests. (Rose, 1944)

These opening hours correspond roughly to Thirsk's (2008) recollection that the library was open ‘mainly at lunch times’ (25). He wrote that they ‘took turns manning the library … helped by some civilian women’ (25). Thirsk gives the impression that he started the library from scratch when he says that ‘with several other librarians whom I knew, we helped to organize a recreational library open to anybody working at Bletchley Park’ (25). He recalls where the library stock came from: ‘We obtained stocks of books from a central body in London, which encouraged the public to give their unwanted books for the benefit of the forces by dropping them into a sack in any post office’ (25). Yet there is no reason to rule out that the leaflet and Thirsk refer to the same library, run collaboratively, although the leaflet describes a structured service: precise information is given on the number of books, the duration of loans and the fines incurred. Moreover, the librarian volunteers to ‘procure readers’ requests’. The leaflet bears no date and the timeline is therefore difficult to compare with Thirsk's experience, yet it definitely circulated between August and October 1944; in fact, the Roll of Honour states that Mrs Owen remained at Bletchley Park until October 1944, and this individual leaflet was signed by its owner, Rosalind Latham, a Wren, who arrived at Bletchley Park in August 1944 and left in May 1945 (Bletchley Park, n.d.a). It might have been issued earlier, but it definitely circulated between August and October 1944.

A 1944 Review (Government Code and Cypher School, 1944) states that the library was not ‘able to meet the increased demand’ for a variety of reasons – the main being that many readers failed to return their books on leaving Bletchley Park. Therefore, ‘a sub-committee containing experts’ (Government Code and Cypher School, 1944) was put in direct control of the library and recommended that the system of part-time librarians be changed and one regular librarian be put in charge. At the same time, more books were purchased and new shelves installed (Government Code and Cypher School, 1945).¹⁶

It appears that this policy paid off, as the 1945 Review (Government Code and Cypher School, 1945) states that the library is ‘in very good shape’, both thanks to ‘a constant stream of new books’ and the payment of a deposit of 5 shillings by library members to replace losses. The name of the new full-time librarian is not shared, but in the 1945 Review (Government Code and Cypher School, 1945) it is mentioned that the committee had to accept (‘with regret’) the resignation of a Mrs Spear. Unfortunately, she is not listed in the Roll of Honour or any other source consulted to date. After Mrs Spear’s departure, ‘despite the apparent impossibility of finding a permanent successor, the library … continued to function’ (Government Code and Cypher School, 1945), indicating that the emphasis was not on the services of a qualified librarian but on lending services and access to items in the collection.

The library would continue to operate until the Government Code and Cypher School's move to Eastcote. On 16 March 1946, it was announced that the Bletchley Park Recreational Club would be dissolved as from 1 April 1946, ‘and all books should be returned to the Librarian on or before that date. The issue of library books will cease on Monday, 25th March, 1946’. Moreover, ‘refunds of library deposits will not be made after 29th March and it is pointed out that neither deposits nor books are transferable to any library which may be opened at Eastcote’ (Government Code and Cypher School, 1945). In a nutshell, until the end, the library was part of the Bletchley Park Recreational Club, which was dissolved at the end of the Bletchley Park operations.

Table 2 summarises the evidence presented to this point, including where the library was located, who ran it and how.

Table 2.

A synthesis of the information collected on Bletchley Park’s reading library.

What	Where	When	Who	How
Lending library at Bletchley Park One of the activities/facilities of the Bletchley Park Recreational Club Fee-based membership 340 members by January 1941, comprising 50% of total staff at the time, although this percentage did not continue for long	Hut 2	October 1940 ↓ April 1942	Mrs Mary Primrose Vivian	Ran lending library
	Ground floor of mansion	May 1942 ↓ Open at mealtimes ↓ 10 January 1944	James Thirsk (with help)	Appeal to citizens to donate paperbacks (at post offices)
	Outer club room ↓ Quiet room (ballroom)	January (?) 1944 ↓ Open daily from 1 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. ↓ October 1944	Mrs Edna Owen	1500 books, of which 300 from the Times Library Requests possible Loans for a fortnight Fines of 6 shillings per week
	Outer club room ↓ Quiet room (ballroom)	1944 (month?) ↓ 31 March 1946	Sub-committee of experts ↓ Mrs Spear ↓ No one (?)	Deposit of 5 shillings New books and shelves Library deemed to be ‘in very good shape’
Closure		1 April 1946	?	Issue of books ceasing on 25 March Books to be returned by 1 AprilRefunds of library deposits to be paid before 29 MarchNo deposits or books transferable to Eastcote

Libraries were welcomed and needed. There was also a library at Shenley Road Camp, as mentioned above. In his memoir, Thirsk (2008) says that he ‘and several fellow-librarians helped to run’ (80) it; it was ‘well stocked with books’ (80); and ‘in it were armchairs for those wishing to spend leisure hours reading, studying or even sleeping’ (80). It was ‘a haven of peace’(80) compared with the ‘bleak and uncomfortable’(80) barracks where they slept and with the sergeants’ mess, where the noise of darts or table-tennis players drowned out all conversation. Curiously, credit for the library is given to a colonel, whose portrait is all but flattering, as this short anecdote proves:

One evening, Colonel … called in at the camp library. Seeing a young Intelligence Corps corporal, he inquired what he was reading. ‘The Way of all Flesh’, Sir, replied the corporal. The Colonel gave a knowing smile. ‘But Sir,’ said the youth, ‘it is a famous classic novel, by Samuel Butler.’ ‘Ah, my boy,’ said [the Colonel], ‘you don’t need to make excuses, I was young myself once!’ (Thirsk, 2008: 80)

Cross-referencing, or information organisation of librarians and codebreakers

Apart from the reading library, the research highlighted some parallels between the professions of the librarians and codebreakers. As alluded to above, it was an asset for James Thirsk to be a librarian. Before Bletchley Park, he had served in the Royal Artillery (Maritime Regiment) in Liverpool,¹⁷ where one day his captain, who had been told he was a librarian, sent for him:

‘Just the man,’ he said, ‘to take charge of this card index of hundreds of soldiers manning the guns on merchant ships all over the world. You can start work immediately,’ he added, pointing to a trestle-table on which stood a large card index box and a file of papers waiting attention. (Thirsk, 2008: 14)

Later, the same factor influenced his admission into intelligence (Thirsk, 2008: 15, 17, 20). This should not come as a surprise, however, since organising information, making it retrievable and creating connections are not just the goals of library and information professionals, but also crucial to cross-referencing, one of the stages of codebreaking.¹⁸ At Bletchley Park, Hollerith cards were used to index data such as keywords, names and location. These indexes were essential to interpreting messages. In order to break the Enigma code, every piece of information had to be stored and organised so that it was retrievable – in other words, catalogued.

Cross-referencing changed the life of Irene Joan Watkins.¹⁹ At Bletchley Park from the age of 20, she had previously been reading German and French. However, she switched to Economic History after the war because she had come to understand the power of indexes. As her husband, James Thirsk, explained in their interview (Thirsk, 2014), her group’s task

was to read the messages and analyse and make note of everything, even the fact that some German sergeant major was having a wisdom tooth out and would be absent for three days. This had to be noted down because he may turn up in another message somewhere else. They had a vast card index. Joan later claimed that it was marvellous experience for her future historical studies as she always paid great attention to detail when reading. (Thirsk, 2014)

Conclusion

This article is the result of a visit to Bletchley Park Museum, which led to a long journey through history and stories, especially among the veterans, exploring their experiences and feelings. It led to contact with Bletchley Park Trust’s Oral History Project and uncovered a series of sources of a different nature.

What is evident is that, at the time, notwithstanding the war, there was a demand for books and a library did exist at Bletchley Park, although it was considered recreational, as entertaining as dancing, fencing or playing chess. It was run on a voluntary basis as part of Bletchley Park Recreational Club, and it involved different kinds of staff. The evidence retrieved to date does not allow for a reconstruction of the whole story, but there is nothing pointing to a perception of the external disputes between the armed forces and the Library Association. James Thirsk, as mentioned, recounted that the library space was quiet and welcoming, unlike other areas.

The research also shows that, in wartime, being a librarian could be an asset – as in the case of Thirsk. At the time, information science was preparing for a giant leap forward, to large systems and mainframes. If now artificial intelligence needs to be nourished with data, at the time large collections of organised data were at the basis of the trial and error that enabled the Allies to fight Nazi power. Much of intelligence work involves information organisation, an activity related to cataloguing, connecting pieces of information to make them more findable. The intelligence officers, then, were in effect information officers, managing information in order to ensure efficacy and effectiveness for their parent organisation (Brunt, 2013).

This investigation is based on resources in different formats but of equal status. Each makes a contribution to reconstructing history and preserving memory. These resources are all ‘substitutes of lived experience’, as (Briet 1951, 2006 and Briet et al. 2022), from a totally different background, would write only six years after the dissolution of Bletchley Park. During a visit to the USA, she observed the opportunities afforded by computer science and reflected on their impact on the new science of documentation (Castellucci, 2022). A memoir may come in the form of a recorded interview or of a written book, but the format is not so relevant. In fact, after the oral source has been fixed in any format, either analogic or digital, it acquires the same duration in time and space as any other source (Portelli, 2017).

This article has presented the facts and recollections that have been discovered to date on the reading library at Bletchley Park. A visit to the National Archives in London and some further reading will allow the study to go deeper; these are plans for the future. For the time being, some answers to the research question have emerged, although partial and with no pretence at completeness. At the same time, some of the stories hint at further discussion on the identity of the librarians and how their profession has evolved along with the history of information technology, where Bletchley Park played a key role. Many stories happened at Bletchley Park during World War II and literature on the topic is growing, yet the library is rarely mentioned. This article constitutes therefore an invitation to opening a new research thread: a stone in the pond, worth throwing if it causes waves to radiate.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Matilde Fontanin

Notes

Author biography

With a background in linguistics and a PhD in Library Science, Matilde Fontanin is a lifelong learner. She has been a librarian since 1995 and believes that the library is an intermediator to information. She started teaching English to librarians in 2001 and has since developed interests in professional development, learning, e-learning and the impact of new technologies. Her current research is on information literacy and information disorder, a contemporary phenomenon whose roots can be traced by studying information history and lead up to Artificial intelligence, opening up ethical questions. Engaged in continuing professional development, she served two terms in IFLA’s Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning Section, where in 2021 she coordinated the infodemic group. She has been a member of the National Board for Professional Development of AIB (Associazione Italiana Biblioteche), the Italian Library Association, from 2007 to 2022. In 2023, she joined the AIB National Board for Information Literacy. She has often been a speaker at conferences and keynoted at BOBCATSSS 2020 in Paris. She is the author of several articles in English and Italian. Her most recent book is the glossary Dalle fake news all’infodemia (Editrice Bibliografica, 2022). She translates academic articles and IFLA documents from and into Italian. Although fond of the digital, she finds free space for creative thinking whenever she logs off by riding her bicycle – an almost daily habit.

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