Radcliffe Camera

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Above: Radcliffe Camera from ground level in Radcliffe Square Below left: Radcliffe Camera, viewed from the University Church Below right: Make Poverty History campaigners form a human ring around Radcliffe Camera, 2005-06-08.

The Radcliffe Camera (often abbreviated to "the Rad Cam" in Oxford), is a building in Oxford, England, designed by James Gibbs in the English Baroque style and built in 1737–1749 to house the Radcliffe Science Library. The building was funded by a £40,000 bequest from John Radcliffe, who died in 1714. Nicholas Hawksmoor proposed making the building round.

After the Radcliffe Science Library moved into another building, the Radcliffe Camera became home to additional reading rooms of the Bodleian Library. It now holds books from the English, History and Theology collections, mostly secondary sources found on undergraduate reading lists. There is space for around 600,000 books in rooms beneath Radcliffe Square.

The term "camera" translates from Latin as "room" or "chamber."

[edit] References in popular culture

J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Silmarillion, remarked that the building resembled Sauron's temple to Morgoth on Númenor. It also features in The Notion Club Papers.
Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian includes a very intense scene set in the interior of the Radcliffe Camera.