The CILT Library collections have, through action coordinated by ALL and partners been conserved for future generations.
At Easter 2011 CILT- the national centre for languages was required to merge with CfBT and moved its operations from London to Reading. The important Library Collections were, at the time of the move, under threat of being dispersed or destroyed, by the administrators employed, who gave a deadline of only a few days for expressions of interest in acquiring the collections.
ALL and partners at University of Cambridge saw the urgency of acting to ensure these unique collections were not lost to the languages community and set in train several strands of practical activity:
• Alerting the wider profession to the risk,
• Initiating a fund aiming to save the collections, and
• Beginning negotiations with institutions who may be able to house part of the collection for the forthcoming future.
It soon became clear that our profession feels strongly about these collections as donations began to arrive immediately. A site visit to the (by now closed) CILT Library revealed however that the collections as a whole were much too extensive to keep together in the timescale available and with the funds people had pledged. The regretful decision was taken that only the unique Research Collection could be preserved as a collection; the Teaching Collection was too large to consider transporting alongside it.
Happily CILT’s new host organisation CfBT subsequently agreed to take the Teaching Collection resources under its wing, and these are now re-housed in Reading.
The Research Collection was expertly packed and taken into storage to await long-term re-siting.
So both collections are still available to the languages profession.
We are very grateful for all of the donations we received, and continue to receive, to help make this possible; many of these were exceptionally generous.
The donors (in alphabetical order) are:
Helen Aberdeen
A Adam
C Amodio
Dr. Bedford
Mark Bentley
Allison Bolster
Daniele Bourdais
Catherine Cheater
Professor James Coleman
Hilary & David Crystal
Phil Dahl
Alan Dobson
M. De Lafuente Duff
Don Elliott
Dr. Janet Enever
Euroclub Schools
Steven Fawkes
Sandie Fillingham
Gemini Language Exchange
A-L Gordon
Henrietta Harnisch
? Harvey
E M Holly
Professor Johnstone
Miss L Keers
Charlotte Kemp
Ms Charmian Kenner
Anny King
Lid King
LLAS
Elisabeth Lazarus
Valeria Leick
Mr & Mrs C Long
Rodney Mantle
Mrs Paul Meara
Carmen Meira-Garcia
David Midgley
A Moys
K Mund
Bill Musk
Jill Oliver
Dr. J Partridge
Vanessa Regan
G Scaplehorn
Philida Schellekens
Gretel Scott
Dr. U. Smail
Ray Sneddon
Martin Swales
Alison Taylor
A Tomei
Tomlinscote School
University of Leicester
O Vazquez-Medina
V.A. Webber
Gill West
Rolf Wiesemes
Mary Williams