LOOKING after the tomes in Glasgow University library is an ongoing job, especially for the more valuable works, some hundreds of years old.

In 1968, there was a particular reason they were being cleaned up, though, as the books were being moved to new accommodation.

The new library was designed by William Whitfield and replaced the former library in the north west Arts Quadrangle. Under the careful eye of university librarian Robert Ogilvie MacKenna, the building authorised in 1964 was built over the following five years, but opened in 1968 before it was complete.

Further designs made in the 1960s were not completed until the 1990s, when level 12 was finished and levels two and three refurbished.

How many volumes it has acquired since the late 1960s can only be imagined but when the 1968 move took place, 640,000 books were transferred to the new shelves.

Let's hope that, for the sake of staff's probably still aching limbs, the library is well settled in its Hillhead Street home.