Imposing: The Radcliffe building, within the Bodleian library, is impressive unlike the look of the new extension

They are not short of brain power in these parts. Having produced 47 Nobel prizewinners, not to mention 26 Prime Ministers, Oxford University usually has an answer to most questions.

Even so, here at the heart of one of the greatest seats of learning on Earth, they are still tackling an issue which has been flummoxing them for years: ‘Just what the hell do we do with all these books?’

  

More room needed: Robert Hardman at the Bodleian's Duke Humfrey Library

  

More room for reading: Robert in the Bodleian's stainless steel extension in Swindon

Every day, the staff at Oxford’s ancient library, the Bodleian, face the same problem.

They have to find space for 1,000 new books. No sooner have they stored them than 1,000 new books arrive the following morning.

They’re not allowed to throw anything away. And, finally, they are reaching the point where there is simply no space for any new books. So what do they do?

After years of head-scratching, they have come up with the answer: erect a huge shed next to the M4 in Swindon.

The Bodleian is one of the finest libraries in the world with 12 million books, maps and documents dating back to the Pharaohs.

Its treasures range from the 15th-century Gutenburg Bible and no fewer than four Magna Cartas (sorry, make that Magnae Cartae) to every Mills & Boon, every instruction manual, every copy of the Yellow Pages ever printed and today’s edition of the Daily Mail.

This is because it is Britain’s oldest ‘legal deposit’ library (the others are the British Library, Cambridge University Library and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales — plus Trinity College Dublin).

As such, it is obliged to store a copy of the entire published output of the UK and Ireland.

On top of all that, it is also expected to acquire every new contribution to every academic subject from all over the world. Not only is the Bodleian unable to throw anything away, it also forbids anyone from borrowing so much as a postcard.

Every time they put up a new shelf, it fills in no time. And every day, the lorries roll in with 1,000 more titles in need of a home. Indeed, the Bodleian now has so much stuff - albeit some of the most erudite and priceless stuff in the world - that if the library held a car boot sale, it would be 175 miles long (picture a book stall stretching from London to Leeds).

Unlike the other legal deposit libraries, it is,  quite simply, full. It is bursting at its  500-year-old seams. The extra vaults  dug in the Edwardian era are full. 

The ‘New’ Bodleian, an 11-storey  extension built in the Thirties, is  overflowing. The seven storage units built in the suburbs since the Seventies are full, too.

The Bodleian is now so bloated with books that 2.4 million are sitting in humidity-free darkness in a salt mine in Cheshire awaiting a permanent home in Oxford. Yet, the
City Council has decided that enough is enough.

Two years ago, it  refused planning permission for any  further book storage. The librarians  were desperate.

So much for all those predictions that the internet would kill off the printed word. Unless the publishing industry could be persuaded to stop producing so many titles, the only answer looked like a spot of arson.

But then the Bodleian staff put their formidable heads together and came up with an answer. They would keep the most popular and precious books in Oxford. And they would put the rest - six million of them - in a colossal 21st-century Bodleian building an hour’s drive away in Swindon.

It is not so much a library as a book mountain. In its own way, it is as striking as Sir Thomas Bodley’s ancient labyrinth of reading rooms - shiny metal shelving stretching off into the strip-lit distance.

Steel box: The new Bodleian library extension is rather less impressive but will do the job

Now that  the producers of Inspector Morse and Lewis have exhausted every crime scene in Oxford, perhaps they could stage a few murders in here.

Bodleian librarians are certainly an unusual bunch. I can see no pointy-headed boffins squinting through their bifocals, fingers raised to hissing lips. They are hard-hatted
crane operators in fluorescent bibs.

Mention Homer in this company and talk will turn to The Simpsons. ‘Everything in here has a barcode and it’s all sorted by size so you might have a book on fishing next to
a book on astrophysics,’ explains Toby Kirtley, the Bodleian’s man in charge of the move.

But he is not recruiting scholars for the Swindon operation. He wants people who can
operate cranes. Every day, the Bodleian in Oxford will send hundreds of requests to the Bodleian in Swindon where staff will buzz around in computerised cherry-pickers
hunting the books by their barcodes.

A fleet of vans will ferry everything to and from Oxford. Because Swindon will house the six million least-wanted titles in the collection, Toby reckons that just three per cent of them will actually be requested in any given year. 

The first books have reached Swindon in pre-sorted boxes. I open one at random and there is a paperback of Barbara Woodhouse’s Talking To Animals alongside a paperback of Anthony Powell’s Temporary Kings. 

Thus, one of the great 20th-century novelists is destined to spend eternity next to a puppy-training manual. Very democratic. 

Incoming books are placed in cardboard trays, a dozen to a tray. There are 14 trays to  a shelf and 1,456 shelves to a bookcase. Each is 33ft high and 200ft long and can hold up to a quarter of a million books - and there are 31 of them.

I am sure there is an exam question in there somewhere-So what would the founding
father, Sir Thomas Bodley, say? 

This sterile steel box bears no resemblance to his magical temple of learning.
On the other hand, he was a man of  his times, an Elizabethan diplomat who married the widow of a wealthy pilchard merchant. He built his original library above the Divinity
School, a magnificent piece of 15th-century Gothic familiar to Harry Potter fans as the Hogwarts Infirmary. 

Upstairs, hefty leather-bound treasures line the shelves of the most spectacular wing of the Bodleian, the tie-beamed Duke Humfrey’s Library. Originally built for the books of Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, it was plundered during the Reformation and then rebuilt by Bodley.

Enough room? Librarian, Alison Prince, carries books along the huge metal racking inside the new storage facility. But space will run out again in 20 years

I move to the Classics reading room where generations of scholars, Boris Johnson among them, worked their way through Plato, Virgil and modern works with punchy titles like Tradition And Innovation In Hellenistic Poetry.

The Bodleian is actually a network of 30 libraries spread across Oxford. Underground tunnels and a wonderful Heath Robinson contraption called ‘The Conveyor’ link Bodley’s original building to the 70-year-old ‘New’ Bodleian.

Known as the ‘Book Fortress’, this was stuffed with 6.5 million books until it could take no more.

Most are on their way to Swindon while all 11 floors are completely rebuilt and renamed the Weston Library after the retail dynasty who have given £25 million towards this six-year overhaul.

Putting a price on the contents, however, is impossible. In the main office, Richard Ovenden, Keeper of Special Collections, shows me a handful of random treasures. He flicks through a sketchbook full of Scottish scenes and scribblings. 

‘Mendelssohn,’ he murmurs proudly. These are none other than the composer’s jottings from the tour which inspired the great Fingal’s Cave Overture. From a tiny leather-bound box, comes an exquisite 15th-century Book Of Hours, an illuminated collection of prayers worth in the region of £10 million.

Once the ordinary stuff has been moved to Swindon and the New Bodleian is reopened, gems like this will be put on public display, with a Magna Carta or two. For the first time in years, the Bodleian will be able to breathe again.

But no one is celebrating too loudly. This lot are as numerate as they are literate. The Swindon depository may be able to cope with eight million books. But they have already calculated that, in 20 years’ time, they will have run out of space again.