Guildhall Library

Our last visit of the trip was to the Guildhall Library. I can't believe the course is over already! Our guide for the day was Andrew Harper, who talked us through the history of the Guildhall and gave us a tour of the facility. The Guildhall is also part of the City of London Libraries. It is one of two research libraries in the City of London, and was founded in the 1420s. The Duke of Somerset decided to take the library's materials for his own personal library, so the library was depleted of resources until it was reestablished in the 1820s. At first the library was only open to businesspeople, but it opened to the public in 1875. During the Blitz, the Guildhall burned and huge amounts of the collection were lost. The remaining material was stored at the Old Bailey until the current library building was opened.

The Guildhall's collection is devoted to British history, local histories, parliamentary matters, and legal history. Many institutions and companies based in the City house their collections at the Guildhall. The London Stock Exchange's collection has historic records dating from 1880-1964 that take up 2.5 miles of shelf space. The Guildhall also stores Lloyd's Marine Collection, which kept a record of shipping movements and voyages from 1927-1974. Since the Guildhall is a reference library, only 5% of its materials are kept on the shelves. The rest of the material is kept in basement or off site storage.

The library is divided into three sections:
Printed Books: The printed books research area contains books, periodicals, and trade directories. There are large collections in the areas of: business history, English law, marine history, parliamentary history, wine and food, and clocks and watchmaking. The reference librarians give researchers 20 minutes of complimentary research time, and can fill requests for materials within 10-15 minutes.

Prints and Maps: This area has prints, maps, illustrations, photos, drawings, watercolors, and ephemera. There is a collection of London maps from the 16th century to the present. Researchers can search the COLLAGE database for images. The Guildhall started its digitization process about 10 years ago and has digitized over 20,000 images so far. The Print Room also has exhibition space. The current exhibition is called "The Changing Face of Cheapside: Four Centuries in Prints, Drawings, and Photographs".

After our tour, I went back to take a closer look at the Cheapside exhibition and really enjoyed the different mediums that were presented in the display. I've included 2 images from the exhibition above. The drawing on the left is Cheapside in 1638, and the photo on the right is Cheapside in 1941 after the Blitz.

Manuscripts: The Guildhall serves as the record office for the City of London and holds the archives of parishes, businesses and commercial bodies, and city wards. It also has records of the Diocese of London and St. Paul's Cathedral.

Images from: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/leisure_heritage/libraries_archives_museums_galleries/city_london_libraries/changing_cheapside.htm

West End!

Shows I saw:
1. Wicked
2. Mary Poppins
3. The Drowsy Chaperone
4. Fame

Barbican Library

Our visit today was to the Barbican Library, one of the City of London's three lending libraries. This was our first visit to a public library here in the UK and we had a wonderful tour! The City of London Libraries is one of the oldest library authorities in the UK. The Barbican Library was opened in 1982 as part of the Barbican Centre building and became the main lending library in the City. Most of the library's patrons are people who work in the City. The Barbican averages 1200 visitors per day, with peak time being the lunch hour period between 12 and 2pm. The library has a staff of 44 people, and receives funding from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

The Barbican has recently installed self-service terminals that use RFID technology. It is estimated that about 12% of check-outs are done using these terminals. Books can also be returned at RFID stands and at the book return outside the library's entrance. There are 24 computer terminals in the library for the publics use. Each person is given an hour per day, with an opportunity to renew their time once per day. The non-fiction collection is more popular than the fiction collection at the Barbican.

This visit has been one of my favorites so far because of my interest in public libraries. The staff at the Barbican was so welcoming and so excited to share the library with us, making the visit interesting and fun. You could really tell that they love their jobs! Our visit took us all over the library, (including the staff room for tea and biscuits!), but here were our main three stops:

Art Library:
Contains a reference area, periodicals and newspapers, over 14,000 monographs, and an assistant librarian to staff the area. There is also exhibition space for artists at the library's entrance that host artists work for 3-4 weeks at a time.

Children's Library:
This is the largest children's library in London with 25,000 items to lend. The young adult area has about 900 titles. The space is bright and fun and host story times 3 times a week, as well as other special events during the year. There are also filtered Internet terminals for children to use while visiting the library. Some other programs for children and young adults at the Barbican include a reading group for kids 8 and older, summer reading (The Big Wild Read), and Book Start/Reading is Fundamental a partnership with Britain's Book Trust that encourages parents to read to their children at an early age. The Barbican has close ties with local schools, and sends out "project boxes" multiple times a year for 15 schools.

Music Library:
The Barbican's Music Library has the largest collection of CDs in London. There are 17,000 available for loan! The Music Library covers all kinds of music, and organizes their CDs with a simple classification system. Each is assigned a genre, and then they are filed alphabetically within their grouping. There is a 30p/week borrowing charge for CDs and a 2.75/week charge for DVDs. The music librarians do their own cataloging for the music library. As well as audio materials, the Music Library also has music books, musical scores, and periodicals. One of the coolest features of the Music Library was the practice piano available for use! The library also had multiple listening booths available at no charge and had a special exhibition called "30 Years of Punk".

Photo courtesy of: fellow classmate Anne!

Royal Observatory - Greenwich

After our visit to the Maritime Museum, we visited the Royal Observatory where we saw the Prime Meridian. Here is a picture of Cortni and I, she's in the eastern hemisphere and I'm in the western!

National Maritime Museum

The library at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is called the Caird Library, named for Sir James Caird. Before entering the reading room, there is an open area where visitors can make enquires, search e-journals, and get a readers card. The Caird Reading Room has over 25,000 books and is a reference library only. There are over 100,000 volumes in the library's collection and over 1 million ship plans. The library also has audiovisual titles and a collection of about 4,000 items of ephemera. The items are cataloged according to the Universal Decimal Classification system, an alternative to the Dewey Decimal System created in Belgium. The library is funded by the government through the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport (like most other national libraries in Britain).

There are 4.5 miles of manuscripts in the library's collection, dating from 1322 to the present. The collection also has a large collection of naval logs, journals, and spy books. One of our presenters chose a host of interesting materials to show us in order for us to get an idea of what kinds of items are in the collection. Here are a few examples of what we got to see!

A log book from the ship, "The Pearl" from 1720, recording the capture of the famous pirate Blackbeard. A 1750 merchant log from John Newton detailing the slave trade aboard his ship. Interestingly, John Newton began as a slave trader, then converted to the anti-slavery movement in later years. We also saw letters from Admiral Lloyd Nelson, who reportedly spent about 5 hours a day writing while sailing. There was one letter to his wife, and then another to his mistress from the same time period. Everyone was fascinated by the items dealing with the Titanic. The library received a bequest from Walter Lord, who had contacted survivors of the disaster and collected some of their items from the voyage. Included in the collection are brochures advertising the ship, a dinner menu from the very last meal aboard the ship, and original photographs taken from the rescue ship. There are photos of lifeboats and even photos of the iceberg. Another amazing item was the medicine book taken on board the HMS Bounty in 1787. The book was recovered with materials available at the time - boards from boxes on board the ship!

National Art Library - Victoria & Albert

Today our site visit was to the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. The National Art Library's collection is concentrated on fine and decorative arts and is considered to be "one of the world's great resources for the art, craft and design of the book," according to the prints & books section of their website!

We split into two groups for our visit. The first part of visit for my group was a walking tour of the library itself. In the public reading rooms, there are reference areas where the public may find and use reference materials on their own, but the majority of materials are those that are kept in the stacks. Patrons can request materials during or even before their visit, and staff members will retrieve them for the patron to use. This library is not a lending library, but is open to the public for research. There are usually 4 librarians staffing the counters in the reading room, as well as 1 librarian at the enquiry desk. Our guide explained that the staff member at the enquiry desk was available for more in-depth research questions. The reading rooms also have self service copiers and camera stands for people to use if they would like to take digital photographs of items themselves.

When we went back behind the scenes to the stacks, the issue of space came up once again. Since space is limited in the stacks, materials are stored according to size and shape. Each floor has a "finding list" to help staff members locate the press numbers the materials are organized by. There is also off site storage in Salisbury for materials, and the children's collection is kept separately. When I asked our guide more about space and fitting new items in, she told me that the cataloging of recent items is backlogged from 2004. People are still able to get to the items they would like, but they do not have a press number and are not kept in the regular stacks.

Our tour of the 2nd floor stacks included the library's collection of over 8000 periodicals, many historical publications from the Victorian era. The collection is not limited to British publications, but also includes foreign publications relating to art and design. There are also MA and PhD theses from the Royal College of Art from the 1960s to the present housed on the same floor, along with copies of every item printed by the V&A Press. There is also a large collection of items from the Great Exhibition of 1851 held by the library. The 3rd floor stacks contain exhibition catalogs, sales catalogs from auction houses, annotated price catalogs, and newer items. The West Room Gallery is home to books kept for curatorial purposes, such as books with fine bindings or books as objects. Eventually, it is hoped that the West Room will be used as a library space that people can enter from the museum.

For the second part of our visit, we learned more about preservation and got to see examples of "books as art". We learned that for preservation, many items are kept in "phase boxes". These boxes are individually made for the protection of various items. The boxes are then numbered and stored. Some items are given book jackets for preservation purposes. The National Art Library was beautiful and our tour guides excellent, but the highlight of the visit for me was getting to have a look at the books our guide pulled from the collection for us. Some of these included diaries (one from the 1800s and one from the 1990s), a poem about quilts that unfolds into quilt square designs (see above left), unique pop-up books, and many more. I've included some pictures my fellow students enjoying these books below.

Mini-Break July 27-30

Basque Country

July 27-30, 2007

For the mini-break I traveled from Edinburgh to Bilbao, Spain to visit the Larranga family - they are pictured below. Felix and Maite are the parents, Ion and Leire are the kids.

Here's me with Felix, Maite, and Ion in a village on the Northern coast of Spain.

Leire and me...

The pictures below were taken in San Sebastian - a gorgeous city!