Public Marylebone Library

Check out the website: https://www.westminster.gov.uk/library-opening-hours-and-contact-details

The public Marylebone Library is currently moving. Their new location will be complete in 2020. In the meantime, they are severely limited in space.

The first floor is essentially all the necessary items a general member would need. To the right of the entrance are movies, and to the left is the children's section. To the back are general fiction and a small lounge. The fiction are organized in alphabetical order, and some have some symbols from back before the move. For instance, some books have a CRI sticker on the binding for Crime, and some have orange stickers with a large Z, which stand for Zone books, for teens.

The basement floor is primarily nonfiction and has some tables and booths for studying and computer time. The nonfiction section are condensed into subjects, no matter their Dewey Decimal call numbers. You can find call numbers from 643 to 747 in the DIY section, or 001 jumping to 300 in the Education/Careers section.

Some of the nonfiction subjects are grouped alphabetically, but some are not. For instance, we can find Food before Gardening. But in an small alcove, Transport is above Housing. Still, there are large binders with headings showing where a new subject starts, and with the smallness of the library, one can find a topic easily and never get lost.

Yet, I worry about the patronage of this library. I came during a children's event, but there weren't many children at all. It made me wonder, since the move, how many people still know where this library is located. Still, my guide, the customer services officer, Stephen Booth, was really helpful in showing me around the small library, and there was always a cheery atmosphere.

Reading Central Library

Check out the website: http://www.reading.gov.uk/centrallibrary

Image taken from Bill Nicholls for the Geograph Project, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2215051

While visiting a friend in Reading (pronounced Red-Ding, sadly), we decided to visit the Reading Central Library, a branch of the Reading Boroughs Library. This is a public library, and unfortunately had the same woes of any other public library. The library has three floors, but is still running out of space that they were having a book sale of unused  and copies of books and maps.

My guide for today was the librarian assistant of this branch library, Virginia Hobbs, who works part-time in this branch library, and full-time as a branch manager at the Tilehurst Library, another branch of the Boroughs Library. She was very knowledgeable of the history and organization of the Central Library, yet she still doesn't understand how the Reading collections (comprising of Reading maps, history books, biographies, the Boroughs Council, and local studies), are organized on the third floor. They are a unique code of letter strands such as BSXE/KH and BN6/DY.

Regardless, the nonfiction were organized in a modified Dewey Decimal System, but not like the Barbican Library. Instead, Hobbs suggests they were shelved this way because of running out of space. For instance, the educations books with the call numbers in the 370s fill up a free-standing shelf, yet behind that same shelf only has engineering books with the call numbers 620. The 621+ call numbers are on a shelves by the wall.

The fiction shelves were also organized by subject rather than just in the alphabet. They were grouped and color-coded to pink for Romance, blue for Historical, purple for Chillers, and many more. However, there are other colors added to these groups. A muddy brown sticker indicates a classic book, while a gold star indicates a black or Asian author. A rainbow sticker also indicates the author was LGBT+.

This library, like the Barbican, is just trying its best to be a library for all kinds of people. In fact they have a large collection of books in all kinds of European, Indian, and other Asian languages. They even have an e-library. Their concerns, at least expressed by Hobbes, is that the government keeps the budget tight and the hours small.

Royal Geographical Society Library and Archive

Check out the website: https://www.rgs.org/

I will be the first to admit that I rudely fell asleep throughout this presentation. Perhaps there was something in my diet because all I can seem to accomplish is narcolepsy in London, yet insomnia in the States. I truly found, what I heard from Mr. Rae, very interesting because I do like geography, minus the history.

Nevertheless, I did gather some information about this presentation. The Royal Geographic Society was founded in the 1830s under a different name by wealthy men. Travel and data-gathering equipment was much more expensive than it is today, and it still is expensive to travel. So this was a discipline for the wealthy and very curious, and thankfully these men wanted to share their findings publicly. These ranged from climbing Mount Everest to exploring the Canadian Northwest Passage, both of which had many brave lives lost.

From what I gathered, many people risked their lives for the pursuit of geographical knowledge, despite the public consensus that geography was not its own discipline at the time. This reminds me of library science very much because when people hear about my desired degree, they are confused on why people need a degree for it and just accuse me of wanting to read the rest of my life. Similarly, I feel these men with all of their wealth and power were accused of just wanting to travel the world.

I am glad there is an archival aspect to the geographical society not just for historical keepsake, but for educational pursuits.

Barbican Library

Check out the website: https://www.barbican.org.uk/your-visit/general-info/library

 

The Barbican Centre houses the public Barbican Library, and that is the only public territory in the Barbican. Bureaucracy aside, this is the only public library we are visiting for class, so I was excited. I expected general information, and I got more than I asked for even with discussions of librarianship during our snack break.

The Barbican Library was established in 1982 for the residents of the City of London. However, the infrastructure of the library never was fitted for a library, and since it is a Grade 2 building, the library has a difficult time even changing shelves. Space is always running out because the library cannot expand either. Despite this, the library prevailed by switching up its organization. Instead of just straight up using the Dewey Decimal System, they use a modified version to help group certain materials together. As a results, young adult materials are together, and computer materials are by the computer lab. Languages are also set aside the guides and maps. Sadly, the oversized books are just lumped together to save on space,  There are also small shelves scattered throughout serving small functions, such a wellness section, or a world cup section. There was even a section on skills, which included steps on becoming a citizen. 

The public library, despite having its problems with bureaucracy, infrastructure, and having to charge people, strive to serve everyone that sets foot in the library. This friendly, and even enthusiastic environment, reminds of the Hoover Public Library, which I grew up with. Despite any problem, it seems that only librarians discuss their issues with others concerning themselves with library and information science.

I feel as if the problems libraries face will just slowly stagnate. One problems solved will just be replaced with another, until there is public favor to solve these issues. For example, while not a public library, the Christ Church library has all the budgeting in the world surprisingly, possibly because it is an Oxford college focused on education, but sometimes the storage faces problems such as restructuring buildings to serve other purposes (such as building a part of a building next to the library as high class dormitories for summer conference visitors). The head librarian there, Mr. Archer, also faces problems with being paid for less than half of his hours and his long commute.

Another example is the Kew Gardens. There is a lot of effort to preserve botanical archivism, but at the cost of a lack or organizational system within the herbarium. Or for the case of the Caird Library, where there is a wonderful amount of naval materials, yet some of the items are stored in Canada because of a lack of space.

I suppose the main problems are because of budgeting and infrastructure. Yet, I have not had a sufficient education in information science, nor accounting or architecture or business practices, so I do not think I am qualified to speak on the matter. Besides, I can barely think of probable profound solutions, only minor details that can slowly chip away problems, such as volunteerism and fundraising.

St. Paul's Cathedral Library

Check out the website: https://www.stpauls.co.uk/history-collections/the-collections/the-library

While I am pretty nonreligious, I am pretty educated in religiosity, having studied world religions in high school and college. Although, I was disappointed there were no religious connotations in our tour. While the art library dealt with art, and the law library dealt with law, our tour and visit to the library did not indicate any religiosity. While yes, having some religious context can deter tourists even if presented from a secular view (high school world religions was pretty controversial), it is a cathedral. Frankly, I was just excited to see how religion at least in the St. Paul's Cathedral affected the library, but I am grateful for the wisdom of Mr. Wisdom.

Despite the library being comparably small to the entire cathedral, Mr. Wisdom unleashed some philosophical topics for us to consider about preservation and restoration of not only the books, but of the library itself. It was like being back in theory of knowledge class, and I loved the discussion even if it was small. While the information presented in books are important, if the room or building is deteriorating, then it would be wise to save the building to prevent any further damage to the books, and being a stone building, dust always ever-present. This decision came because of a lack of budget, a common trope in libraries. 

There is also the topic of preservation and restoration. Both are similar but results in different outcomes. Preservation keeps the historical value at the expense of damages, but restoration prevents damage at the expense of historical value. Which is better will always be up to debate like any philosophical or even religious topic.

While the library will be closed for a while due to their efforts to save the library's structure, I do hope that next year's class will have the chance to encounter Mr Wisdom's efforts.

Bletchley Park National Museum of Computing

Check out the website: http://www.tnmoc.org/

I was half excited and half concerned over my trip to the National Museum of Computing. While I love electronics, I found their history rather dull, and I did not know whether this tour would be one or the other. Thankfully, it was half-and-half.

That is not to say I do not enjoy hearing about accomplishments such as Alan Turing, Tommy Flowers, and Tutte. Their accomplishments, especially the diagram produced by Tutte in figuring out how the Lorenz machine worked, does show that the human brain is a far more better computer than any we have built so far, it is still enigmatic, and these computers we have built are the closest we can use to see how logic and computing would work in our head.

I am far more excited to learn the engineering and computational aspects of the museum compared to the history, much like how I prefer reading a book set in Victorian times rather than study the Victorian era. That is to say, I am quite disappointed by our time constraint. Still, I applaud Mr. Williams, our guide, in trying to explain both the humanity and science of these machines. Because of the constraint, Mr. Williams briefly went over the logical aspects of the machines and how they functioned, so I was not able to grasp how these machines completely worked and only knew the aftermaths of say the WITCH, Lorenz and Enigma Machine, Bombe, and Colossus.

My favorite part of the tour was the speed-run of the evolution of machines through their models. Ranging from hulking landmasses and calculators the size of an arm, we eventually reached personal computers. I will admit, I would have rather spent a day in their game room, with seemingly an evolution of gaming consoles. And embarrassingly, I knew how to work these old computers and newer models much better than I would with a modern TV.

Middle Temple Law Library

Check out the website: https://www.middletemple.org.uk/library-and-archive/library

First off, I am heavily confused on the connection between a knight and a lawyer. This may be because of my RPG games, but I always considered knights as keeping order, not conducting legalities in a court. Just strange, but at the very least, it does give a fanciful atmosphere about justice.

The Middle Temple is one of the four Courts which educate people into law into becoming barristers or solicitors. The main focus however were barristers, as they are the ones who go to court and advocate. To become a barrister, one must study law, then go on for certification. Afterwards, they may try for tenancy in their court. This is where the library can help, as they can find information make it readily available to those trying to become educated. This is the part that makes me want to be librarian, as a keeper and dispenser of information.

Our guide, Mr. Woellhaf, led us through the library and told us of the history and of their categorization of the Law Library. This still did not explain how knights became associated with law, but I did find it interesting how, after nearly 350 years, the Middle Temple considers the USA more advanced in current law, such as privacy rights and computer ethics. I figured that this was because the Middle Temple is focused on interpreting law rather than making laws, and that using reference does help with information building overall. 

Onto the categorization, the Middle Temple essentially organizes their shelves into categories, with each floor dealing with a portion of the world's law. There are law reviews of the entire United Kingdom legislation, but also of the United States and of the European Union. While I am not a stickler for diversity, all of these refer to Western law, and none of eastern law. Granted, laws are extensive and may not work in other cultures, but I figured that referring to Eastern law may help with overall international understandings of laws. It would be interesting to see this change implemented, if the other courts have not an interest in those laws already. Of course, if this change were to occur, there would need to be more shelf space and an amping on cataloging, which I have no idea if it is in the budget.

I guess I am just more into general information rather than libraries of particular subjects. Still, I highly respect the Middle Temple and Mr. Woellhaf's efforts.

National Art Library at V & A Museum

Check out the website: https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/national-art-library

The National Art Library surprisingly is older than the museum. Established in 1837, the library initially was to help artists become artists, but it has since then gathered some general knowledge. Similar to the British Library, their materials are closed stacks and shelved on book size and year, organized with a unique system. This system does save up on a lot of space to expand their collection, but not even all of the materials in the library have been cataloged yet.

To be bluntly honest, I did not really enjoy myself in the National Art Library. By this time, trends have already begun to be repetitive. The only topic that sparked my interest in this particular library is the collection of bookish art, but we were shown little of that. My two favorites were of the telescoptic view of the Great Exhibition and the Word Pharmacy with their grammar prescriptions.

I did appreciate being taken around however. Piggybacking from the Maughan Library, I saw tall ceiling can closed doors with some metals everywhere. Our guide told us this library was one of the firsts to be lit by electricity, and I knew why from the architecture. Looking at the stacks also revealed me the size of their collections, something I was not able to grasp from their reading room, as most of the building I would have attributed to be museum space.

King's College Maughan Library

Check out the website: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/visiting/maughan.aspx

I will admit, I fell asleep during Mr. Ray's and Katie Sambrook's presentation on their displayed collection. While my diet in London is much healthier back at home, I've found I'm having trouble being awake.

Nevertheless, I did find parts of the collections interesting--at least the parts I was awake for. I was confused as to why Benjamin Franklin's copy of the Pennsylvania charter would be here of all places until I remembered Franklin did build up a name for himself and was from England, like everyone else in the late 1700s. I also found the conservation philosophy interesting. Function over form does work better on the long run, but that would remove the originality of the materials. Personally, I would go with function above all else. Form is only something one should considers if they can afford replacing it, and we all know how little funding libraries have.

Further along our tour, I became moreover interested in architecture than librarianship. It began in the cell room, a room of unused iron shelves that made the room seem like a prison, and yet sometimes students come to study in this room. If I were to study here, I would end up reminding myself of the student debt imprisoning me once I leave college. 

Anyway, this geared me towards why this library was built the way it is. The reconstruction of buildings after the fire of 1666 shows in the Maughan Library. Giant iron doors are to always remain closed, and the ceilings are extravagantly high. The floor is all stone tiles and bricks. Any wooden floor is linoleum. To prevent any fire hazards, huge windows  Honestly, a focus on the development and improvements of architecture in terms of housing a library would have better made the Maughan Library more distinct than any other library.

British Museum Archives

Check out the website: http://britishmuseum.org/research/libraries_and_archives.aspx

The British Museum Archives and Reading Room is located in the center of the museum, and has been closed off from the public for some time now. Our guide, the lone and second ever qualified archivist Francesca Hillier, toured us around the rotunda and discussed the items on the shelves and the history of the museum. She also discussed her job as an archivist, and how severely backlogged she is in cataloging all of these historical materials.

As the only archivist, she relies on volunteers and interns, but as there is no organization, it is difficult for others to find materials for inquiries. Only Ms. Hillier knows where some items are only because she has been working there for twelve years, and even then she still finds new materials she doubts anyone ever heard of.

Archivism never seemed to be considered despite the building being a museum. For instance, some books have vague titles, such as Original Letters and Papers. No one knows what are in these books, but when opened, many letters are damaged because of wax sticking to other pages and how materials were just folding and glued to fit no matter how brittle the paper are. Some materials are also in books but in later years were just stuffed in labeled boxes which took up more space.

For a place of historicity of over eight million items, there is no organization, which frightens me. Surely more classes should take a trip to the reading room to learn more about the importance of cataloging and archivism, if Hillier can handle the extra workload.

National Maritime Museum's Caird Library and Archives

Check out the website: https://www.rmg.co.uk/national-maritime-museum/caird-library

While the Kew focused on botanic archivism, the Caird library at Greenwich focuses on nautical collections. This involves maps and charts. Their collections of books also are geared to sea-faring subjects, as they are grouped in topics such as voyages, naval life, art, weaponry, and languages.

We were introduced by Mr. Bevan, but his assistant Ms. Syrett led my group first, where we looked at the Lord MacQuitty collection of various Titanic-related materials, such as menus, letters, and photographs. This is where we spent most of our time as we attempted to read handwriting from ages ago, where everyone wrote like a doctor. Thankfully, some materials were with printed texts and images. This collection helped me understand those who were in the Titanic much better than most displays I have seen, but this could be because the assistant was there to explain the ephemera even further.

We later discussed the journals in this library, particularly that of Edward Barlow and his fanciful depictions of his adventures and findings. These journals and Titanic ephemera are just two subjects in the library's large collection, so large that some materials are stored in Canada of all places. While I love both the journals and the Titanic materials, I just have to criticize that some materials are just stored in Canada. I'm sure there must be a good reason why in terms of social engineering, but just trying to get materials in Canada is much more difficult than transferring them from a storage facility a town over. These displays could have been expanded or complemented with other displays, but that is just a guess since I have no idea what materials are separated.

I also have to comment on their organizational system, the Universal Decimal System. This system is new to me. I have only encountered Dewey-based systems and the Library of Congress, and only heard of SuDocs and the United Nations Documents Classification, but encountering a new system with no prior knowledge was riveting, yet I could not grasp it the first day.

Oxford Libraries: Bodleian and Christ Church

Check out the website: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

I just made it to the Bodleian library after oversleeping, and I am glad I did not miss this day. Both the Bodleian library and the Christ Church Library were beautiful in their architecture, and the city felt a lot more safer and educated than London, which I attributed to being busy and political.

Perhaps because everyone is studying, Oxford was surprisingly quiet compared to other cities. And quiet is what we needed to be in the Bodleian library. We could not even take pictures of the interior of the library. Still, our tour guide showed us around the rooms and discussed the history of this college.

People would need to write up 3000 word essays every six days and have one-on-one tutoring with mentors. Their exams consists of presentations. This used to be a college to turn people towards God, like almost every major old college, and this took seven years of apprenticeships, but now people can choose and study a variety of topics, and there is an emphasis on taking the classics.

What intrigued me is the history. While established in 1488 by Duke Humphrey, it had to be reestablished back in 1598 by Sir Bodley after all the books were removed after the Anglican reformation. I suspect this is why even royalty cannot lend books from the library, to preserve whatever is left from any mass censorship, but I never pressed the issue. For a library, it seems very exclusive, but for good reason. Only three original works are left, and four years ago, someone was cutting illuminated pages out of books to make a quick buck.

-------

 

Check out the website: https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/library

 

  

My favorite part of the trip however was the Christ Church College. This Oxford college looked more like a campus yet architecturally ancient. This library felt the most modern however, perhaps because Steven Archer looked like  student and yet is the head of the working library, and there is too much money to go around (yet the only drawback is the staff seems greatly underpaid for their efforts). Granted, his introduction to the library was quite radical, as he was the third librarian after 65 years. Changes must have been needed, and that may be why the library itself seems so modern despite its ancient shelves.

The items displayed are even more ancient than the shelves. From the first edition of Charles Darwin's The Origins of Species to Lewis Carroll's sketches, every item felt like they had heavy historic value, and yet any student could look through these collections. The needs of the students are put over these collections, and I am concern on how to feel about this, but figured a collection stowed away is as useless as not ever having it.

KEW Tour & the Royal Gardens

Check out the website: https://www.kew.org/

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, struck my grammatical interest as much as their herbarium. Why Kew is referred to as botanic and not botanical confused me, but according to grammar websites, botanic is just a variant of botanical. English is weird.

Anyway, we were first introduced to Andrew Wiltshire, who gave a lecture about Beatrix Potter and her secret life, which mostly stayed hidden because of her secret language. When after five years of decoding, all the secrets were let out. She was an analytical and well-rounded woman, able to draw realistic depictions and study botanical concepts, which could have led to an earlier discovery of penicillin. Unfortunately, she ceased her research because the scientific community, particularly the Linnean Society, rejected her work. She then became successful and more known for Peter Rabbit and her distinct anatomical art of rabbits.

Afterwards, we were toured displays of the Gardens's materials. We did not see their herbarium, but we were told of their uncatalogued collections: 300,000 books/pamphlets, 200,00 artworks, and 7,000,000 archived papers, along with numerous dried plant samples. Fiona Ainsworth led us through the collections and discussed Kew's history and the history of the collections set out. The gardens started as a royal status symbol and began collecting plants from all over the world during the English imperialist period, where the mindset of finding economical and scientific benefit to the country overrode any informational organization until the library began about a hundred years later. Their herbarium, which also includes digitized materials, is about 165 years-old, with the oldest material dating from the 14th century. It was really disappointing we did not see the herbarium in person because I was pretty unenthusiastic about the materials presented. they were mostly artwork, which were lovely, but no dried samples were provided nor pictures of these materials. Rather, we got books, photographs, and letters from others which were involved in botany, such as Charles Darwin or Potter. I never knew a herbarium existed until then, but sadly we were only delivered archival materials which could be found in an art gallery and a conventional archive.

However, my favorite art of the trip was getting lost in the royal gardens. The maps were utterly useless to my spatially dumb mind, but around every corner was something beautiful. And though my legs were in pain by the end of the day, I managed to see about every marker of the map, eventually. I felt in tuned with everything around me, especially when under the cedar trees.

   

Conservation Centre & the British Library

Check out the website: https://www.bl.uk/

The conservation centre, where we visited first, provided a look into preserving and restoring books, maps, and even textiles. The rooms were very regulated. No pens or bags allowed, and the humidity and temperature are always in check. We saw what workers currently were focused on, and even saw before/after and progress in hi-definition photographs.

The main problems in the workers' projects however are mostly because of not considering preservation at the time. In the Arabic medieval times, book covers were recycled constantly, and their gold paint would eventually burn through the paper. During the Raj, a photoalbum was found, yet was not meant to be preserved. So it stood sideways in a shelf, and dust collected in the openings to where discoloration of the pages and photos occurred. Most of the time spent in the centre however was on the textile conservation of a British flag, which started more than a year ago.

Into the British Library, the tour consisted of the history, information on their collections, and the process which books are available to the people.

The British Library truly started in 1972 after the British Library Act was passed to separate the entities of the British Library and British Museum. The building was opened to the public during the late 90s by Her Majesty, and people from all over the world could come to read books.

By law, the British Library must obtain a copy of everything ever published and sold, which results in 8000 items collected per day and already a 200 million collection of books, magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and the second largest collection of pornography. These items can be accessed with a reader card, but they cannot be browsed for nor checked out. Organization must be contained on an immense scale, so no one can come in and pull out a book, then forget where to put it. Readers must come with an item in mind, and people will search for the item through unique numbers each item has. All of this has very little automation, and there are stories of books held underground. Unsurprisingly, books are organized by size to conserve space.

The British Library also has a massive collection of stamps and some monuments or protected artifacts in and around the building. These include some printing presses, Patrick Hughes's Paradoxymoron illusion work, Sitting on History bench, a replica of Turing's enigma machine, and the second largest atlas. I assumed some of these items were not accepted into the British Museum during the split, but these items make the library more interesting. Of course, the main feature and historical collection is the King's Library of George III, with stories of old books like an original print of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales intricately preserved and monitored.

I very much enjoyed the British Library despite getting lost in its size. The tour of the library's intricacies was much preferred over the scientific tour of the Royal Institute. 

Royal Institute of Science

Check out the website: http://www.rigb.org/

The Royal Institute of Science looks like a fun place to be as a child, but it was of poor taste for me.

The Institute focuses on educating people of all ages about scientific discoveries and the history of scientists that in the lecture theatre. We learned a great deal about the initial history of the institution and why science is was so important: to benefit Britain. The establishment began in 1799, just two decades after Britain lost their American colonies, so the educated class of Britain believed using science could improve Britain's control and power. This drive eventually led to the discoveries of ten elements in the building. Experiments with laughing gas and liquid hydrogen was also held in the building. Particularly, we learned a little history invovled in the lectures of Humphrey's nitrous oxide in the early 1800s, Faraday's experiments on densitites of wood blocks on different elements in the 1850s, Deware's liquid hydrogen lectures in the early 1900s, and Bragg's work on electronics in the 1960s.

The Royal Institute works as a museum of items scientists made, used, and thought of. These are on display around the building, but mostly in the basement floor, where items are organized by scientific subject such as dealing with light or chemistry. Important artifacts are held here, such as miner's lamps and improvements, which would safely allow miners to see in their dark cavernous work environment without igniting any coal on accident.

The Institute does not focus on research at the moment. In fact, they're mostly known for their Christmas lectures. Nevertheless, famous scientists still come and speak in the lecture theatre, and I certainly would not mind attending one, if the lecture is not about chemistry.

Frankly, the Royal Institute did not suit my tastes. No matter how much our historian guide Frank James attempted to make science engaging, I could not pay attention for long periods of time. And I know this was rude of me, but I kept dozing off despite standing. I would have hoped to deal with books rather than scientific instruments and artifacts.