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.