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.