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.
No comments:
Post a Comment