Spare Parts

Sand art by the Thames

My first Sunday at Hyde Park. The most heated exchange was among a pro-Israeli speaker and a group of Arabs. The funniest was the anti-Imperialist from Africa. It would be inappropriate to quote him.

A monument to the animals that died alongside the British in 20th century warfare.

Oceanic feeling at Hyde Park.

Scotland

Joy and freedom on the Southbank.

Final time at my haven. It did not help what the Scottish air did to my sinuses. The effect of the surgery I had in April was undone by the dampness.

Turtle!

London Zoo? Don't mind if I do.

Chillin'

I relate.

Is your mama a llama?

I pissed off the macaw.

Butterfly Love

Grooming?

With Carey before the symposium. By this point in the summer, people were asking if we were sisters.

Brick Lane

Le sigh!

Maughan Library

Our last tour was of Maughan Library, the King's College humanities library on Chancery Lane. This academic library has over 1,000 reader places, over 330 computer places, and 750,000 volumes. It serves 11,000 students on the Strand, although any of the 20,000 King's College students may use their building or services. Its strong points are War Studies and Theology.

The Maughan librarians have gone rove. They lurk near entrance areas attempting to look friendly and offer help. Given the massive size of the library, I expect this is much appreciated. There will always be people who do not want to be helped, but it is good for both users and the profession for librarians to thwart stereotypes and aim for the ideal. The roving librarian is much discussed in school, yet this is the first time I have encountered an organized effort to make this a reality.

The staff room has a very nice librarianship collection that they keep up. The room has comfortable, multi-colored chairs. You can tell the staff is valued. The entire library makes good use of space.

National Archives of Scotland

The purpose of the National Archives of Scotland is the maintenance and preservation of the records of Scotland. The earliest surviving records are from the 12th century. The NAS buildings house over 70 kilometers of records. Of the millions of documents you can find Parliament papers, railway records, valuation rolls, government records, maps, Register of Deeds, and much more.


During the tour the librarian stressed the importance of weeding. She told us to be brutal. Although I agree with the sentiment, I was surprised that was the philosophy of a library whose mission is record keeping. Space and funding are always issues. The NAS opened their 3rd building in 1995. The Thomas Thomson house is entirely a storage facility. It was supposed to last them until 2020. It is virtually full. At the moment, the NAS is trying to convince to the courts to be more selective in what they preserve.

The impact of WWI is soon to be a topic for compulsory exams at Scottish universities. Laid out on a table set up for us were applications from men to be exempted from the war. One could become exempt on the basis of conscientious objection or hardship. The latter means that, for example, a young man who is the only child of a widowed mother could apply for a hardship exemption. In a 1916 application, James Hamilton explains that his family's farm will not survive if he goes off to war. The military took his request to be genuine and gave him a temporary exemption until he reaches 18 years and 8 months. They were not always so kind.

Image from NAS website.

Dunfermline Public Library

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline. It is only natural that he offered a 5,000 pound donation to his hometown to build what became the Dunfermline Public Library. This first Carnegie Library was a main library when it opened in 1883, but is now considered a branch library. There is homage to the philanthropist throughout the site. You can find a bust of his mother or a portrait of the man himself.

While DPL is a lending library, it is known for its reference services. In particular, they get a lot of family history enquiries from around the world. It is apparently the place to go to for anyone doing Fife research.

My class was shown both the George Reid and the Murison Burns collections. Reid collected early, printed books. This valuable collection holds a medieval Book of Hours (14th C), Aquinas' Summa Theologica (15th C), the works of Euclid (15th C), and a Bassandyne Bible (16th C). The Burns collection struck me as rather odd. Who is Murison Burns? Once I realized that Murison was the collector and Robert Burns was the subject of the collection it made much more sense. Robert Burns was a poet during the time of the French Revolution. He is perhaps thought of as the grandfather of Romantic poetry.

Image source here.

Edinburgh Central Library

Our bus ride from England to Scotland started early in the morning and contained myriad accents. Amidst the stream of background educational commentary, I managed to get in 50 pages of a book that Sam Harris recommended on his website. I snatched up Aaronovitch's Voodoo Histories at a rest stop. The first chapter dealt with the history of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the famous Russian forgery of the Jewish plan for world domination that continues to be widely read and accepted in parts of the Middle East. This is the book I turned to when I realized our homebase in Dalkeith was not safe enough for nightlife outside my locked hotel room.

We checked out several book and information havens in Scotland. For too long Edinburgh did not have a free public library. The town had a lackadaisical attitude about fulfilling the Public Library Act. They already had subsciption libraries, so the expense was deemed a taxpayer burden. Andrew Carnegie's 1886 donation of 25,000 pounds inspired the Town Council to approve the building of the Edinburgh Central Library. It opened to the public in 1890.

Our tour was thorough, starting with 3 presentations. Alison talked about the ways in which they are working to improve their virtual library. You can read the library's blog here. Staff members go so far as to survey Twitter for people's compliments and complaints. Karen told us a little about their special collections, which span the 15th century to present day. The biggest treat for me was the presentation on reader development. Annie and Colm try to set up at least 1 author event a month. The bring in literary fiction writers, well known Scottish writers, and emergent writers. Crime is the highest circulating genre at the Barbican in London. This trend is no different at Edinburgh Central Library. In March, they built off this collective passion and did a successful program of events called Crime in the City.

Photo courtesy of the Central Library.

Freud House

When I learned that Freud had only lived in the Freud House for the last year of his life, I felt I had been fooled. It seemed like a pattern was emerging. London has been the home and stopping point for many genuises. There is not a street that does not have grand intellectual significance tied to it many times over. Dickens lived on Doughty Street for about the same amount of time Freud lived in Maresfield Gardens. Unfair comparisons twitched through my mind. It's as if I became a big and important person and after my death they started doing tours of Stamford Street!

Of course, the house a man dies in is significant. Freud fled Vienna in 1938 when paying off the Nazis no longer offered security to his family and home. As Freud quoted in "Civilization and its Discontents": homo homini lupus. He was able to take all his belongings with him, including a large selection from his library. His personal collection of over 1600 titles requires a catalogue. Most prominently displayed in his study is a set of the complete works of Goethe. He also had a taste for Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Poe, and Twain. There are numerous book on science and psychology, some even dedicated to him. Many are still sitting on his shelves with the pages uncut.

A salient portion of Freud's library is devoted to books on archaeology, one of his most passionate interests. He surrounded himself with an always growing collection of artifacts. The rich rugs, the fertility figures, the Ancient Egyptian mummy bandages, and more were almost all from his main home in Vienna. They came with him to London and remain in the Maresfield Gardens house, preserved as they were during Freud's year there. When you walk into the British Museum you expect to be surrounded by history. Museum displays can become tedious. Keys to our past are locked away behind glass. The Freud House is not like that. There is a path that visitors are permitted to walk through before the velvet rope indicates not to get one step closer to Freud's couch and buddha figure. Freud lived in a museum of his own making only without the protective glass. That has more impact for me than any museum exhibit, no matter how beautiful, exciting, or intellectually stimulating. Freud's house is a window into his psyche. The experience of being there is visceral. He considered himself an archaeologist of the mind.

In keeping with the no photopraphy policy of the Museum, I took pictures in the bathroom. I wish I had a better shot of the reading material:

And what better setting for a narcissistic photo shoot into a reflective surface?

Bodleian

Oxford is the oldest English speaking university in the world. They claim an origin of at least 1201. Unsurprisingly, one of the later buildings was designed by none other than Christopher Wren. Is there anything this man did not do? The library got its first real start when Duke Humphrey donated his collection in the 15th century. Sir Thomas Bodley, husband of a rich widow, gave the library a giant donation and, thus, new life at the end of the 16th century.

Ranganathan's first law of Library Science is books are for use. The London Library takes this concept very seriously and lends out almost all materials. Oxford's Bodleian has a different tradition. They do not lend out anything. Even Charles I was denied the privilege, though a room was built specifically for his reading pleasure. To this day they still have chains on books. This idiosyncrasy is compensated for by the meticulous job the conservation department does in caring for the materials. Books are even stored backwards.

The Bodleian has copies of Blake's Songs of Innocence, The Book of Thel, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. My catnip!

Image from Bodleian website.