London Library

The London Library is on to something. It is so unassuming from the outside. The inside is an Alice in Wonderland labyrinth of shelves and bad heel surfaces (the photo to the left is a floor). My first reaction was that it was too hot. Then our class spoke to the librarians. Their enthusiasm was infectious. They clearly loved where they worked. I internally scoffed when they explained their policy of never weeding. It makes no sense, I thought. They are not a copyright library. As it turns out, they are a subscription lending library. Their members love them so much that they pay for the privilege of using their books and services. T.S. Eliot's widow still receives royalties from Cats. She donates millions to the library. This is the kind of thing that allows them not to weed. Another unique policy is that the London Library lends out rare books, which shows their patrons (they would call them members) an admirable respect. One very understandable exception is their 1st edition copy of The Origin of Species. Darwin's formative work on worms, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, is open to the public.

The library owes its existence to Thomas Carlyle. He did not appreciate the reference nature of the British Library. Well before the digital era, he envisioned a nation where information could be accessed at home. The library was founded in 1841 and has since enjoyed administrative association with heavyweights such as Thackeray, Tennyson, Kipling, Eliot, and the current president Tom Stoppard.

The London Library housed the meetings of the Philological Society. It was here that Richard Chenevix Trench first presented the idea of a dictionary that describes words as they are, not as we would like them to be. He critiqued work that had been done in the past, even by Samuel Johnson. Thus began the idea of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1857.

An unexpected favorite, the London Library most challenged my preconceptions and made me go back to the my early library school lessons. I was conditioned to be a weeder because that makes the most sense for most public libraries. If your founding and mission statement are based on offering the wealth of a nation for home use and you can afford it, go forth and expand! Use non-eye catching library binding to preserve your collection. Your patrons want to be here. You do not have to convince them to read.