National Art Library

The Victoria & Albert Museum was founded on the basis of a simple principle: to make art available to the public. Sir Henry Cole wanted to educate the working class and inspire artists. The financial success of the Great Exhibition of 1851 allowed for the funding of the V&A, as well as the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum.

According to our tour guide, the Museum's National Art Library averages about 100 visitors a day. It originated as the library of the School of Design in 1837, predating the Museum.

Art books create a special shelving problem. The National Art Library deals with it by shunning a classification system altogether. They shelve based on size. This makes browsing impossible, but it does save space.

The Library houses more than just art books. Some items are so valuable that they are locked away. John Forster, an early biographer of Dickens, donated his collection of over 18,000 books for use by the nation. The photograph to the left is of a copy of the biography held at the Dickens House. Forster was such good friends with Dickens that the latter bequeathed the former a corrected proof of Bleak House. The copy the Library owns is heavily corrected, much like the work of J.G. Ballard on display at the British Library.

William Blake is my favorite poet. Seeing his art was a highlight for me. In one of my library classes last year, a student and professor both came to a very passionate agreement about the horror of looking at reproduced art in books and online archives. His paintings are something to behold, yet Blake's visual sense is so strong that they can be pretty well absorbed in any fashion. What I want to see in person are the plates. I should have thought of that at the British Museum! Nevertheless, I was quite pleased to look at the 2 Blake works. He painted in tempera instead of oil because he thought it was more ethical to not be able to do corrections. Take that Dickens!

Image "Eve Tempted by the Serpent" taken from here on the V&A website.

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.

Greenwich Maritime Museum

The site of the Greenwich Maritime Museum was once a school for the children of seafarers. It became what it is today due to the persistence of the Society for Nautical Research and the generosity of member Sir James Caird. It incorporates the Royal Observatory and the Queen's House.


The Caird Library is one of the largest reference libraries in the world. It is undergoing its first major redevelopment since its founding in 1937. There is talk that when the new library is complete that discriminatory age barriers on usage will be removed. I hope this happens. If a research library in which there is no smutty fiction cannot treat the young like human beings then there is no hope for public libraries. In addition to reference section and some current fare, the collection includes over 100,000 books, 20,000 pamphlets, 20,000 periodicals, and 8,000 rare books spanning 1474 to 1850. They are known for their manuscripts collection, which takes up over 4 miles of shelf space. The collection covers all things maritime, piracy, astronomy, horology, and biography.

Martin and Hannah shared a number of gems with the class. We looked at the Aurora Australis, the first book written, illustrated, and bound at the sign of the Penguins. Sir Ernest Shackleton allowed a printing press on the expedition because of the down time in the Antarctic when traveling is impossible due to pack ice. He was so serious about the avoidance of "polar ennui" (and also about the creation of a nice promotional souvenir) that he had a printing firm provide 3 weeks of printing training to his men. The book contains fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. The illustrations were by expedition artist George Marston.


Image from National Maritime Museum website.

British Library

This picture pretty much sums up how I feel about the British Library. I visited for the first time last summer. My best laid plans to explore the library were thwarted by an extensive Henry VIII exhibition that I wrongly thought would only take me an hour. One year later, I have no regrets.

The British Library branched out of the British Museum and became the legal deposit library of the U.K. and Ireland in 1973. It may have the largest collection in the world, touting 200 million items. Then again, the Library of Congress, Bibliotheque Nationale of France, and the Russian State Library are also contenders. As our tour guide clarified, national libraries grow at exponential rates, so it is hard to say one is the biggest.

Such an important library must be run with caution. Anyone desiring to use the reading rooms must prove genuine need. It does not have to be PhD level need. An elderly man wanted to look at a book he remembered from his childhood. That was enough. However, if he had wanted to look at Shakespeare's 1st folio he likely would have been turned down. The system of records and barcoding led to the catching of a book vandal. A man who smuggled in a knife and cut pages out of books was sentenced to 2 years in prison. He was a top researcher in his field.

While I expected that the library would house manuscripts, periodicals, maps, and even patents, I would have never guessed they had the ashes of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The story from our guide is that someone took a handful from his cremation site in Italy. Why this happened and how the British Library obtained the physical remnants of the French Revolution obsessed Romantic poet remains to be discovered. I am on it.

There are too many treasures in the Treasures of the British Library to do the collection justice. I am going to note just a few of the most interesting to me (not necessarily the most interesting to the anyone else):

• Beowulf. This copy from Cotton's collection was saved from a fire by a servant. It is charred.
  
• J.G. Ballard Archive. So now we know the claim that Ballard did not keep archives was a lie. The recently deceased British author kept documents relating to his experiences in WWII, including a map of the Internment camp in which he and his family were held. On display is evidence he heavily edited and rewrote his works. There are pages from his manuscripts filled with illegible (at least to me) words and lines in red and blue ink. An ink-filled page is one of the more visceral windows into brilliance.


• A letter by Charles Darwin where he asserts he is "confident in the truth of my main doctrine." For the record, I can read no one's handwriting. I know what the letter says because of signage. Darwin is not even the worst offender.
  
• The diary of Robert Falcon Scott and photos from his ill-fated polar expedition. When he learned that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten him to the South Pole he wrote that it was "a horrible day" and went on to express his correct fear that he and his own crew would not survive.

Image of "The Funeral of Shelley" by Fournier is from the National Museums Liverpool website.
Image of Ballard manuscript from bibliokept.org.
Image of Scott's Journal from British Library online gallery.

British Museum

Charles Dickens was once a reader at the British Museum. The first public library in Britain was bound to attract important literary figures. It all started when physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane bequeathed his entire collection of over 71,000 items to the nation in 1753. Such a vast collection is bound to be diverse, but its chief focus was natural history specimens. Another early user of the reading room was Charles Darwin. Who knows how library access may have furthered along the revolutionary thinker who led to the greatest paradigm shift since Copernicus?

Flux is the prevailing condition of the structure of the British Museum. It used to be all encompassing, handling the materials that have now branched off into the Natural History Museum and the British Library. Its own libraries include the Paul Hamlyn Library, which is open to the public for on-site research, and a lending library for the staff, which is accessed by a book camouflaged door in the Enlightenment Gallery. The collection is made up materials relating to archaeology, museum studies, and the history of the museum.

Our tour guide, Charles Hoare, explained the many location changes the museum library has endured over time. In the 20 year tenure of his boss, the library has moved 14 times. This often occurs in order to make room for an exhibit. As we walked through the museum, Hoare would point to off to some gallery and tell us that the library used to be there. It had the feel of a Kids in the Hall skit. Upon reflection, I found it to be logical that the library would so often get the shift. It makes more sense for the staff library to be in a cramped "Long Room" than it does for the Enlightenment Gallery to be.

The tight space of the Long Room holds the library's most expensive collection: The Witt Collection. It is made up of books, Roman sculptures, Indian objects, and Middle Eastern objects. Books that jumped out at me were Lives of the Ancient Philosophers and India's Moor's Narratives.

Hoare quietly warned us against the massive consequences of a poorly thought out classification scheme. The museum originally classified things based on the departments. Classification needs an anchor and the departments are always shifting. They still have 25,000 items to redo.

The image above is the Gilgamesh Flood Tablet, something I wish I had thought to look for in person. When British Museum assistant George Smith discovered that this Assyrian tablet contained a flood story that predates the Old Testament, he apparently got so excited that he jumped around the room and undressed in front of his colleagues.

Fun Fact: James Murray applied for a job at the British Museum in his pre-OED days. He was rejected.

Image courtesy of the British Museum website.

Charles Dickens House Museum

Charles Dickens lived on Doughty St. in London from 1837 to 1839. His eldest children, Mary and Katey, were born there. As Dickens's fame grew he moved to bigger houses. Other places he lived have been demolished. This museum opened in 1925. Its point of pride is that it contains and cares for the National Dickens Library, which has all the author's works in various editions, translations, and adaptations locked up in what used to be Dickens's basement.


Other Highlights:






An 1835 map of London













A copy of Dickens's magazine in which he curiously chose to announce his separation from his wife.





The museum also houses some of Catherine Dickens's jewelry. I could not get a clear shot of her gold and diamond serpent ring. The Museum paid over 5,000 pounds for this item that is believed to have been a gift from the Count D'Orsay.

The video room showed a documentary on Dickens's life. Unlike many writers, Dickens was neither tortured nor anti-social, (though he may have been a bad man). He was friends with actors, fond of his children, and always had a sense of fun. Whereas his father spent 3 months in debtors prison (the museum showcases the grille), Dickens took good care of his money. Dickens fought for what he felt was rightfully his when he went to America and lobbied Congress to recognize the copyright of British authors. The American reaction to his copyright crusade soured his view of the country.

LOST may be over, but it is impossible to see a copy of Our Mutual Friend without thinking:

I'll see you in another life, Brotha!

Link to an incredible LOST rap video: We have to go back!

The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers

I did not know the Clockmakers' Museum even existed until I found myself in a group of library students heading to the single room attraction in the Guildhall Library. It is a collection of timekeeping devices that has items dating back to the 17th century. The most unexpected pieces in the collection were the works of art, such as the portrait of a lady and her watch. The main attraction is John Harrison's 5th marine timekeeper pictured in the top right, courtesy of the museum website.

A year ago I would have had no interest in such a museum. It was through a piece of historical fiction on the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition that I came to appreciate polar exploration. The Terror is about 600 pages too long and more monster-centered than I would have liked, but Dan Simmons captures an authentic sense of time, place, and explorer mentality. It prompted me to research the history of the search for the Northwest Passage, which is where I first came across the problem of determining longitude at sea. The unhappy tale of Henry Hudson sailing blindly with no map and keeping time with a sand hourglass before John Harrison was even born is the image that has stayed with me, even moreso than him and his son drifting aimlessly to an unknown fate after mutiny.

John Harrison solved the longitude problem long before he was satisfied enough with his work to submit it for final appraisal to the Board of Longitude. His first 3 timekeepers were substantially sized. It was not until his friend John Jefferys made him a pocket watch inspired by his larger devices that he realized he could make a small watch that held up against the elements and remained accurate at sea. Jefferys was a freeman with the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. The inspiration for Harrison's H4 is on display at the Clockmakers' Museum.

Proponents of intelligent design always offer up the oft refuted teleological argument to prove the existence of a grand designer. William Paley presented this idea at the start of the 19th century based on the science of the time. The universe seemed too complex to not have been consciously designed by a higher power just as a watch with all its cogs and springs is designed by a watchmaker. Now we know enough about biology and natural selection to see the error of this argument. As it turns out, H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5 have a craftsmanship and a foresight that we lack. In my early exposure to the question of design, I had always been more focused on the universe. The Clockmakers' Museum caused me to finally reflect on the planned complexity of the watch and the genius of the watchmaker.