Central Library, City of Edinburgh Council

t is hard to imagine that within the heavy gothic buildings that decorate the ancient Royal Mile and the surrounding streets lives a thriving public library. The Central Library is a fine example of all that a public library can do.

There is an entire department devoted to creating a library environment online. This department is in charge of managing the corporate website but also with providing 24 hour access to the library. Your Library is a program designed to combine the library with social media. The librarians are playing with a library application for smart phones which has the potential to allow patrons to check out books using this application. The library maintains a Google map called Edinburgh Reads where patrons can find book clubs across the city. Tales of One City is a blog designed to bring library resources and events to patrons utilizing various kinds of social media including twitter, facebook, flickr, and youtube. Patrons also can receive a newsletter which is a more expanded version of the blog.

There is a feature called Library to Go which allows patrons to read online or check out e-books and e-audio. Among the references and online resources there are language programs, information on how to get a driver’s license, how to apply for funds and grants and genealogy resources. Within the library, plasma touch screens are features throughout the library providing information on library services, events and collections. There is potential to have digital exhibitions available on these screens as well. This social media and online resource blitzkrieg is designed to bring more patrons into the library both online and onsite.

There is a program specifically for reader development. The purpose of this program is to get people reading more and reading more widely. Author events are hosted. The Royal Book Trust has a program called Live Literature where the trust will match the libraries donation to bring an author to the central library or any of the community libraries. Authors often solicit to come promote their books as well.

The library is extremely active in book groups. There are 46 groups hosted through the library and over 40 more independent groups that work with the library. City of Literature events are events hosted through the library with the aim of promoting literature throughout Edinburgh. Read Aloud is a program where volunteers go into elderly homes and read to the residents and bring some library materials. The library is partners with a number of organizations such as Scottish Book Trust, Scottish Poetry Library, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh Book Festival, City of Literature, and Scottish Library and Information Council.

The library also has training programs called Frontline which educates staff members on how to engage with the public, how to set up effective displays, event training. Reader development and book group training is also available.

The Central Library is devoted to community development. In addition to all of the services I’ve already mentioned, the library has a department devoted to adult IT learning. 15 of the local communities join the Central Library in teaching classes. Classes are taught such as beginning computer classes and English as a second language. IT Buddies is a program where volunteers work directly with patrons. Future IT programs include learning IT family history, social media, and employment.

The library is also involved in literacy efforts. The Six Book Challenge is a program designed to encourage reluctant readers to read more. The library is also partners with Dyslexia Scotland which promotes online support software and hosts dyslexia reading groups for children.

I am absolutely blown away by the services offered at this library. This library is a shining example of innovation and community involvement. The library staff are keenly aware of the importance of keeping the library relevant in our modern technology culture. What a wonderful library. And here is the view from the back window...

*The amazing display cap above is by Jessica Hische, an amazing designer I came across in my perpetual search for awesome design and typography. The letter comes from her Daily Drop Cap project.

The National Archives of Scotland

he National Archives of Scotland are located just over the bridge from the Royal Mile. The organization is in the midst of combining resources and merging with the National Registrar Office for Scotland. So in fact, it is no longer the National Archives but now the National Records of Scotland. 

http://www.freefoto.com/images/1087/18/1087_18_1---National-Archives-of-Scotland--Edinburgh_web.jpg

The archive is comprised of six buildings with about 450 employees. In the main building there is a search room called the Adam Dome where the public is welcome to come and browse the catalog for up to two hours. Further research requires a day ticket. The ground floor search rooms are all electronic. There are five different search rooms. The Thomas Thompson House is a large storage facility which devotes an entire floor to a conservation department.

The Brits, especially the Scots, are very interested in tracing their genealogy. It’s a bit of a craze in fact. So it is unsurprising that the majority of the records held in the National Records pertain mostly to family history. The National Records deliver records for the National Archives of Scotland, National Register of Archives of Scotland, Scottish Register of Tartans, Registers for birth, death and marriage, and an organization called the Scottish People Centre which holds information on Scottish culture.

Here is a laundry list of the kinds of documents the organization manages: state papers, deeds, church records, valuation rolls, family and estate papers, old parish records, birth records, death records, marriage records, court and legal records, government papers, business records, railway records, maps and plans.

http://www.tartansauthority.com/assets/images/tartan/National%20Archives%201.jpg

The organization engages in an interesting cooperative effort with educators and schools across the country using a program called Glow. This program brings the archival materials to students through video conferencing.

Many of the documents are ancient enough that the unique art of paleography is needed to transcribe the documents. Luckily, the organization provides classes for employees and the public to develop this rare skill. The website has links to a website called Scottishhandwritting.com.

The oldest document the organization has is a brief from King David I granting the land for St. Cuthbert’s Church that dates from 1120 AD. The church is still there, by the way.


*The amazing display cap above is by Jessica Hische, an amazing designer I came across in my perpetual search for awesome design and typography. The letter comes from her Daily Drop Cap project.

Christ Church College, Oxford University

xford University is made of of several different colleges. Having seen the central library for the university, we walked just down the lane to Christ Church College. As with the Bodleian, much of the architecture of the college has been used in films, specifically the Harry Potter Series. The grand staircase and the great hall have both been used along with the grounds outside and some of the cloisters.

Christ Church was the home of two great fantastical English authors; JRR Tolkien and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. It is said that Alice Liddell played in the private garden of the head librarian. In the great hall, amongst the many panes of stained glass there are characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  including the Queen, the White Rabbit, and Alice herself.

The library at Christ Church was opened in 1772. Materials are organized by collection, or rather the former owner of a collection. The librarian argues that keeping these collections together as they were collected by individuals provides us with valuable information regarding not just the collections people owned but how they built their collections. There are many annotations from the owners in these books as well as the occasional letter from the author to the collector.

The library has 100,000 early printed books. Cataloging efforts for these collections has been underway for 13 years. No small feat. Many of the books descriptions are acquired through antiquarian MARC records. As of now about 2/3 of the early printed books are in the online catalog.

The Ornery Collection is a collection of early printed science books including works by Galileo. This collection also came with a number of scientific instruments and objects which were lent to the Science Museum in the 19th century. There is a collection of around 700 manuscripts including a roman manuscript from 500 AD and the earliest known manuscript in England, the Sermons of Augustus from 1163.

The library has the third largest collection of manuscript scores behind the British Library and the Bodleian including Jacobean and Tudor scores. Plaster ornamentation in the walls of the library reflect the content of the collections including a musical motif which features a number of musical instruments.

There are also some royal collections including illuminated manuscripts from Elizabeth I and a treatise on how to be King which belonged to Edward III. One unique object is Thomas Wolsey's Cardinal Hat. On special exhibition was a collection of original manuscripts by Lewis Carroll and translations of his works in many different languages.

 

*The amazing display cap above is by Jessica Hische, an amazing designer I came across in my perpetual search for awesome design and typography. The letter comes from her Daily Drop Cap project.

Bodleian Library, Oxford University

orty-five minutes outside of London is the lovely town of Oxford. This darling little burg has roots as far back as 700 AD. During these early years, men seeking education had to go to university in Paris. Several monasteries were established in Oxford due to its central location and subsequently, a university was established to keep the young men in the country to get their education. The Church of St. Mary the Virgin was used as the first educational building.

The first library at Oxford University was added to St Mary's in 1320. In those days the library was always located on the upper floor to protect the books from possible flood damage. The galleries were build with huge windows to allow sunlight in because no fire was allowed for illumination. To this day, each student must make a vow to never expose an open flame in the library. In the 15th century the first purpose built building for the university was erected for the purpose of lectures and examinations, all of which took place in Latin.

In 1488 a new library was finished which held the Duke Humfrey's Library and a divinity school. A few years later there was this guy named Henry who decided to shake things up a bit. As a result of his dissolution of the monasteries, all but a precious dozen of the books in the library were burned.

Thomas Bodley was a diploma tin the Netherlands and had been educated in Geneva and England. Seeing the value in education, he returned to Oxford to establish a central library. It is from his name that we have the Bodleian Library. The Bodleian Library was England's first copyright library and by 1610 was the second largest in the world. Each college in the university had their own library so the Bodleian acted as the university's central library. It houses 11 million books. Materials are not available for lending but must be accessed through the reading room.

The interior of the library is visually stunning. Much of the architecture has been featured in films including the Harry Potter series. In fact the library in the movie is in fact the stacks in the Bodleian. Two stories high, the books are packed on the shelves, showing off their beautiful spines.

*The amazing display cap above is by Jessica Hische, an amazing designer I came across in my perpetual search for awesome design and typography. The letter comes from her Daily Drop Cap project.

Royal Geographical Society

enerally speaking, when most people think of archives it all seems rather boring. Stacks of dry pages recording the mundane conversations of dusty old men talking about the weather from sixty years ago. But there is always a diamond in the ruff, something that makes people stop and wonder at the marvels within. The Royal Geographical Society is one such diamond.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Royal_Geographical_Society,_Kensington.jpg

 Those of us who grew up watching Indiana Jones all secretly yearned for a chance to be just such an explorer. The RGS, founded in 1830, was instrumental to the exploration, discovery, and mapping of much of the world's unseen places. The RGS archive houses 2 million items relating to expeditions of the earths surface. There are 1 million maps, half a million photographs and drawings, 250,000 books and periodicals, and 15,000 artifacts.

The RGS has commonly been viewed as something of an old boys club. The Society wished to make archive's materials  more accessible to the public so in 2004 the Foyle Reading Room was built  to bring more patrons to view the collections. The collections are open to RGS members and to the public but non-members are required to pay a small fee unless they work in education and are doing research for their teaching. The catalog is available online and patrons are encouraged to e-mail what materials they need the day prior to coming to the reading room so that the archivists have time to retrieve the materials. One can drop in unannounced and request materials but will have to wait about 10 minutes for their requests to be retrieved. Some materials are available for lending to members.

Faced with the daunting task of cataloging the archives 2 million items, archivists outsourced the cataloging to India. This saved the staff much time and effort. But such endeavors always come with some minor glitches so the archivists are still involved with ensuring all the information is accurate. To maximize the best use of the place available the items are stored such that the books and maps are together and the artifacts, archives and pictures are housed together.

So just what kind of artifacts are we talking about here? When I arrived, the archivist had a huge table absolutely covered in different objects from various expeditions. There were metal collars with the name of a ship and the longitude and latitude to be placed on foxes to try and locate a ship which disappeared in pursuit of the North Pole. There is an unopened canister of meat left from the abandoned ship Resolute. Timbers from this ship were used to make the desk which now resides in the Oval Office in the White House. There was a hand-drawn map of Arabia by Lawrence of Arabia. There were articles of clothing from some of the most revered explorers in modern history. Included in these artifacts were diaries, log books of ships, correspondence, planning papers, receipts, and sketches.

The highlight of this visit was not just being able to see and touch these incredibly rare objects. Our welcoming host, Eugene Rae, took the time to explain the complete history of these unique items. The RGS is so much more than just and archive, but a living vessel of exploration history; a unique gem for anyone who loves history and to dream of unexplored places.

*The amazing display cap above is by Jessica Hische, an amazing designer I came across in my perpetual search for awesome design and typography. The letter comes from her Daily Drop Cap project.

London Library

very hopeless book romantic dreams about a secret place where you disappear into and find yourself surrounded by thousands and thousands of books. Books from every corner of the world; books in every language; books you've never heard of and didn't know existed; books that might, if you simply cracked it open, change everything for you. Carlos Ruiz Zafon described a place like this in his novel Shadow of the Wind, known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There is a place very like this and it is the London Library.

http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/aboutus/index.htm

The library was founded in 1841 by Sir Charles Hayberd Wright. The emphasis of the library was as a lending library, but a lending library where one could borrow anything including the rare materials. The library was founded on the basis of subscription and continues this practice to this day. Members pay a fee to use the library. This way, the library is completely independent. It relies completely on the support of their 7,000 members and does not receive grants or funding.  Membership is rather expensive, but if used enough does pay for itself. Although there is a trust for students or researcher who cannot afford the monthly fee. They even have a royal patron. I believe you know her as the Queen.

The library contains 15 miles of shelving and predominantly features arts and humanities materials. There is materials representing 50 different languages, mostly European. The collections include history, literature, biography, topography, religion, and an incredibly broad category known as "Science and Miscellaneous." There are over 1 million books starting from the 16th century to the present. There is a rare materials collection which has 30,000 items. 97% of the collections are available for lending. The other 3% consist of the rarest and most valuable books such as a first edition Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species and an original King James Bible. They have 2,500 publications, 750 of which are current publications. The library acquired 8,000 new books a year and has subscriptions to electronic resources.

A short list of the literary  personalities which have held subscriptions to the library include George Eliot,  Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie, and TS Eliot who was president of the library from 1952-1964. Virginia Woolf began her membership when she was 22 and retained her membership for the rest of her life. As a child, her father was the president of the library.

http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/phase2/index.htm

The building itself is an enigma unto itself. The building has been built onto and added in so many ways it seems impossible to navigate as a novice patron. Due to the extreme weight of the books, the building itself began to sag. To remedy the problem, steel shelving was put in to make the structure for the books secure. On the top floor, one can look down through the metal grates which are the floor, all the way down seven floors. Those afraid of heights might want to keep your eyes up. This unique method to shelving presents certain challenges. The open grates allow for water to trickle down through all layers of books with nothing to hold it back. The same is true of flames.

There is a small preservation department which oversees the preservation management of the materials. There are no dust jackets. Any books that comes in as a paperback is taken to a binding firm and hard bound. The preservation team binds or re-binds 4,500 books a year. The team is also responsible for cataloguing the provenance of an object. The library keeps all versions of a book. The current head librarian enforces this as she believes that it is just as important to see not just the text but the manner in which it is interpreted across time.

The current head librarian has a wonderful quote which relates my own feelings in regards to books: "A good book is the essence of the human soul... The good of a book is not in the facts that can be got out of it, but the kind of resonance it awakens in our minds."


*The amazing display cap above is by Jessica Hische, an amazing designer I came across in my perpetual search for awesome design and typography. The letter comes from her Daily Drop Cap project.

Steven Lawrence Gallery

boarded the boat towards Greenwich expecting to see the Greenwich Naval College Library. I then learned that the library wasn't available to be seen because it is being moved to another facility. So instead we went to see the Steven Lawrence Gallery.

 The Steven Lawrence Gallery was created in 2000. The beginnings of the gallery are steeped in deep sorrow. Steven Lawrence was fatally stabbed at a bus stop in London. The police did not seek to prosecute the parties involved as their families  were criminal informants. Thus the racially motivated murder became a scandal. The term "institutionalized racism" emerged in the wake of this tragedy, revealing the corruption which was playing out in the system. Steven Lawrence's mother wished to establish an art gallery which would feature dynamic visual art which she felt expressed her son's own creativity.

http://www.gre.ac.uk/pr/slg

The gallery features exhibitions which are especially pertinent to Greenwich. The current exhibition features a collection of pieces from a group of artists. In the 1970's a group of artists around the Greenwich area, needing studio space but unable to afford it, started taking over abandoned industrial buildings to live and work in. The group worked in this way until the mid 1990's. Jeff Lowe, one of the groups founding members, later founded a charitable studio organization for artists in need of a studio space.

The exhibition is designed to pair pieces with similar color and emotion are coupled together. The pieces were a mixture of paintings and sculpture. Several of the artists featured were spouses or in relationships with the other artists, revealing just how close this group of artists are.  This exhibition is the second of a two part exhibition. The first show displayed archival materials from the group's organization.

After the visit to the gallery, we took a tour of the grounds of Greenwich. The place is the site of such history its hard to keep it all straight. It was the site of the Royal Naval College, the Palace of King James IV, the birthplace of Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I. It served as a naval hospital for retired sailors. It currently houses the college of Greenwich and Trinity College of Music. There are so many buildings build and each one seemingly built at a different time.

Walking the grounds, viewing the original foundations, and seeing the grand hall which the sailors found too fancy to eat in, one feels just how much history there can be in one place.

One of my favorite features is the Skittle Alley. Built for the sailors entertainment, the old bowling alley has pins made from the wood of old ships and the balls are left over cannon balls.

*The amazing display cap above is by Jessica Hische, an amazing designer I came across in my perpetual search for awesome design and typography. The letter comes from her Daily Drop Cap project.