Hello!

Welcome to my blog where I’ll share all sorts of tidbits and photos about the libraries, archives, and special collections that I visit as a Library and Information Studies student abroad in London.

I'm Jessica, an LIS student at the University of Alberta. Together with other students from around North America, I will spend a month in London, England to learn about librarianship, collections management, and archival preservation at various British institutions. Check back often to see where we visit and to read what was shared by the fantastic librarians, archivists, and information professionals that lead us through these stunning locations.

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King's College - Maughan Library, Foyle Special Collections

At King's College, we visited the Foyle Special Collections in the Maughan Library . Katie Sambrook, the head of Special Collections, and her colleague Adam showed us a selection of items from their collection. The photos below showcase some of the material we saw, but another not shown was a tour book documenting the 1860 royal tour taken by the Prince of Wales, Edward, who was rumoured to have been chosen for it to quell his wild ways. It didn't work. Another interesting item was a book about the Polish ghetto, donated by a Holocaust survivor who collected items about the Jewish experience. Conservators deacidified the pages and laminated them to preserve them as much as possible. Vesalius' On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543) John Ogilby's America, Being an Accurate Description of the New World (1671) A 1799 map of London Extensive conservation has repaired the map's frayed edges An example of a 19th-century chapbook K...

The National Museum of Computing - Bletchley Park

Our trip to Bletchley Park was the one that I was most looking forward to, having a vague idea about the covert activities that occurred there during the Second World War thanks to shows like The Bletchley Circle and movies like the Imitation Game (which takes bold creative liberties, it turns out). We were there to see the National Museum of Computing , which is actually a separate entity from Bletchley Park though they share a space and a history. The location was chosen because it is only a train ride away from London without being conspicuously close . Our guide, a mathematician and rocket scientist named Sheridan, led our group through a history-rich tour, detailing the advancements in computing science with various iterations of computers and objects like memory storage devices. He went into detail about the great minds who contributed to codebreaking during WWII, like Alan Turing, Bill Tutte, and Tommy Flowers and the machines they de...

London Transport Museum

Tucked into the Covent Garden Piazza is the London Transport Museum (LTM), housing a collection of over 450,000 items related to London's history of urban growth and development as it ties to its transportation. I went to this museum to find out more information about train travel and timetables for my research paper, and though I was disappointed to learn the library is closed because they are in the process of moving their collection, I was able to find out lots about the evolution of all forms of London's transportation and their projections for the future. They also have an excellent website with lots of information about their library's physical and digital collection which has filled in a lot of gaps for me. According to their website, the LTM library "holds a unique collection of over 14,000 books, journals and special collections covering the development of public transport in London – past, present and future." Online users have access to ...

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