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...

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral is on the must-see list of everyone I have talked to about London, so it was great to see the visitor points of the Cathedral but even more great to get the behind the scenes "attic room" tour. Our guide, Yvonne, was an informative and lively woman who has been with the St. Paul's for 12 years. She shared with our group the history of the Cathedral, saying that what we see today is actually the 5th iteration of the religious space, having most recently been replaced after the 4th cathedral burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. It took Christopher Wren about 40 years to complete this project, finishing in 1710. A facsimile of the cathedral made by Christopher Wren After bringing us up to the triforium, or what she dubbed "the attic", Yvonne showed to us some of the treasures the Cathedral has no space for in their main areas. Included here were daring paintings, Viking tombstones, and stones from former cathedrals (ie. a pil...

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