Hey Tomorrow

Today's visit was to the National Art Library where we were treated to a selection from their special library collection and a tour of their space. The National Art Library is located in the Victoria & Albert Museum, overlooking a pair of beautiful public reading rooms. Their extensive art and design reference collection include, among others, books, magazines, comics, art books, and auction house sales catalogues. Among these are several true treasures, including materials by Shakespeare, Dickens, and DaVinci. One of the National Art Library's Reading Rooms We stopped first to see the special collection items. Our guide showed to us and described several styles of books, allowing us a close up look at some of the library's unique and curious items. My favourite was a peep-show book. It's a series of image plates connected by fabric, each with a hole in the middle. By looking through the hole you can see multiple layers of prints...

This morning's adventure was to Middle Temple Library , a law library available to all members of the four Inns of Court - the professional associations for all barristers in England and Wales. Middle Temple's Garden As this is a private library we were fortunate to have Adam, the Training and Development Librarian, give us a sneak peek at the library space, the Benchers' room, and the impressive Middle Temple Hall. Staff were preparing for lunch as we toured around the Hall, laying place settings on many long tables situated in a large room adorned in notable Barristers' crests, suits of armour, and stained-glass windows. The whole effect was very formidable - not to mention delicious smelling! Middle Temple Hall The library is housed in the Ashley building, named for Robert Ashley, a passionate book collector who bequeathed his collection to the Temple in the 1640's, kick-starting the library we now see. While today the library holds about 250,000...

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...

Inside the large, curved centre of the British Museum is their archive , a room not too many people visit anymore but where we were lucky enough to stop in for a tour.   Led by their straight-shooting archivist of 12 years, Francesca, we were shown systematically around the large room as she shared the collection, their history, and the institution's archival problems with us. The Museum was built in 1855 with this space a reading room for the British Library, which was merged with the Museum at the time. In 1973 the Library moved out to find space on their own and this room shifted to Museum priorities. The only issue with the gorgeous space is that because of its historic significance they are not allowed to make major modifications, essentially freezing it in time and preventing the Museum from removing any of the reading room benches or carrels. As such it is largely unusable space. Ergo, the archive moved in.  Their collection is a vast array of materials, larg...

Greenwich, perhaps better known as the place where time zones begin, is also home to the National Maritime Museum (NMM). While we did tour around their exhibition and take many photos on the Prime Meridian line, the primary purpose for our visit was to chat with archive staff Mike and Vicki to gain an understanding of what is unique about their collection.  As a part of the Royal Museums Greenwich, the Museum is situated with the Royal Observatory, Cutty Sark, and Queen’s House next to a vast and hilled green park, much enjoyed by joggers and dogs. Their mission is "together we’re dedicated to enriching people’s understanding of the sea, the exploration of space, and Britain's role in world history."  The archive's collection consists of about 6000 items located on the shelves around their public area and an additional 20,000 items stored over several floors in another location. Included among these 26,000 items are books, manuscripts, maps, prints, and p...

Program kicks off with a tour of the River Thames and too many photos of Tower Bridge Home base for the next several weeks! Apparently, Benedict Cumberbatch saved a man from muggers down the road from us, because Sherlock Holmes is real life (it took me days too long to make this connection) North of us is St. John's Wood Church Grounds, a disused graveyard with very old (by Canadian standards) and beautiful (empirically) headstones Camden Market's resident heron dining companion More from Kew Gardens, because it's just the prettiest

To cap our first week in London our class took an hour-long train ride to Oxford to visit two of their most notable libraries, the Bodleian and Christ Church . I have previously been to Oxford and had great memories of this city so was excited to revisit it but I was not expecting that this would turn out to be one of the most special visits for me.  To begin our tour we were given a history of the Oxford University and insight into the operations of the 37 colleges that make up the institution. We weren't able to take any photos inside the library itself, so please search out the images now to get a better appreciation of just how beautiful this space is!  The Bodleian is one of those libraries whose reputation precedes it, and for excellent reason. As the main research library at Oxford University, this library is formidable in both appearance and collections. As a deposit library, they receive a copy of every book, paper, and article publi...