The British Library – where no shhing is necessary…

The British Library is very much a place after my own heart in the reference library sense. When I worked in the Art Library at the University of Iowa I didn’t really ever like to see the books leave the room and the British Library never lets anything out.

Their system involves becoming a reader, where after providing comprehensive identification and an interview regarding why you actually need to do research there and touch their books and manuscripts you receive a card and can take a space in any one of the eleven reading rooms and have your list of books and materials delivered to you. There are 1200 seats in the reading rooms, and any book can be delivered to any of them via a conveyor system (which has 33,000 routes), preferably within seventeen minutes.

The overall library has many collections, including about 80,000 stamps, rare materials such as the Magna Carta and the written copy of Beowulf, a document that contains Shakespeare’s signature and copies of his first Folio, and a Guttenberg Bible. The history of printing is well established throughout their collection already and it will continue on that way as they legally must receive a free copy of every single thing printed in the UK.

Since one cannot get lost in the stacks at the library because the British Library brings the books to the researcher, the British Library has one collection visible that makes the building seem a bit more familiar to library users, a five story book tower holding the collection of King George III. He gave his purchased-for-looks collection to the British Library under the conditions that it would be visible at all times and usable. It is encased in the glass tower and only specially trained librarians are allowed to move inside the tower to get the books out if a reader requires them. It seems to me that this would be a very prestigious and possibly sneeze-inducing task, however, our guide made many mentions of temperature controls and so I’m assuming the book tower is under special conditions as well and perhaps would be both the best and worst place to be if the library were attacked by zombies (generally I judge a good library's set up based on its vulnerability to petty thieves and the walking undead).

As the most government funded institution in the UK it is no surprise to me that this was the most impressive library I have ever seen facility and collection wise; but I haven’t seen the Library of Congress yet, so it probably won’t stay that way.