London Library

Today, we were able to visit one of the most exclusive libraries in the world. The London Library is a subscription lending library, meaning that an annual membership fee must be paid in order to check out books--which right now is somewhere around £400 per year. Apparently there are a lot of celebrities who visit the London Library, including a lot of writers--the current president is playwright Tom Stoppard. The day we visited we had just missed Hugh Grant that morning, who had popped in to use the loo and to do some research about a new film role. I like to think that Stephen Fry is probably a member, though the people who worked there weren't very revealing about those who subscribed. This discretion is probably what they pay for, but we were a bit disappointed that we didn't see anyone famous. Oh, well.



http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/images/aboutus/exterior_lights_on.jpg

The library has a very long history--it was founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle, who wanted to have a library where one could actually take books home. The British Library at this time only allowed certain people to use the reading room, and books could not be taken out. The London Library has a long history of being a lending library, which predates the Public Library Acts, and which is funded by subscriptions and donations. You may still borrow some of the library's oldest books, some dating from the 16th century, and take them home to read.

The library's collections are impressive, containing over 1 million books and over 15 miles of shelving. The stacks are open, so patrons are able and encouraged to browse the shelves--97% of the books are available for loan--there are only a few that are too rare and in too poor condition to be allowed to be taken home. They have thirty thousand rare books dating from the 16th century, 2500 periodical titles, and 750 current periodicals, not including electronic resources that the library subscribes to. The library acquires around 8000 new books each year, and doesn't throw books away--thus they've had a problem with space and have had to add on to the building in several different renovations. Last summer, they completed a new wing, the T.S. Eliot wing that should give them enough space for the next 20 years.

The library is arranged by subject area, these include: arts and humanities, history, literature, biography, art, topography, science and miscellaneous, and religion. These subject areas are then further split up by subjects within these areas. For example, literature would be arranged by the language in which it is written--the library contains materials in more than 50 languages. The science and miscellaneous section might have a section on dogs, or domesticated animals, etc. They have an online catalog which contains most of the items that the library owns, but still retain paper indexes for those materials that have not yet made it into the online catalog.

We also heard from Sheila, who is a part of the preservation department at the London library; she talked to us about the way in which librarians have to monitor the well-being of books and make informed decisions about whether preservation or access is more important for rare materials--we also discussed this issue in many of the other libraries we've visited. While it is important to make sure that people are able to use materials of this sort, it is also important to restrict that access in some cases in order to make materials available to future generations. One solution to this problem is digitization, something that the London Library has yet to really undertake. However, they do keep in mind that the preservation standards of today might not be considered the best in the future, so they only preserve books in ways that are reversible if need be--for example, they use an organic wheat paste that is water soluble.

Although I thought the collections of the London Library and their clientele are both very impressive, there is something in me that doesn't understand the exclusivity of the London Library. To make the library more accessible to people who may not be able to afford the subscription fee, the library has a London Library Trust, which provides a sort of scholarship for membership to the London Library. Membership in the London Library seems to be a sort of status symbol; one could say they were in the same organization as George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, Henry James, T.S. Eliot, and more. The London Library has been able to achieve a very rare and exciting collection of books that have survived because it is exclusive and well-funded.  I really enjoyed my visit to the London Library, the librarians who showed us around were very welcoming and very nice, and they provided us with a lot of good information about one of the oldest lending libraries in the world.