St. Paul's Cathedral Library



All photos are taken from the St. Paul's webpage.

 On Monday, 4 July, we visited the St. Paul's Cathedral Library. We were greeted in the lobby of the cathedral by Mr. Joe Wisdom, the cathedral librarian, who was kind enough to give us a tour of the triforium of the cathedral, which is the level that is halfway up to the dome and where the library is situated.

St. Paul's was built in 1710 as a Protestant cathedral and designed by Sir Christoper Wren to rebuild after London's Great Fire of 1666 destroyed the church that was previously there. The sculpture of a book and heart over the west door of the cathedral indicates the importance of books, especially the Bible, in the mission of the cathedral; there is also a similar sculpture on the staircase that takes you to the library. As we entered the triforium level, there were several artifacts, such as furniture, stones from the building, pulpits that are no longer in use, sculptures, and artwork displayed that Mr. Wisdom indicated might be turned into an exhibition if funding permits within the next couple of years.

Mr. Wisdom then took us to the library, which was a fairly small room of books that had two levels. The library was beautiful, dimly lit as to not harm the books, many of which were old and fairly rare.  He discussed the history of the library; he said that there had been collections of books in St. Paul's since the Middle Ages, many of which were personal collections of the deans (ministers) that were practicing in the church and there were also inventories of collections that could be considered a library (not a personal collection), but much of the libraries that existed before 1666 were destroyed by the fire as well--only 10 printed books and 3 manuscripts were left. One of the books was a psalter, or a book of psalms.

After the cathedral was rebuilt, what was left of the collection of the cathedral library was supplemented by the Bishop of London, who gave two thousand books from his collections to start the collection, and the library began to acquire materials from clergy after they died. The most rare volume that the library has is a 1526 Tyndall New Testament, something for which Tyndall died because he translated the Bible into English from the Vulgate, which was Latin.

The library is currently arranged by size, and uses a shelf locating system for retrieval--each set of shelves is numbered, and each shelf within that set is lettered, and then the third indication is the books spot on the shelf (whether it is first, second, third, etc.). This arrangement is often used for archival collections as well, and it works fairly well until something is reshelved in the wrong space--for a library of this size, it seems to be a managable retrieval device.

Today, the St. Paul's Cathedral Library would be considered a special library, as it collects mostly books on theology and the subjects which support theology, such as history, sociology, and biography of deans of the cathedral, like John Donne.  The accessions that the library acquires today are limited--they only collect materials within this scope, as their space and resources are limited, as are most libraries within this economy. Mr. Wisdom also discussed the people who use the library, which are primarily those doing academic research--students, scholars, etc.--but that there are also many more people doing their family histories that use the library.  By looking at the guestbook, it seemed to me that there were only a few researchers that came in per week; perhaps if the library wanted to raise its profile, there would be some indication (with a sign or a mention in  a brochure) that the library was there and available for research. However, as Mr. Wisdom discussed, there is always the debate between access and preservation that occurs for a librarian who wants to preserve the materials in the library's collection--how accessible should you make the library when you want to make sure that all of the materials stay in as good of condition as possible. The webpage for the library shows some photos of the beautiful library and its collection and gives you more information about the library.