Oxford

Today we visited the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The place has so much history, it's really overwhelming. The first building we entered first opened as a divinity school in 1488 and has beautiful late-Gothic architecture. The guide told us that the Bodleian is the oldest public library in Britain, and the second largest (after the British Library). The library acts as a depository in that they collect a copy of everything published in Britain as well as other items. They have material in 125 different languages. As if this weren't enough, some of the Bodleian's rooms were used in the filming of the Haarry Potter movies!


But back to the history. After some of the initial book-less rooms, we were taken into Duke Humphrey's reading room, which is the oldest in the library. Many of the books here are still chained to the wall as they were in the early days of the library. On the end of each shelf was a framed shelf lists which acted as the first library catalog, describing which books were held on that shelf. The Humphrey library was also one of the first galleried libraries in Britain. By putting the stairs to the gallery by the librarian's desk, the lirbarian could monitor who went up to the shelves; this also meant that those books would not have to be chained to the wall.

After the Humphrey's library were were led into underground tunnels that connect the old library to the new. The tunnels were originally used as air raid shelters, but fortunately, Oxford was never actually bombed during the war. (The guide explained to us that there is a rumor that the reason they weren't bombed is because Hitler wanted an honorary degree from Oxford.) Also in the tunnels is an old conveyor system that moves books between the libraries and is still in use.

Other than the library, the trip to Oxford was fairly uneventful. We traveled there by train from Paddington Station, which was nice if only because I was always a fan of the Paddington Bear books when I was a kid. They even had a kiosk selling Paddington Bear-related merchandise, and I ended up buying a new copy of the first book in the series. Once in Oxford, I wandered around with some of my classmates, going in some of the toursity shops and checking out the town on foot. After the library tour, we hit the Alice in Wonderland Shop (which was fun, though I didn't buy anything), grabbed dinner at a nearby pub, then grabbed the train back to London.

Image courtesy of bookpatrol.net

The V&A Museum Library

Today I visited the Victoria & Albert Museum Library. The library is open to the public, but is a closed-access library; this means that while people can browse titles online, most of the actual books and materials will need to be retrieved by a librarian. One interesting aspect of the library is that they have no classification system--everything is shelved by size. Because most art books can be large or unusual sizes, this method is used to best utilize available shelf space. Another interesting fact about the library is that they never weed items, thus space is always an issue. This is further complicated by the fact that the museum will often fight them for space for its exhibits. The librarian showed us a room where library materials were in locked shelves along the walls, but a museum exhibit took up the central space in the room.

In addition to the regular art collection, the library also contains a special colelction. Some of the items include Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, a first folio Shakespeare, and Dickens' manuscripts (among other things). These items can be pulled out for patrons but only if absolutely necessary and if the patron provides appropriate letters and credentials for needing to see the items. One way around this is items like da Vinci's notebook, of which they have a photocopy. That way they almost never have to pull out the original. A couple interesting items they showed us were "art books", which weren't books at all in the traditional sense, but works of art. One was bound comic book pages that had several pieces cut out, making the original story unreadable. Another looked more like a wooden box, but had text written all over the inside, and pieces that came out of it, such as a small scroll.

Other than visiting the library, I didn't spend too much time at the library. However, I did take the time to visit the Beatrix Potter exhibit. My mom read those stories so many times growing up that I was eager to see the original artworks. The exhibit was well done in that it had each original illustration with the text from the story underneath it; thus you could walk around the room and read the story while viewing the original artwork.

After the museum, a classmate and I went to Hyde park for a bit. The park is massive and I intend to go back as I only got to see a fraction of it. We followed the park trip with a quick dinner at a pub, and then we were off to see the Welsh band Los Campesinos! play a show. The show was a lot of fun, it was at a smaller venue and the crowd was really into it. I had seen the band once before (at last year's Lollapalooza) but seeing a band at a festival is a lot different from seeing them at one of their own shows.

Image courtesy of curiousexpeditions.org

The British Museum

Today, deep within the bowels of the British Museum, we visited the museum's central archives. The archives collection is composed of six types of records--government, meetings' minutes, staff finance, building, temporary exhibitions, and reading room records. The records were actually really interesting, both in their breadth and content. One particularly interesting item we got to see was an exploded bomb shell that hit the museum during WWII. We also saw pictures of the damage. While I've read about the air raids in London, I don't know that I realized just how much was bombed and destroyed here during that time. Every site we've visited so far has had something to say on the destruction caused by the bombings. Other things we got to see included a property deed from 1694 and a folder related to their King Tut exhibit in 1973. The exhibit folder was interesting because it included all kinds of information related to the exhibit, as well as pictures of the lines of people waiting to get in.

After the archives tour, a classmate and I wandered around the British Museum and saw--among other things--the Rosetta Stone. The museum itself is massive and was too much to get through in a day; even after breaking for lunch at a pub we didn't get around to everything.

British Museum image courtesy of foundationstone.org