British Library

Apparently the renovation of the British Library took criticism from all sides. I've seen it described as "red-brick brutalism" and HRH Prince Charles said it was like an academy for the secret police(!). I think tempers have cooled by now, because this was one hopping place, packed with laptop-bearing people using BL's free wireless, when I visited on Monday. The current special exhibition is about magnificient maps, and I also visited the very dimly lit John Ritblat Gallery, to look at things like Beowulf, the Magna Carta, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures under the Ground and the journal of Anarctic explorer Scott's journals. Oh, yes, a few things from Wm. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and treasures like a Koran, Hindu and Buddhist religious texts, and a Gutenberg bible.

There are some great quotes from notables on billboards outside, advertising the BL. This one is from actor and scholar, Stephen Fry, who played my favorite person, Jeeves, in a TV series a while back. The wierd 3-D painting is "Paradoxymoron" by Patrick Hughes, and hangs in the basement cloakroom, where you have to leave all coats, bags, pens, books, etc., before you can enter any of the BL reading rooms. Next time I need to create a computer password, I know which word I will consider using!

And, how do you get a reader's pass? Well, you apply for one. I actually did this online before I left Seattle, so I went to the reader's pass room, completed a short interview, and now I have a pass valid until May 2013. I have plans to return to the BL later this month and experience life in a library where you order everything from the bowels of the building, where the minimum delivery time is 70 minutes, and apparently the books are delivered to you by a runner, at your numbered seat! Years ago, there was a scene in the movie Ghostbusters, where an ethereal librarian was floating around in the basement of the NY public library. I bet they have ghosts here too, down in the stacks.

In the recent past I worked in libraries where a few too many users thought an accurate descriptive catalog was unnecessary. Well, kids, not in this library! If you want to see any of the 9 million items, you've got to use the right tool.