British Library Reading Rooms

Photos: the Tube, and Eros in Piccadilly Circus

More dreary rainy weather today, so I went to the British Library and spent time with several books in the Rare Books & Music Room. It's a very different experience to pass from the packed public areas of the BL, where every table, chair and electrical outlet seems to be occupied by a harried student hunched over a laptop. My Reader's Pass gave me entry into the quiet of a spacious and well-lit research paradise. The desks include special padded cradle holders to use when you want to read a rare book. Using your Reader's Pass number, you search the library's catalog, and place orders online for materials, which are retrieved by library clerks and held for you at a service desk. The daily limit is 10 books, and the minimum time to retrieve is 70 minutes. You can only take a pencil and some paper into the reading room, and you carry your stuff in a clear plastic bag. if I'd brought a laptop with me on this trip, that can come in as well. I left my laptop in the US, because I will be in France next month riding a bike, and I decided it was nuts to carry a computer in my panniers. Everything else is checked in the cloakroom downstairs. The guards check your pass each time you enter and exit the room, and there are CCTV cameras everywhere.

Here's what I looked at: 3 books of early C2oth Australian literature, 2 with etchings by Norman Lindsay, and one with 3 wood cuts, tipped into the book [glued along one edge]; 2 letterpressed limited edition books of poetry from the 1970s, with handprinted handcolored linocuts by H. Weissenborn and a 1947 book called La femme et le pantin by Pierre Louys, illustrated with exquisite color lithographs. This last one was a surprise. The desk staff made a mistake, as I never actually requested this one, but they brought it up with the others, and I took a look anyway. I was here to look at the books both as physical art objects as well as "books," so I didn't mind the unexpected delivery. Looks like mistakes like this aren't unusual. Further up the pick-up desk an irate researcher was giving the desk clerk hell over deliveries of books she'd not requested. No doubt the 10-book per day limit was really sticking in her craw.

If I want to use the BL's collection of newspapers, I'll need to go to their branch in Colindale. They are in process of digitizing their newspapers, so it's possible that the ones I want are unavailable. The collection is pretty dynamic, and mistakes about holdings inevitably occur. One of the books I'd requested a 1930's edition of The Magic Pudding, which was actually written as well as illustrated by Norman Lindsay didn't seem to be available. When I left the BL this afternoon around 3pm, it was still "on order." You need a bit of patience in a national research library of 9 million items. I think I can handle it.

No photos allowed in the reading rooms. I walked in the rain from the BL to Piccadilly Circus Tube, through Soho, on the way home.