A collaborative journal by Sam Jack, Anne Keech, Andrea Thimesch & Stephen Woody

Librarian’s LondonThe

Inside this week:Crossword & Sudoku ........ Page 2AYesteryears ........................... Page 6AOpinions ............................... Page 7ASports ..................................... Page 1BClassifieds ............................. Page 7B

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February 12th - 21st, 2016 Vol. 1 No. 1

Page 3Egyptology archive preserves evidence of drowned site

Treasures of the British Library!Turn to Page 2

Each member of the Emporia State Group was asked to visit the Senate House Library exhibit “Not With Words, But With Things” during free time. With no tour guide or British library professional leading the way, the Senate House experience was less interactive, but was a valuable chance to get a look inside an academic library and examine some interesting arti-facts.

The library itself had great spaces for stu-dents, including some very nice leather couches. It was a qui-et, secluded space, offering a fantastic benefit to a somewhat smaller subset of Lon-don’s population.

Some academic li-braries in Kansas and the United States feel as though they are losing their identity as entities separate from the universi-ties, with study rooms repurposed or stacks cleared away to make room for other forms of storage. The Sen-ate House did not have that feeling at all. It was clear that the Senate House Library has its own institutional trajec-tory and is valued for what it does and what it is. Objects in dis-play cases scattered through the library gave an interesting, if somewhat haphaz-ard, window into the history of the library and the changing technology that has affected it.

For ten days in February, Sam Jack, Anne Keech, Andrea Thimesch and Stephen Woody joined Emporia State University library school colleagues in exploring the “Librarians’ London.”

From revered, historical institutions to more humble, but no more dispens-able, sites, it was a wide-ranging, infor-mative and inspirational trip. Details and photographs of each library visit can be found throughout this “news-paper.”

The direct and straightforward learn-ing, facilitated by generous British li-brary professionals, was substantial. Yet the trip as a whole – including our impressions of London’s and the UK’s culture as well as the raw experience of international travel – provided another layer of meaning and enrichment that emerged more slowly over the course of our stay.

The more holistic learning process began even before we had left our homes in the United States. Three members of our group – Jack, Thi-mesch and Woody – hail from relative-ly small towns in Kansas, while Keech is from the larger Portland area, a me-tropolis that is nevertheless dwarfed by London.

Arrivals and departures: Trip allowed exploration

That’s one way to get “hands-on.” At the urging of other group members, Stephen Woody donned a straitjacket during a visit to the Wellcome Library’s Reading Room. It was fun, but it also spurred discussion about ways libraries should (and should not) engage with the past.

Members of the ESU Librarians’ London group, still a bit jetlagged, walk from the Holiday Inn to their first visit, at the national head-quarters of CILIP.

“I have been in the United States my entire life, and I feel safe here,” Woody commented. “It is very easy to get lost in a big city like London. Going to college from a small town really broadened my worldview and helped me to see things I was not able to before. I expect to be able to say the same thing about expanding my worldview after this trip.”

Several group members noted that the U.S. is a very large country with a great amount of variety. What it lacks, however, is a recorded his-tory – and a cultural continuit – that stretches back as far as England’s.

As soon as we each got off our planes at Heathrow airport, we start-ed to observe cultural differences and modulations. Style was one ob-vious difference, with a more formal look prevailing and men tending to wear better-tailored clothing.

The expected British accents were present, but there were also a great many people speaking French, Ital-ian, Russian, Spanish and many other languages. The polyglot variety re-ally brought home that London is a truly global city, with a profusion of ethnic and linguistic communities that are not necessarily very visible to tourists.

The other articles in this newspa-per go into detail about what we did

Pub dialog

From left, Stephen Woody, Anne Keech, Sam Jack and Andrea Thimesch pose for a dimly-lit selfie during a group dinner at a local pub. Evening get-togethers sched-uled throughout the trip provided opportunities to compare notes and make plans in fun, informal settings.

On the afternoon of Thursday, Febru-ary 18th, the Emporia SLIM students visited the he Egypt Explora-tion Society, located at the edge of Blooms-bury, which contains “a world-class Egyptologi-cal library and a unique collection of archival material relating to the Society’s history from its foundation in 1882 to the present day.” The students were greeted by Hazel Gray, office manager and librarian to the EES for just over two years, and were re-warded with a talk on the history of the or-ganization and candid discussion. A major theme present through-out the visit was that of resourcefulness.

Ms. Grey, during her tenure, has reorganized the library and archives, housed in the former home of Ricardo Cami-

The British Film In-stitute Rueben Library was visited by a small group of Emporia State University students as a special trip to see one of London’s many unique special libraries. The li-brary’s collections span “the history of cinema. Our priority is compre-hensive coverage of the moving image in Britain, but the collection is inter-national in scope.” The focus of the BFI and the Library is on the art of “the world of film, tele-vision and the moving image”.

It was with great en-thusiasm that Sarah Cur-rant spoke to the group. As manager of reader services for the BFI Reu-ben Library, her focus is on how users access and interact with the materi-als available in the Read-ing Room. While the BFI Library has many rare ar-tifacts, Ms. Currant em-phasized the importance of getting materials into the hands of users. As long as materials are in-tact, they should be used. She said there should be no “sacred cows” in the library and that the pur-pose of the collection is

See BFI, Page 2

See ARRIVALS, Page 2

Wiener Library preserves evidence of atrocities

Library focuses

on history of cinema

Beyond words: Exhibit offers window into

Senate HouseLibrary

An exhibit case in the Senate House Li-brary exhibition “Not With Words, But With Things.”

See EGYPT, Page 2

EES Library supports present,

records past explorations

Page 4The ancient Royal Library of Ashurbanipal

Page 2 The Librarian’s LondonVISITS

The British Library was a wonderful building, that was built to look like a boat! This Library is a public library that seemed to serve most of the peo-ple of London.

We found it rather in-teresting that the library itself contained its own museum-exhibits that held value to the library pro-fession. Containing many exhibits and and books for academics all over the world makes it a hotspot for research.

Learning about the se-curity measures that are in place to protect the col-lection seemed extreme

to someone who doesn’t understand the value of such things, but in fact as an incident with a pencil sharpener blade was refer-enced, these measures are necessary.

The British Library’s re-quirements of proven ad-dressees and real reasons to see it’s special collection items seem to be a com-mon theme through most libraries throughout Great Britain.We were given the sense that this is an enor-mous operation.

Giant warehouses with robots! Book delivery sys-tems! Three people and a locked book cart to re-

British Library houses scads of treasures

move items from the King George Room! A six foot tall atlas!

We initially never under-stood the purpose of hav-ing closed stacks but when you have such a large col-lection and the books are arranged for efficiency and not findability, there really is no other way to deal with getting books to

people. The British Library’s

overall system is not al-phabetical or based on categories. Instead, books are simply placed on the shelf in the order re-ceived, and their locations are marked for later re-trieval.

Any library lacking open stacks can deploy this sys-

tem without much fear of negative consequences – but if the key, meaning the master list of numbers, were to be lost, the entire collection would suddenly become a chaotic pile. Presumably, data security measures are in place to make that impossible.

The sheer volume of items that get donated to

the library each month (with a mandatory law of publications must be donated to the library for free), seemed rather shocking but considering the British Library’s only true rival is the U.S Library of Congress, it can be concluded that the volume isn’t all that shocking after all.

ABOVE: The King’s Library, a vast collection of books assembled by King George III, serves as the centerpiece of the British Library. LEFT: A printing press used to create early British stamps was dis-played near the British Library’s extensive stamp collection.

and saw across London. However, some broad themes did emerge.

One theme was financial constraint. As in the Unit-ed States, many London li-braries must work around financial difficulties, caused both by trends in government as well as the brute fact of being located in one of the most expen-sive cities in the world. As in the US, elected officials are often under-informed about the proper role of libraries, and they may ap-proach library funding us-ing an improper analogy to for-profit business.

We learned at CILIP – on our very first day of visits – that more than 400 libraries have closed their doors in the last two years. That fact is discouraging, but seeing the faces and hearing the passion of the many librar-ians we met gives us hope that, with so many people of goodwill working in be-half of libraries, the trend will reverse itself.

The uncertain support for London’s libraries, and the attendant battle to con-

trol their future, seems of a piece with the spirited city English poet William Blake imagined in his prophetic literature. It is the “spiritual fourfold London,” “perfect in its building, ornaments & perfection,” and also the London of Blake’s poem of the same name, char-acterized by “mind-forg’d manacles” and in-your-face suffering, sometimes horrifically ignored. It was hard to avoid thinking of Blake’s contraries: reason and energy, repulsion and attraction. Without the contraries, Blake said, there would be no progression, and the human spirit would sink into a stony, sleepless death-state.

In the dual existence of the contraries, Blake saw endless horror arm in arm with delight. Lon-don is light, history, pres-ent experience, opportu-nity, chances for catharsis, transcendence, fame, and so on. But it seems to leave a trail of dead and injured, those who spent their life’s energy or found themselves ground in its gears. Our homes in the United States seem to promise much less, but they also offer a much surer sustenance for exist-ing values.

ArrivalsContinued from Page 1

to provide access to the his-tory of the creation of film. To this end, membership fees have been elimi-nated and other rules relaxed.

G e t t i n g into the nitty-gritty of how the library o r g a n i z e s its hold-ings, Sarah showed the group of s t u d e n t s how to navi-gate through the Library’s catalog, highlighting the ability to link a variety of resources to a film, director or actor. The BFI contin-ues to set the standards for cataloging materials related to the moving image.

Many of the libraries that have been visited by the Emporia students have been housed in historic structures that each pres-ent their own challenges. Although the BFI library’s operations had relocated to the iconic Southbank Cen-

tre (and they were quite settled into the space), the sixty-year-old con-crete struc-ture presents unique and o n g o i n g p r o b l e m s with regard to storage. Much of the c o l l e c t i o n is housed off-site. En-trepreneur-ial spirit has

helped create new funding and support for the BFI Reuben Library. Publishing and film release agreements have added revenue streams that help support the work of the BFI and the Library.

BFIContinued from Page 1

The exterior of the British Film Institute. The BFI sets standards for cataloging material related to the moving image.

nos, into a research hub at the center of the history and archeo-logical exploration of Egypt that includes periodicals, pamphlets, book series and mono-graphs. This new and unique cataloging sys-tem groups the collec-tion into subject groups that focus on reference, historical, language, re-ligious, artistic and tech-nological aspects of an-cient Egyptian society, as well as representa-tions in popular culture and the records from specific archeological digs and exhibitions of the resulting artifacts in museums around the

EgyptContinued from Page 1

globe.Several students from

the Emporia cohort ex-pressed that the visit re-inforced the importance of having trained librar-ians with specific exper-tise within specialized li-braries, such as the Egypt Exploration Society. The research needs of users of the library are very likely to be academics, perhaps interested in conducting broad surveys of the finds of archeological digs. Em-poria student Samuel Jack commented that it would be “to comprehensively serve the research needs of Egypt scholars, one would need not only the traditional library skills but also a detailed understand-ing of what artifacts are located where, what digs happened when, and who did and did not gather and collate the desired infor-

mation.” A group of industri-

ous interns makes much of the Egypt Explora-tion Society work pos-sible. They teach a variety of courses (several of the Emporia students at-tended a seminar in hiero-glyphics) and have been digitizing the collection dig “find cards” that doc-ument specific archeolog-ical discoveries and track-ing down artifacts loaned or given to museums and other institutions. Addi-tionally, the library uses crowdsourcing in order to translate documents after digitization.

Resourcefulness is the quality that is emphasized by Hazel Grey. She told the visiting students that, as a librarian, one may not have expertise in the sub-ject at hand but librarians are trained to be informa-

tion professionals that are able to use their training to benefit patrons in any information organization. More than that, resource-fulness is needed when re-organizing the library’s or-ganization, reconfiguring space for maximum utility, or for handling unexpect-ed attention. A recently discovered text provides a recipe for an ancient Egyp-tian hangover cure and the EES’s phones were off the hook with reporters and others wanting confirma-tion and further details. Such news brings an un-anticipated attention that both brings attention to and draws resources away from the mission of the Egypt Exploration Soci-ety. Ms. Grey, the librarian behind it all, seems to take it in stride, and remains fo-cused on her work and the projects that are to come.

Hazel Gray, librarian and office manager of the Egypt Exploration Society, flips through some archival materi-als. The EES archive includes materials on digs dating back to the organization’s found-ing, including informa-tion on sites that were later destroyed by the construction of a hy-droelectric dam.

The Emporia State group poses for a photo outside the Egypt Exploration Society’s Central London head-quarters.

The Librarian’s London Page 3VISITS

One of our visits in-cluded the Wiener Library, which mainly housed Ho-locaust and Genocide lit-erature. The architecture was very impressive in that it was modestly sized, with bright and light filled spaces, simple and very thoughtful, or respectful. It seemed very appropri-ate for the type of library. Such a small space actually housed the UK’s greatest collection of Holocaust materials, which was rath-er surprising considering the Holocaust didn’t hap-pen very long ago. It was almost a figurative hole in the wall, and had our pro-fession, Dr. Smith, not led us there, we were not en-tirely sure we would have been able to find it. The librarians had mentioned a greater increase in atten-dance after advertising in-side Russell Square station elevators, which is a great way to bring in locals or tourists who plan to visit the British library.

This particular library was remodeled to fit in-side an old house, and was founded by a German Jew named Alfred Wiener who fled Amsterdam in 1933, who chose to record any-thing and everything he could regarding the ho-locaust. The collection contains a large collection of oral histories, photo-graphs, contemporaneous magazines and newspa-pers, scholarly studies and other material related to the library’s collecting area. Our group spoke with the library’s digital curator, who described the library’s use of the Soutron system and its growing Web pres-ence. She noted that to-day’s librarians need to be prepared to span the gap of understanding that ex-ists between programmers and digital service vendors and those trained in library science specifically.

“Fragments of a Lost Homeland” told the sto-ry of one family among

thousands torn apart by the Armenian genocide. The exhibit on display was about the Dildillians with resources in Armenian and English. This was a collection of photographs of many of the commu-nity and one of the pho-tographers, Tsolag. He captured unique images of the people in his fam-ily and community. These 1000+ images were some of the very few that sur-vived the genocide. Infor-mation like this is impera-tive for those looking for family information where little else can be found.

The Wiener collection will be interpreted differ-ently as time passes and it seems that the introduc-tion of new collections will also activate new meanings in the library. The addition of the drawing of surviv-ing children from Darfur adds a new dimension to the collection both for the users and for the archivists and librarians.

Against forgetting: the Wiener Library

Our official program of visits began Monday with a trip down the street to the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. At CILIP, one thing we learned about was the “My Library By Right” campaign, the group’s effort to point out statutes that mandate gov-ernment support for pub-lic libraries.

A later visit to the Swiss Cottage Library made it clear why CILIP is un-dertaking the campaign. Budget cuts emanating

from the central govern-ment have affected public libraries across the UK. This was implemented by a law in 1964’s Libraries and Museums act.

Simon and Guy had said that many communities were led by people who felt that Libraries are not a right but were considered as “discretionary spend-ing” in much the same way as local pools.

Since CILIP represents library professionals, rath-er than library institutions, they are well positioned

One of our recent visits featured Swiss Cottage, which was the heart of the Camden library system, and the largest library in the system. The Li-brarians showed us a short film about outreach to the community and com-municating with them about what they want in a library and how they saw their library space. This was something that would be useful in any library in the world. They showed fun games and ways to ask how the people in the area would most want to use their library, or how they were already utilizing it. The one piece of the film had patrons make a yarn trail where they wound a piece of yarn showing who they were and what they were there at the library for. Its participants included professionals and local residents, even those who did not use the library. It is too bad that most libraries in the United States don’t con-duct such massive surveys.

It was obviously immensely success-ful, and very helpful to Swiss Cottage,

which let made us all think something like that could be applied to local librar-ies. Giving the students a real voice in deciding what sorts of things they felt the library did well, and things they could improve on. The results of yarn showing the trail of participants an-swers was not only informative on the answers of who was using the library and what it was most utilized for, but its results were a visually interesting piece of art that was both anonymous and informative with quantitative data that could be extracted from it. The patrons building their own idea of a library made them take the time to really think about the things they really wanted, in-stead of arbitrarily circling answers on a paper survey which they were not giving real thought to. This shows one can en-gage your patrons, and also the commu-nity who may not have been involved in the library before, to actually care what the library has and what services it could provide in the future.

The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts is not an academic in-stitution. Rather, it is a performing arts academy that focuses almost solely on the practice of acting. As such, the main demand from students is for direct access to play scripts, and the scripts at the RADA Library are front and center as you enter the library. A student searching for monologues or scenes to perform would have plenty of options. On the other hand, a stu-dent who wanted to dive into the critical literature surrounding a particular playwright would be better served to look elsewhere, or at least certainly not to rely on what they happen to find on the shelves (the librarian at RADA was up front about this limitation of his library’s mission).

RADA Library mod-ernized fairly recently. Its collection was fully cataloged only a hand-ful of years ago, and check-ins and check-outs operated pretty much on the honor system until a comput-er system was imple-mented.

As at several other

LEFT: A Wiener Library staff member displays a book of paper dolls depicting Aryan youths. The library holds a vari-ety of items relating to the Holocaust and also includes materials relat-ing to other genocides and instances of racial or ethnic hatred.ABOVE: Group member Andrea Thimesch lis-tens to archival audio, part of an exhibit track-ing the stories of one family caught up in the Armenian Genocide.

Our meeting room at CILIP included a royal charter with the seal of Queen Elizabeth II. The royal imprimatur was everywhere in London, but the librarians and others I met never said much to suggest that its importance goes beyond the ceremonial in the present day.

to advocate, specifically, against trends toward de-professionalization in the library field. The process of becoming chartered and maintaining profes-sional credentials is one that we could learn from in the US.

It also provides a poten-tial path for the growing number of US informa-tion professionals that lack an MLS degree to grow in their connection to the library profession. CILIP encourages continuing education, self-reflection and advocacy for librar-ies at the center of their organization is a really eye-opening and inspiring way to start the series of library visits.

The ability of CILIP to be able to return to their charter for guidance in re-envisioning theirs is a really different concept and it means that the original concept behind the charter must have been very good to begin with.

We really liked learn-ing about the study that CILIP conducted that mapped the Library, Ar-chives, Records, Infor-mation Management, and Knowledge Management professions in the UK. It was the first of it’s kind anywhere in the world, and really goes into in-depth depictions of the state of the various field types that the study cov-ered.

CILIP advocates for librarians

An innovative public library

libraries we visited, space was a concern at the RADA library. The current library space is to be renovated and repurposed, and the original plan was for the

library to be relocated to a rooftop location. However, planning councils in the area have withheld approv-al, so the RADA library is sort of in limbo.

The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts was one of several libraries we visited that is challenged by lack of space. London’s real estate market is such that there is very little possibility of expanding unless affiliated with very wealthy institutions. Still, the RADA Library makes the best of what it has and has taken several positive steps to fulfill its mission.

Real estate drama at RADA Library

ABOVE: Despite its open plan and high number of patrons, the Swiss Cottage Library is surprisingly quiet. Dr. Smith explained that in the ur-ban setting of London, a quiet place to work on one’s own is something to be sought after. BELOW: The children’s library included unique, organ-ic-looking tables and benches.

Page 4 The Librarian’s LondonVISITS/SCRAPBOOK

The Wellcome Collec-tion was a great surprise to many of the students of Emporia State Uni-versity who visited on February 18, 2016. The Library’s commitment to digitization was both re-vealing and a amazing to those present. The Ameri-cans were not entirely prepared for what was to come when they entered the building that houses the Wellcome Collection, which is both library and museum.

The presentation by Digital Dave proved to be most challenging to those in the program studying traditional librarianship and drew comments from the group’s chaperone, Andrew Smith. “What you’re saying is pretty radi-cal” Smith remarked. Digi-tal Dave reviewed the state of digitization and men-tioned several projects in which digitization has al-lowed for the reimagining of data and information in order to construct new understandings of our his-tory and artistic heritage. He referred to several in-teresting projects in which the punctuation from novels and another where foods referenced in Aus-tralian diaries were isolated and analyzed, enabling the reimaging of information through digitization.

The “Reading Room”, which is a reimagining of a traditional library quiet study space, proved to be

Look, Touch, Read, Collect, Share: The Wellcome Library’s innovative Reading Room space is a model for how academic or limited-circulation libraries can engage with the public in a way that feels authentic. Part of the genius of the exhibit is in convincing people that maybe they do have a use for the Wellcome’s collections, even if they are not doctors or scientists.

Ambitious Wellcome Library devoted to health

a unique space for read-ing and engaging patrons in both high tech and an-

alog formats. This space is a new space that allows for art, reading and inter-

action. The recreation of special collections mate-rials and availability of

objects to interact with both physical objects and technological devises cre-

ates spaces for explora-tion and comfort. The Engagement Librarian sent the Emporia library students loose in the reading room and asked teams to bring back to the group something that was surprising. Groups brought back bookmarks in which they might leave notes to future us-ers, prints and photo-graphs that illuminate how medical profession-als were educated and how society processed and understood medical knowledge, and literally wore (in the form of a straightjacket) replicas of the physical artifacts of the medical profession.

At the end of the dis-cussion, many students made their way to the ex-hibits on display, medita-tion and it’s relationship to human health, the fine line between conscious-ness and unconscious-ness or other displays. What was of greatest evidence was the experi-mental and resourcefull manner in which the Wellcome Collection exhibited their goal, to “explore the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, pres-ent and future”. Taking advantage of every tech-nology and opportunity available, they are bring-ing the resources within their holdings to the greatest number of users possible.

Those of us that signed up for the Royal Academy of Music went our way to-wards the destination. We honestly had no idea on what we should expect, as the library was special-ized towards music, hence it’s name. One of our big-gest take aways from RAM was the adaptability of li-braries, especially those in England, with regards to space.

Enormous cities like London create premiums on space, and as such ac-quiring more space is al-most always out of the question, add in the fact that many buildings could be considered histori-cally significant and there-for untouchable when it comes to renovations.

The Royal Academy of Music was overhauling an auditorium which was a big construction building that forced the library to develop new measures to provide the same services.

The construction proj-ect forced the library to operate under precari-ous circumstances, which included entering the li-brary from the back of the building.

Our tour guide Kathryn was clearly filled with a sense of mission and with

a positive urge to make the most of what she has and do the best job for her pa-trons.

The RAM library cata-log system is unique, but seemingly well suited to the needs of a musical conservatory. An accor-dion student (apparently they do have them) would know exactly where to look for the entire accordi-on music collection in the library’s possession, and the same goes for most other musical disciplines.

RAM also has a comput-er catalog that allows for searches based on desired ensembles, styles, vocal ranges and other criteria.

Kathryn’s intensive and creative use of space should be a spur for librar-ians in the U.S., who most-ly work with a lot more room. Imagine how much we could do with our li-brary spaces if we thought as hard about every square foot as do the librarians at RAM!

The adaptability of the RAM Library was remark-able in the way that they were still able to provide essential services while still doing most of their regular functions albeit with a greater degree of difficulty.

Under construction: Music library adapts

to challenges

Already-cramped basement spaces at the RAM Library became even moreso when computer workstations were added. But despite the real estate crunch, RAM is well-organized and heavily used by students and faculty.

A visit to Camden Library branch of Hol-born showed us what sort of great things a library can do for their community. Looking at the many programs throughout Camden library systems, they provide many oppor-tunities for people to find work. They offer “Jobzones” which have individuals who come in and help with resume and CV construction. This is an incredible as-set to any public library, and something that should be implement-ed in just about every community.

One of the best as-pects of this location was that it had a lot of great community ser-vices. It had lists for on-line classes and learn-ing. It had computer classes for seniors, it had rhyme time for little kids, as well as a “citizen’s advice” help center on the 3rd floor. They also had a “job-zone” and job hunting materials and also on-line literacy classes. The services they provided to their community was invaluable. .Job boards and flyers were done, not only in English but in other language from the surrounding area. This shows their dedi-cation to all of their lo-cal stakeholders.

Holborn shows what a library can bring to the table, which is to better a society from the inside out. Provid-ing free services to citi-zens struggling during a recession should be the objective. If one took a closer look at what libraries provide one could see that it more important to fund dur-ing a recession than during an economic boom.

Holborn branch serves average blokesOn Sunday, the first free day, Sam Jack

took the train to Oxford and visited Ox-ford’s (original) Bodleian Library.

The Bodleian provided a valuable window into the early history of librar-ies – particularly academic and univer-sity libraries. The patronage of nobles and royals was important from the 1300s until quite recently. Duke Humfrey’s Li-brary, built above the Divinity School in 1488, is the oldest continuously-used reading room. Sir Thomas Bodley, for whom the library is now named, advo-cated for expansion and renovation and, critically, made an agreement with the Stationer’s Guild in London to receive copies of all registered books. This al-lowed the library collection to expand rapidly, attracting scholars from across

Europe and contributing greatly to Ox-ford’s reputation as a center of learning.

Policies observed in the early days of the Bodleian have now become tradi-tions, and perhaps they have a kind of ancestral influence over policies in mod-ern libraries to this day. Patrons are still required to recite (or sign to) a tradi-tional oath, promising not to take books away, damage them or “kindle any fire or flame.”

The library has long been non-circu-lating. King Charles I, when he asked to borrow a book, was denied. The tour guide recounted this fact while standing in front of a throne-like chair in Duke Humfrey’s Library – the seat of office for the Bodleian Librarian, whose word was law within his domain.

Oxford’s historic Bodleian

Past and present: The New Bodleian Library (left, now called the Weston Library) and the Radcliffe Camera form quite a contrast. The Camera was built starting in 1737 to house the Bodleian’s science collection and is still used as a private reading room.

Ancient archive

This one wasn’t on our itinerary: The British Museum holds the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, a collection of more than 20,000 tablets assembled by the Assyrian king during the seventh century BC. Archaeologists, archivists and conservators are working to reassemble and decipher many of the texts.