Tuesday, 26 November 2013

Pictures from my British Museum visit...

Below are pictures from my visit to Libraries at the British Museum - a full report can be found here.

20131121_093707 
The British Museum Main Entrance

20131121_094248 
The View inside the Great Court

20131121_101430 
My Visit Badge with Strange Date

 20131121_101958 
The Anthropology Library

20131121_101948
The Aztec Codex

20131121_102046 
A Rare Book on South Australia - We were told that one of these sold in Australia recently for many thousands of pounds

20131121_102822 
The Prints and Drawings Study Room from Below

20131121_103943
The Prints and Drawings Study Room from Above - the items out were for people visiting that day, the boxes in the cupboards contain the collection.

20131121_104001
And the Library Tucked Away at the Back


20131121_103734   
A Bay of Shelves in the Prints and Drawings Study Room - Cm denotes the bay and is used as part of a map grid type system for finding books

20131121_113004

20131121_113444
Views of the Middle East Library - the lower level is a Cuneiform Tablet Library

20131121_110805 


20131121_110821 
The Books in the Upper Levels of the Middle East Library

20131121_110924 
Looking down through the floor!

20131121_112334   
One of the numbers used to help find books.  Nowadays they are all arranged by subject and/or geographical area - we were told that at one time the British Library would shelve books in the order they were purchased, in other words put each new book on the shelf next to the last one - possibly not the best system.

20131121_113616 
Looking up to the upper levels in the Middle East Library

20131121_120832 
The Central Archives - didn't get a very good one there

20131121_121828 
One of the library cupboards in Europe and Prehistory

20131121_124324
And the journal collection


20131121_124045 
Finally, rare books in Europe and Prehistory: the stamp in the one in the foreground denotes that it was part of Hans Sloane's collection (they stamped them all after he died) - his books were largely sold off as duplicates but the British Library have sought to locate them all...

Friday, 23 November 2012

Friday, 16 November 2012

Library life: It's embarrassing when....

you use the service desk computer to add a new profile picture of yourself when you were about 7 (here, as it happens - do you like?) and somehow accidentally add it to the screensaver slideshow!

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Library Life: You fear library work may be doing your head in...

...when you are shocked that the new edition of Chitty on Contracts has a different colour title patch to the old one.

Thursday, 1 November 2012

Books on the loose!


I can tell from the shelves there are books on the loose,
Like that song with the lines about a moose in the hoose.
Scattered they lie on tables like the wounded in battle,
Round them up I must like great herds of cattle.
Out to them I trudge like a shepherd in fog,
Or another part in the library machine, a cog
And build mini towers of books to carry home,
Back to the shelves and place in the order of tomes
As prescribed by our old friend Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey,

Knowing that it’ll be the same again real soon - oh phooey!

Thursday, 25 October 2012

Tuesday, 9 October 2012

Library Life: I'm liking...

working in a VERY quiet library with the sounds of clock bongs every 15 mins or so.