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During the last week of June, 2009, GLOW traveled to London.

While there, we conducted interviews with 4 significant libraries, preparatory to creating episodes featuring our first libraries outside the United States. London has such a concentration of important historical libraries that it was hard to winnow down to the ones we selected for our first British episodes.

In succeeding blogs, we’ll give you a little background and preview each of the libraries we visited.

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In 2009, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew celebrate their 250th anniversary as a national and world treasure. Kew, itself (formerly or originally known as “Cayho”) began on the river bank at the lowest point along the Thames where people could cross the river on foot. It is surmised that in 54 B.C. Julius Caeser, himself, crossed at this point. The Gardens (including their famed Library and Herbarium) were declared a UNESCO “World Heritage Site” in 2003.

The preceding three centuries were critical for Kew’s development. During this period the locale became the home, first, of courtiers to the Court, next of “king makers” with their grand houses and estates, and ultimately of royalty itself, who built palatial residences. As this was going on, the gardens were constantly enriched with new exotic plants, but equally importantly, with funding to establish them on a solid footing.

The UNESCO inscription of Kew into the list of World Heritage sites reads:

Since their creation in 1759, the gardens have made a significant and uninterrupted
contribution to the study of plant diversity and economic botany.

The Gardens’ Library houses one of the most prestigious collection of botanical works in the world. This collection is, of course, critically important today, as the world struggles to find solutions to the problems of global warming, feeding the hungry, providing sustainable high-yield agricultural productivity and learning what can be medicinally useful from the enormous diversity and startling capabilities that have evolved within the plant kingdom.

We spoke at length with David Simpson, Associate Curator of the Herbarium, and Christopher Mills, Head of Library, Art and Archives. The sessions couldn’t have gone more smoothly, and the interviews (intended to be preliminary, but proving to be entirely usable) were fascinating, informative and interesting.

The “built environment” at Kew (especially the old Herbarium, still in use) is beautiful; the gardens are a delight; and the library is welcoming. Each has contributed to the recognition that the Royal Botanical Gardens are:

“rich in history and with the Earth’s largest botanical
and horticultural collections under its care.”

The Library is presently being expanded to occupy a brand new modern building (which was in the final stages of construction as we were visiting). The new building will provide more protection to its precious collection of books, documents and drawings, but also more space and comfort for its use. The bright and spacious reading room will make the library’s unique resources freshly and more conveniently available to the scholars, botanists, scientists and students from around the world who beat a path to its welcoming doors.

The Library at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew promises to be a first-rate GLOW program!

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You can read about the LSE Library on its web site, but so you won’t have to navigate away from the GLOW site, here are a couple descriptive paragraphs from the LSE website:

Unusual for an academic library, all materials are housed in a single site…
…Following a stunning multi-million pound building redevelopment, this is a superb environment for individual and group study: 1,740 study places include 450 networked PCs and 200 laptop drop-in points. The Library has amongst the longest opening hours of any university library in Britain, opening late into the evening, at weekends, and for 24 hours during exam time.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) of the UK awarded the following citation to the LSE Library: “Designated as an Outstanding Collection.” GLOW wondered how a library could be managed that contained not only four million individual items under one roof (but also responds to 5,000 visits from students and staff each day. The LSE Library possesses a specialist national and international research collection, all of which—for visitors who physically visit the library—is available in open access shelving stretching no fewer than 50 km in total length. But access the LSE collection is also made available electronically to visitors who are physically removed from the Lionel Robbins Building. The library supports over 12,000 registered external users each year.

Did we mention the Archives held in the library, with its collection of historical posters, pamphlets, maps, lapel buttons, and broadsides? Or the 20,000 e-journals to which the library subscribes on behalf of its users? Or the recorded audio guides that are provided students to easily orient themselves to the massive collection on its shelves?

Setting up for the interviews

Our preliminary interviews, this trip, naturally seemed to focus more on the the library staff than on the library’s comprehensive collection. How did they manage such a complex institution? What kind of approach did they assume towards their users? How is support provided the faculty? How does the library maintain its relevance for students in an increasingly “digital” age? How does the library manage to continue to be a center for the exchange of ideas and the formation of questions stimulated by the materials on its shelves?

We were not disappointed. Our interviews included the most lively, dedicated, and articulate set of dialogs we’ve previously enjoyed having. Viewers are in for a treat when GLOW releases its episode on the Library of the London School of Economics!

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The Royal Society came into being in late November 1660. Its members were dedicated to a study of those matters that could be determined through tangible experimentation. The 17th century was the beginning of the Scientific Age. Once each week, members gathered for the presentation of papers, discussion and, insofar as possible, the actual performance of experiments. The Society’s motto is Nullius in verba, suggesting that nothing is to be accepted as true, except that which can be proven through tangible and observable experimentation. A tall order these days, when science is investigating micro-biology, molecular DNA, and atomic building-blocks of Nature at the one extreme; and at the other, surveying the cosmos to determine what happened in the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang, discovering the operations of Black Holes and trying to calculate the Mass of invisible matter.

But in the heyday of scientific observation, being a member of the Royal Society must have been especially thrilling as individuals observed and discovered the fundamentals of how the world worked, in all its myriad ways. Cast your eye upon the list of Presidents of the Royal Society over the centuries. Even relatively untutored young readers will recognize names that are familiar:

• Sir Christopher Wren
• Samuel Pepys
• Sir Isaac Newton
• Sir Joseph Banks
• Lord Lister

Imagine then, what it is to explore the archives, touch the manuscripts and see the actual experimental equipment that was used as the original “natural Philosophers” gradually defined and established the scientific disciplines and organizations we now recognize as fundamental to our understanding of the world.

The disciplines of Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry, Medicine, Molecular Biology, Physics… all of them… began—in one way or another—in the halls and meeting rooms of the Royal Society of London. And all the sub-specializations, experimental technologies, scientific advances leading to today’s almost daily transformations are still dependent upon, or, at minimum, descended from the discussions among members, debates, experimentation and encouragement of one another that is documented in the Library of the Royal Society.

Royal Society's Mace

Lest you think that the Royal Society wears its historical mantle with stuffy formality, on the day GLOW arrived to interview Keith Moore, Librarian of the Royal Society of London, every room and hallway in the building was abuzz. Even exquisitely decorated Library Reading Rooms with mouth-watering volumes on their shelves were filled with exhibitors of scientific instruments, models and demonstrations of every scientific kind. Hundreds (if not thousands) of teens to young adults were scrambling from one room to another visiting as many booths and exhibits that interested them. It is no exaggeration to say that the walls rebounded with energy, enthusiasm and excited shouts of discovery.

Keith explained that—as the Society celebrates 350 years of excellence in science—it recognizes its increasing responsibility not only to its professional worldwide members (who use and depend upon the Library and its Resources); but to the youngest “potential members” of the Society. There exists a conscious outreach to attract, inform, and inculcate in young visitors to the Library the spirit of curiosity, questioning, and experimentation that has formed the basis of all scientific progress over the centuries.

Our visit was a delight and a surprise. We approached the library expecting to be enthralled by the annotated manuscript of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia, the Society’s Charter Book, which is signed by all Fellows, and learn not only about the documents and personal libraries donated to and deposited with the Library, but also about the new initiatives like the Science Policy Collection which is the Library’s most rapidly growing collection, containing over 10,000 documents of national and international significance. We came away with excited children’s voices ringing in our ears.

If that juxtaposition of “archival repository” and “living library” doesn’t express the reality of what libraries mean in our Society, we don’t know what does express it better.

We can’t wait to develop GLOW’s forthcoming episode on the Library of the Royal Society of London.

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