Linda's British Studies 2008

For the Fun of It: Live Theatre Productions Attended

2008-07-29T04:53:00.000-07:00

5 July 2008: Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw (1916), directed by Peter Hall; The Old Vic in Southwark, London, UK (http://www.oldvictheatre.com/). This revelatory production starts to cook when Michelle Dockery’s Eliza first arrives at Higgins’s home demanding elocution lessons. Tim Pigott-Smith as the professor dances with diabolical joy at the thought of transforming her. Dockery’s face speaks volumes as she eats her first chocolate and wrestles with a combination of suspicion, bad teeth and finally sheer pleasure. Little does she know the rocky road she is about to embark on and the dangers of being transformed into someone else’s toy, a progress that Dockery brilliantly depicts every inch of the way. The film My Fair Lady notoriously ignored Shaw’s instructions and insisted on a romantic ending. Hall’s production makes clear that such a fate would be disastrous for Eliza. In a stupendous final scene, the two actors rise above Shaw’s garrulousness as Eliza discovers her independence and Higgins realizes too late that he has feelings he can only half acknowledge. Although it’s painful to watch, Dockery makes it clear that Eliza has to leave, just as Nora does in The Doll’s House. (photo from theatre site; review from http://www.timeout.com/)

20 July 2008: Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (1590s), performed by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company and directed by Conall Morrison at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. This production begins with a modern-dress version of the Christopher Sly prologue, where the traditional Elizabethan dance is supplanted by the fist-waving and high-kicking of a rampaging stag party. Then the drunken Sly (Stephen Boxer) is chucked through the window of a tavern and head-butted by a hellion in high-heeled boots (Michelle Gomez), before landing in a dustman's cart. Sly wakes on the couch of the prankster, who tricks him into believing that his life was all a dream, and that he really is a lord. When the traveling actors arrive in a truck to perform the play proper, the tone of the performance changes to one that is dark and violent. The actors physically hit each other and are knocked to the floor frequently. Though Gomez's stone-cold belligerence leaves us unmoved when she is knocked about, only a stone could fail to shudder as, dazed and starved, she begs a servant for food and even plucks at her ragged nightdress, offering him her arse in exchange. The dehumanizing of Kate continues until she recites the final speech, advising wives to be obedient, like a scary robot. The final minutes of the play right the balance of justice and leave us with the memorable image of Boxer, near-naked and trembling, but the nearly three hours of harshness and rapacity, played for laughs, is too high a price to pay for it. (photo from theatre site; review gleaned from www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre)

24 July 2008: Portrait of a Lady, novel by Henry James (1881), stage play by Nicki Frei (2008), director Peter Hall, Theatre Royal, Bath, UK (http://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/). Starring Catherine McCormack, Niamh Cusack, Finbar Lynch, Anthony Howell, Christopher Ravenscroft and Jean Marsh. Set in London, Rome and Florence, the story is of Isabel Archer, a beautiful, young American heiress, who travels to Europe on a voyage of self-discovery. She is accompanied by the delightful Madam Merle who seems to have many friends, but no past. Having turned down an English lord and wealthy American industrialist, Isabel marries Gilbert Osmond, a man of exquisite taste and sensibility, who claims to care nothing for worldly possessions. As Gilbert and Madam Merle reveal their true faces, however, Isabel has to confront her future alone. (review and from theatre site)

22 July 2008: Never So Good (2008) written and directed by Howard Brenton, National Theatre, Lyttelton, Southwark, London, UK (www.nationaltheatre.org.uk). Starring the incomparable Jeremy Irons and set against a back-drop of fading Empire, war, the Suez crisis, vintage champagne, adultery, and vicious Tory politics at the Ritz, this biographical play about the life and times of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, paints the portrait of a brilliant, witty but complex man, at times comically and, in the end, tragically out of kilter with his times. Macmillan, the Eton-educated idealist who rushed, with Homer’s Iliad under his arm, to do his duty in the Grenadier Guards, is tormented by the harsh experiences of war and an unhappy marriage. His career in the 1930s is blocked by his loyalty to Winston Churchill and he nearly loses his life in World War II. When at last he becomes Prime Minister he is brought down by he Profumo scandal. (review and photo from theatre site)

29 July 2008: Her Naked Skin (2008) by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, directed by Howard Davies. National Theatre, Oliver, Southwark, London, UK (http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/). Set in London 1913 when militancy in the Suffragette Movement is at its height. Thousands of women of all classes serve time in Holloway Prison in their fight to gain the vote and among them is Lady Celia Cain who feels trapped by both the policies of the day and the shackles of a frustrating marriage. Inside, she meets a young seamstress, Eve Douglas, and her life spirals into an erotic but dangerous chaos. This play is set at a crucial moment when, with emancipation almost in sight, women refuse to let the establishment stand in their way. The play is based on the life of Emily Wilding Davison, who was the most famous suffragette in England, and her deathly dash onto the race course at Epsom on Derby Day, 4th June 1913, guaranteed her place in history. Captured on 20 feet of silver nitrate, her blurred, jerky, silent movements have been playing ever since: an essential moment in the struggle for women’s liberation. She was wearing a suffragette flag pinned to the lining of her jacket. Although her family and friends were shocked by her suicidal protest, they can hardly have been surprised. Three years of suffragette militancy had taken their toll on her; even sympathetic publishers refused to do anything with her memoirs of her time in Strangeways and Holloway prisons. Davison had a total disregard for her individual status within the struggle. She threw iron balls labelled ‘Bomb’ through windows; regularly set fire to pillar-boxes; barricaded herself in her prison cell and had to be flushed out with water-cannon; and was a committed hunger-striker. “Deeds not Words” is inscribed on her gravestone. (review and photo from theatre site)

30 July 2008: King Lear by William Shakespeare (1603-6), directed by Dominic Dromogoole. The Shakespeare Globe, Southwark, London, UK (www.shakespeares-globe.org/). Old King Lear, weary of royal duties, decides to break up his kingdom, divide it among his three daughters, and present the largest part to the one who loves him most. His two eldest daughters profess their love extravagantly, but young Cordelia refuses to flatter him. Enraged, he banishes her to France. But the old king’s rash generosity is cruelly repaid. Cast out by his daughters onto a bare heath during a pitiless storm, Lear discovers too late the false values by which he has lived and, devastatingly, the suffering common to all humanity. Its tempestuous poetry shot through with touches of humor and moments of heartrending simplicity, King Lear is one of the most far-reaching artistic explorations of the human condition. This production stars David Calder as King Lear and Jodie McNee as Cordelia. (Review and photo from theatre site)

London Grand Prix Track Meet: The Crystal Palace

2008-07-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

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.....So why is this sports complex called The Crystal Palace? Okay, from memory...a big, glass greenhouse called the Crystal Palace was built for the London Exhibition in the mid 1800s--Prince Albert had a lot to do with it. Afterwards, it was moved to Sydenham, south of London, but it burned down in the 1930s. A sports complex was built on the same spot, so that's how it got its name. This meet, held over a two day period during my mini-break, was the last competition before the Beijing Olympics begin next week, so every race had Olympians in the field. We saw lots of fast runners and jumpers, and the weather was perfect. It was a reminiscent experience, since I ran here a few times in my younger days.

Bath, Somerset, UK

2008-07-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

As part of my mini-break, I took an hour and a half train ride today to Bath, located in Somerset in the southwest corner of England. It’s on the River Avon, but it’s not the same River Avon that is in Stratford-upon-Avon; in fact, there are seven Avon Rivers in the country. The first thing I did when I got there was get on a tour bus, which is where I found out about all the Rivers Avon, and where I learned a little history of the city. I also located the places I wanted to visit before the end of the day.

I learned that the City of Bath has basically gone through about three stages. The first stage was back during the time of the Romans, around 50 AD. Some soldiers saw some steam coming through the ground and found the hot springs, on which they constructed the Roman Baths. I visited those later, which was fun. It’s a museum, really, that has been built around and within the ruins—very well done, with audio phones that explain all kinds of details. Basically, the Romans built a big pool with all kinds of neat drainage systems that still work today—the pool is still filled by the spring on one side and drains out the other. The pool had a roof and dressing rooms and steam rooms all around the sides. A lot of it is surprisingly in tact, and parts of the roof, the temple, and the tiles are all on display around the site.

The famous Bath Abbey was first built in the 600s, or rather, one of the Abbey’s predecessors was built. It was actually just a convent house. A proper church was built in the 700s, but it wasn’t until around 1100 that it was enlarged to be a cathedral, but really it wasn’t ever finished and ended up in ruins by the 1500s. It was rebuilt within that same century, which is when Bath actually became an official city by the granting of a royal charter by Queen Elizabeth I, who also promoted the restoration of the church. Major restoration work was done in the 1860s including the replacement of much of the looted ornamentation. It’s a beautiful building.

.....................After the waters were written about in a book in the 1600s, Bath became very popular, which basically started its second stage as a city. The health-giving properties supposedly in the water bubbling up from the ground brought some very fashionable people to Bath. By the time George was on the thrown in the 1700s, Bath was an all out spa resort and buildings, primarily designed by the father and son architects of John and John Wood, went up like crazy. The streets and squares were carefully planned, identical facades, classically designed in what is now known as Georgian with lots of columns, gave streets the look of palaces, and the light stone taken from the nearby hills all gave Bath its unique look. By the time Jane Austen arrived in the early 1800s, however, Bath as gathering place for the social elite was beginning to come to an end.

The Jane Austen Centre was my third stop of the day. It’s located on Gay Street, close to one of the places Austen lived while she was in Bath. The exhibition at the Centre basically tells the story of Austen’s experiences in Bath, which were not exactly happy. The tour at the Centre began with a lecture about Jane Austen’s family life, her authorship, how she ended up in Bath, and why she left. It was informative in that I didn’t know much about her brothers, nor did I know where she lived when she created each of her novels. She had visited Bath twice before moving there, which were generally happy visits, but her life living in Bath was colored by the loss of her father and his income. In listening to the lecture, I though of Anne Elliot’s dislike of Bath in Persuasion because it was associated with the death of her mother; I also thought of Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters in Sense and Sensibility having no where to go after they were left penniless with the death of Mr. Dashwood. Bath is also the main setting of Northanger Abbey, which I never finished reading; I should.
...........So, in the five years that Austen and her sisters lived in Bath, they lived in seven different houses, each one a lower status then the others. The last one was located in the area where one would find prostitutes. They were apparently living off the charity of the brothers, but they couldn’t have been very generous. Not surprisingly, Austen wrote very little in Bath—she began a novel called The Watsons, but stopped after only three chapters (I bought it in the gift shop). Really, she didn’t write again until 1809, three years after she finally left Bath, which occurred when an uncle took them in—which is just like what happens to the Dashwoods. It wasn’t until one of the brothers came through and gave them a house in Chawton, near where Austen grew up, that she began to write again. Austen, like her Pride and Prejudice heroine Lizzy Bennet, appears to be happiest in the country, away from cities. I’m glad they moved because otherwise, we would not have Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion. She also started another book called Sanditon, which I bought in the gift shop.

My last stop of the day was at the Royal Theatre where I saw the stage production of Henry James's A Portrait of a Lady. The building, built during the great Georgian building boom of the 1700s, was beautiful. I bought the tickets ages ago. I was unsure of how such a long, complicated novel could be presented in just a few hours on stage, but it was well done. They actually told the story in reverse, except for the ending. Every seen is a flashback. The acting was really great, too. More about the play in my blog on all my plays (above).

University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, followed by a visit to The Bridge Library

2008-07-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

This University offers a Masters of Science (MSc) in Library and Informational Science that is beginning to attract Americans. It’s not as expensive as many American schools, it only takes a year, and it has the added benefit of being in a beautiful city. This is a skyline picture taken from one of the classrooms. We began our day with introductions by David McMenemy (resume at www.cis.strath.ac.uk/cis/staff/index.php?uid=davidm), a man with a great Scottish brogue and sense of humor who teaches information systems, digital archiving, preservation and other classes in librarianship at the University of Strathclyde and Alan Poulter (resume at www.cis.strath.ac.uk/cis/staff/index.php?uid=ap), a Brit who is also an LIS instructor at the University and has a strong interest in computer crime. While McMenemy has a strong background in public libraries, Poulter spend years cataloging at the British Library in London. We got a little history about the school, that it was instituted in 1796, changed its name to what it is now in 1964, and is now Scotland’s third largest university with 25,000 students, fifty of which are in the LIS program. We then got some statistics on Scottish libraries, in general. For example, there are 4,515 public libraries, 846 academic libraries, and no one knows how many school libraries there are because they are not required by law! The decentralization of government in 1998, which saw Scotland’s first meeting of Parliament in three hundred years, had a tremendous impact on the countries libraries in that local priorities have become competitive. Some of the key issues in Scottish librarianship include the dropping book loan figures, attracting non-users, digitizing, measurability, and the current trend toward deprofessionalism in librarianship (which we saw first hand at The Bridge Library later in the day). We talked about the doctorial program offered at the University, which interested many of us, and then we were introduced to Christine Rooney-Browne, a doctorial candidate.

Christine’s research focus is in how to measure effectiveness of public libraries. Quantitative measurement of economic value is pretty easy to do, but qualitative measurement of social value is a relatively new research field, about which she seems quite excited. In her PowerPoint presentation, she showed us how she will use the Social Impact Audit, which involves questionnaires, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups at select libraries. Her study provoked much discussion in our group, especially when she touched on the importance of libraries after a disaster, such as Katrina in the Southern United States, which some of our classmates experienced first-hand. We talked about the civic responsibilities inherent in librarians, along with the coping and resiliency skills that develop with literacy. It was a very interesting conversation.

Alan Poulter also gave us a presentation on forensic readiness and criminal behaviour the occurs in public libraries. He discussed ways in which to track what patrons do, including software that records key strokes. He and David also discussed digital library research, the organization methods used by Internet catalogs from bubl.link to google.

After lunch, Alan, David, and Christine brought us over to The Bridge Library in a deprived section of Glasgow called Easterhouse, and I was really impressed with what I saw. At first, I was thinking we were going to see just another library, but the library at The Bridge was just a part of the complex, which was only built two years ago. Resulting from a partnership between the City Council, the Community College, and the Culture and Sports Authority, the Bridge is the response to a substantial decrease in population over the past generation, high unemployment, high percentage of health issues, and low educational achievement. For example, over two-thirds of the residents don’t have access to their own transport, nineteen percent of the population has never worked, and more than half of the working-age population have no formal educational qualifications. In response to this, the community has built a center that provides a library, a gallery, a theatre, a swimming pool, a series of fitness classes for all ages, an arts workshop, a recording studio, a dance studio, and a community college. Rather than turn their backs on the underprivileged, the greater community has offered solutions in the form of this complex.

.................And the facility is beautiful. The library was buzzing with activity, including readers, some face-painting, arts & crafts, and computer-animation station. The swimming pool was packed with kids screaming and having fun; the café, which offered nutritional food at a reasonable price, had tables and chairs were people read books and the newspaper; and flat-screens were stationed all around the facility showing the schedule of classes for theatre rehearsals, singing classes, fitness classes, and other community events. While statistics have only been tracked for the two years its been open, The Bridge Library saw an increase in visitors from year one to year two of 242%, an increase in check outs of 27%, and general inquiries up by 140%. The Library is now counted as the second best library in the city, behind a highly rated library in an affluent area where people are considered highly-educated. The complex cost £8.5 million to build, it’s open sixty-four hours a week, and the library contains almost 34,000 items.

National Archives of Scotland

2008-07-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

The National Archives of Scotland (NAS) is housed within three buildings, two that are open to the public, the General Register House (shown here with the Duke of Wellington on his horse out front) and the West Register House; the third building, the Thomas Thomason House, is used for the conservation department and storage. Formerly a church built in 1811, the Thomason House was purchased by the NAS in the 1960s. If people need modern government files, court records from 1800 to 1983, records dealing with nationalized industries (like rail, electricity, coal, etc), basic business records, and maps, their requests would come from here.

We met today with Margaret McBride of the NAS Outreach Services Department in the General Register House; she is shown here with Dr. Welch. The house is old but updated, dating from the late 1700s when it was opened as the national repository of records. We had to enter through the back because much of the building has been closed for refurbishing, but it opens again next month. This building contains two search rooms, one for historical research, where people find information concerning family, local, national, and international history, and the legal search room, where people consult early government records, church records, estate and political papers, and property records—we saw many people working with these records on the way in, and later learned that many of them pay a fee to work there every day to gather information for professional reasons—they were either solicitors or worked for them. Ms. McBride told us that all the museums, archives, and libraries that house national collections work under the authority of the same ministries, and that they have very good working relationships with each other. They all share the same mission, which includes preservation, promotion, and protecting national treasures. Within the three buildings, 160 staff work, including about thirty-five archivists. Basically, NAS responsibilities are organized into two divisions: corporate services, including accommodation, finance, administration, conservation, and reader services; and record services, which collect government, court, legal, private, and miscellaneous records, as well as performs outreach services, making records accessible to the public.

One thing that I learned today was that not every record is kept; I thought it was, but really, that would be impossible. One of the main functions of the NAS, and any national archive, is to make decisions regarding selection, categorizing, and storing artifacts. Other functions include preservation, which requires a large staff and budget—difficulties have recently arisen regarding E-records; promotion of public access, including the outreach services that showed us around today—accessibility and preservation are considerations here, as well as how best to produce catalogs and exhibitions; distribution of advice, guidance, and other support to owners and custodians of records—many NAS are actually kept offsite in local communities (if site specifications are met); and leadership in the development of archival techniques—our guide acknowledged that Scotland is behind here. Over seventy thousand records since the twelfth century are overseen by NAS, all of which are catalogued online via the NAS OPAC: http://www.nas.gov.uk/. NAS has made four other websites available for the public, as well: http://www.scan.org.uk/, which contains many research tools; http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/, for researching genealogy; http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/, for help in deciphering archaic letter writing; and www.scottisharchivesforschools.org/, an educational resource for students and teachers.

To conclude our visit, we were allowed to view some of Scotland’s Treasures. Wearing cotton gloves, we were permitted to look at manuscripts and printed materials dating back to the 1200s, including maps, letters, a will, and a cookbook. The delicacy of these materials brought home the importance of conservation, and the NAS’s broadening reliance on high quality digital copies for its patrons is an indication of this fact. If a reader requests an artifact that is on the conservation list that has not yet been digitized, his request will move that item to the front of the list. On the way out of the building, we actually saw the earphoned, young digitalizers at work, carefully turning pages, placing materials under glass, and snapping pictures. These images are available from the digital archive on scan.org, such as this one, which is a Petition of inhabitants of Balmeanach and Peinchorran, Isle of Skye, dated 30 November 1849. This second image is a Letter of condolence from a senior officer to a deceased soldier’s father during WWI. These primary sources are grouped together in teaching units on the Scottish archives for schools site, and appears to be very effective.

The National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

2008-07-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

David McClay is the curator of the National Library of Scotland and filled us in on some basic information about the library, which is one of the six national depositories in the United Kingdom; two others that we’ve visited are the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the British Library in London (Cambridge’s University Library, Dublin’s Library of Trinity College, and the National Library of Wales are the other three). Over eight million books are here, along with fifteen million other documents. One of the remaining Shakespeare First Folios is here, along with Charles Darwin’s original manuscript of Origin of Species and the Gutenberg Bible. A page from Darwin's notebook is shown here (darwin-online.org.uk). Established in 1925, the Library has only been funded publicly since 1999, but it's progress since then has been phenominal.

With the help of the national lottery and donations, the Library was able to make a huge £32.5 million purchase of the John Murray Archive, which is comprised of all the holdings of the John Murray Publishers (spanning seven generations of John Murrays) from the 1700s to the early 1900s containing over 150,000 items. We were told that this amount is the single most expensive archive ever to have been purchased in the world; clearly, Scotland is serious about preserving its history. Not only did the National Library acquire the Darwin manuscript, but it received the manuscripts and letters of some of the world’s greatest literary giants, such as Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Isabella Bird Bishop, Sir Austen Layard, David Livingstone, Charles Darwin, and one of my favorites, Jane Austen.

Part of the National Library of Scotland’s mission is to make the Library available to everyone, which is what our other guide, Emma Faragher, the Library’s coordinator for the Education, Interpretation, and Outreach Program, talked to us about today. She gave us a PowerPoint presentation showing us what went into the permanent exhibition now on display for the John Murray Archive, the goal of which is to bring in more people to the Library. Unlike object-based or even art-based displays, manuscripts are the most challenging exhibitions to design. The value comes from reading the text, which takes time, contextual background, and the ability to decipher archaic or sloppy handwriting. Many people were involved in the team effort to create the exhibit, and considerations had to include such details as lighting, for conservation reasons, height for viewing, and interpretation. In order to overcome the main obstacle of boredom typically associated with text and label heavy displays, exhibition designers relied on theatrical displays to appeal to emotion, the addition of objects (pseudo-artifacts) that add context, interactive delivery of information, creative use of light and shadow, and adhered to a theme where the process of writing and publishing is communicated. Education theory was obviously used to plan the displays, and while the terms “learning outcome” and “differentiated instruction” weren’t actually used in today’s lecture, they were clearly employed in the design process.

This background information helped us to understand better what we were looking at when we finally viewed the exhibition ourselves, but we didn’t need it to be overwhelmingly impressed. Various authors were featured from the John Murray collection, which Emma told us was intended to be a cross section of the entire archive. Each figure is in its own vertical display case, which contains selections from the archive, as well as items that will help add dimension the writer’s life. When the viewer touches an item shown on the screen in front of the display, it is spotlighted in the display and more information is provided; an audio reading is also available for the items. This photo shows someone interacting with a display (www.24hourmuseum.org.uk). Clothing, writing implements, objects of the day are also spotlighted and explained. I wanted to look at each and every one of the author displays and found the presentation very stimulating.

More and more of the archive is being digitally preserved and hopefully will be online for easy access in the future: http://www.nls.uk/.

The Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive, Stratford-upon-Avon

2008-07-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

..Two librarians, Claire and Jo, were our guides today as we visited the library collection of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) and the Royal Shakespeare Collection (RSC). Without the formation of the SBT in 1847, many Shakespearean artifacts would have been lost. The RSC, formerly the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, combined with the RSC in 1961, expanding the collection further. Located near the Shakespeare Birthplace Museum, the Library has a newly renovated catalog and reading room, and has plans to expand its reading room and storage areas in the future. The Library sees over three thousand readers a year (who must follow strict guidelines in handling the material—such as gloves, pencils only, and special page weights), as well as over five thousand Email and phone inquiries a year.

The collection contains manuscripts, early editions, Shakespeare’s source material, criticism and commentary, and performance histories (set designs, acting editions, programs, playbills, music scores, and photographs). Some of the archives are available in the reading rooms, but most are stored in the basement strong rooms, which we visited. They are like bank vaults—very secure both in terms of theft prevention and protection from natural disasters, such the floods common to Stratford-upon-Avon. They are also climate controlled for preservation, so they are pleasant rooms in which to be in. In the vaults, we saw many rare and protected items, such as Shakespeare’s source book for his classical allusions, Plutarch's Lives, as well as his primary source for Macbeth, Holinshed's Chronicles.

The most impressive item we were able to see today, however, was one of the three Shakespeare First Folios owned by the Library, pictured here. Historians estimate that 750-1000 Folios of Shakespeare’s plays were printed in 1623 by colleagues of Shakespeare seven years after his death. It is fairly certain that if this printing had not taken place, eighteen of his thirty-seven plays would have been lost forever. Only 228 Folios still survive, seventy-nine of which are owned by the Folger’s Shakespeare Library in Washington DC (a fact that appeared not a little irritating to our guide), and they are all different, which surprised me. The printing, in fact, took over two years to complete because many corrections were made along the way. So that’s why there are always so many discrepancies from edition to edition! This First Folio is worth an estimated five million dollars.

The Shakespeare Library isn’t just for academics interested in literature, theatre, and history. The average citizen visits to discover his genealogical roots, to discover the history of a particular house (a book exists that lists by street name all the owners of each house), or to see the design and photographs of an area or a house for renovations or restorations. People also come in to do research on their favorite actors and to do school projects. Along with the tangible materials, which includes more than fifty thousand books (eight hundred of which were printed before 1700), and thousands of other objects, four computer terminals give access to the public to databases containing details of over eighty percent of the holdings, as well as ovr a thousand old photographs of the Stratford-upon-Avon area. Some of this is online at http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/.

.....................................After visiting the library, I took a stroll to Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare is buried. It’s a beautiful mid-size church right on the River Avon; the grounds are very peaceful and scenic—with the exception of all the tourists milling around. My picture from the inside of the church didn’t come out, but I found this one at http://z.about.com/d/gouk/1/7/V/F/-/-/grave.jpg.

I finished the day by seeing a play, The Taming of the Shrew, which you can read about later, when I post a blog about all the plays I've seen.

The Bodleian Library, Oxford

2008-07-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

We took a train to Oxford today, about an hour ride from London, where we visited the Bodleian Library, which dates back to 1418. It is now the main research library of the University of Oxford and one of forty libraries within the Oxford University Library Services. Our guide, docent John Cross, took us through the Duke Humphrey Library, the Radcliffe Camera, and the New Building, which are all part of the Bodleian.

Our tour started in the Humphrey Library, the oldest part of the Bodleian complex, which looks much the same it did back in the 1600s: High, ornamentally painted ceilings; rich, dark woods; and shelf and after shelf of large, early-printed books, originally chained to the shelves. The students at Oxford during that time would have had to contend with weak lighting, lack of heat, and the noise made by the chains. All of the materials Duke Humphrey donated to the library, except three manuscripts, perished during the Reformation, a historical event that also resulted in the college’s loss of its pre-eminence as an educational institution. Shocked at the downfallen state of the library in the 1500s, Sir Thomas Bodley refurbished the building, bought furnishings, acquired books, and created a catalog. This 1605 catalog was the first to be printed for the library, and when it was updated in 1620, it ran 675 pages. Bodley’s of arms still hangs in the library. Extensions were added and added until the library had to move to another building.

The Humphrey Library is now accessed from a quadrangle courtyard, which was built after Bodley died. Doorways lead from this quadrangle into the various parts of the school that deal with the core subjects of a liberal arts education. Leaving this area, we made our way over to the Radcliffe Camera (Camera is Latin for room). Dr. John Radcliffe bequeathed the endowment to build this round, domed building designed by architect James Gibbs, which was finished in 1749. Mr. Cross told us it was the first circular building ever built in the country. It came under the domain of Bodleian during the mid-1800s and became the main undergraduate reading room. When this space became filled up with books, the space underneath was excavated for basement stacks, which is now used for Official Papers. The Camera is now where the Oxford University Library Network is centralized.

Various legislation was implemented in the 1800s, which made the Bodleian a national depository. This, along with the library’s unique collections donated through the years, is what makes the Bodleian so special. In these collections, for example, are a handwritten instruction book by the Order of St. Benedict on how to run a monastery, two original copies of the Magna Carta, a marriage contract written on papyrus dated 500 BC, an Egyptian letter dated 250 BC from a boy to his father asking for a harp, menus from all the transatlantic ocean liners, and many other unusual items.

Many of these items are kept in boxes on shelves in the locked stack corridors of the New Building, which are guide accessed through an underground passage way. Along this passageway were pipes that were previously used to carry the slips of paper containing researcher requests, which are now handled electronically. The conveyer belts that carry the items are still in operation and have been since 1938. They appear to be an older model of what we saw in the British Library’s operations center.

Despite the fact that so much of what is old still works, the library is still running out of space. Consequently, planning for a £50 million new building are underway for the future. As Mr. Cross pointed out, even though the percentage of all publishing in electronic form is increasing, the number of books published in the United Kingdom have doubled.

After our tour, I walked around the town, which is a tourist filled, lovely historic university city. It has lots of shops, too, including a camera shop, where I bought a new camera to replace the ones those little hoodlums took from me yesterday in Greenwich. I’m charging up the battery as I write; in the mean time, here is where I stole today’s pictures from:
http://printingbooksandmaps.blogspot.com/2007/07/duke-humphrey-library.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Courtyard_of_the_Bodleian_Library,_Oxford.jpg
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/oxford-bodleian-library.htm
http://www.myenglandtravel.com/images/oxford/Oxford_Aerial.jpe

The National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory

2008-07-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

Today, we visited the Caird Library, which is part of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It took about forty minutes to get there by a London Transport Ferry, which was very enjoyable on the Thames River. I took a lot of pictures, but as you can see from the photo references below, my pictures are not posted, which is because my camera was stolen today. Do beware if you visit here, as I had my phone taken last week. Like the National Art Library, the Caird Library is a special library comprised of maritime documents. Our first guide today, Hannah, who is an archive manuscripts manager, told us that the Caird Library is the largest research Library of Maritime history, and I think she was talking about all the maritime libraries in the world. Its special collections are divided into such areas as emigration, navigation, piracy, shipwrecks, horology (timekeeping), Merchant Navy, astronomy, business records of shipping companies, Royal Navy, war ships, and family histories.

The Library, which opened with the museum in 1937, acquired its core collection from Scottish born Sir James Caird, the Baronet of Glenfarquhar, who, after acquiring a large fortune in the shipping industry, became interested in preserving British naval records. Caird funded the entire cost of renovating the Greenwich buildings to serve as the National Maritime Museum, as well purchased many nautical artifacts, rare books, instruments, and art for donation to the museum. The Library rooms are beautiful, with its original oak furniture and stunning marble entry way, a rotunda designed by famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, that looks up through an oval cut out in the ceiling to a glass dome.

The Library, which is about to undergo major £35 Million renovation to add new storage, another reading room, and a Treasures Gallery (to open 2012), contains over 100,000 books, 20,000 pamphlets, 20,000 bound periodicals, and 8,000 rare items. 15,000-18,000 people visit the reception desk each year, with about 3,000-4,000 of them actually entering the reading rooms for personal research. The process for examining documents in this library is similar to that of the British and National Art Libraries: a reader must register for a pass, search the catolog (which is online), and request items to be delivered by a member of the reference staff. About 2,000 books and 5,000 manuscripts are used each year by research patrons. Popular primary resources include the Lloyds Lists (shipping movements), the Mercantile Registry, and the alphabetical lists of naval officers.

The second segment our tour today was in a conference room where two librarians split us up and showed us some real treasures. Mike, who is part of the Library’s manuscripts team, showed a series of rare manuscripts. My favourite one is a journal kept by Royal Navy Surgeon Edward Hodges Cree, who served in the mid 1800s. His bound journals, of which there are twenty-one, are mostly handwritten, some are typed, and they are all beautifully illustrated with either watercolored paintings or pen and ink drawings. His journals depict battles, pirateering, and slavery. Another interesting item was a book of navel signals used by the American Navy in the early 1800s. It was taken from the USS Chesapeake after it was captured by the Royal Navy. It’s binding is lined with metal balls so that it will sink in case of attack. Since the battle in which the Chesapeake was defeated lasted only fifteen minutes, the captain didn’t have time to dispose of it. Since the signals are a matter of national security, a new book would have had to be issued after this capture. It’s a beautiful book with colorful flags and printed instructions. I think, however, that the Brits aught to think about giving it back now.

Renee, a digital services librarian, showed us a collection fascinating rare books. A gorgeously bound book of essays about the improvement of navigation is an example of mid-eighteenth century Dutch binding and covers. Actually made in Germany or Italy, the covers were printed from woodblocks or metal plates and imitated the current fabric fashions; this one was a flowery pattern in yellow and green with gold page edging. Probably boring to read but definitely fascinating to look at is the book on Captain Kidd’s trial for murder and piracy. It shows how trial transcripts were published in the seventeenth centuries. The account tells what Kidd did, that he was found guilty, and that he was sentenced to death in 1701. Renee seemed please to tell us of the connection between Captain Kidd and the building that started off as the hospital in Greenwich: The crown used the £6,000 confiscated from the convict to fund the building project.
After our visit, I hiked up to the Royal Observatory, where I toured the exhibits on space, telescopes, time pieces, and longitude. It was all very well presented, and the thousands of school children that were there seemed engrossed by the hands on displays. I was most interested in seeing John Harrison’s watch, as it was the one that first enabled reliable navigation of the seas. I also stood on the prime meridian, which means that I had a foot in each hemisphere (the bestseller Longitude tells the whole story). I took a picture of it, which is currently in the hands of a thief. My next endeavour, therefore, is to go out and buy a new camera, and try to forget such people live in the world.

These are URLs from which I stole my pictures, all of which are pretty close to the ones I took:

Harrison's Watch: www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog/?m=200707

Museum Facade: www.londonlogue.com/places-to-go/londons-museums-national-maritime-museum.html

Observatory Building: http://photos.igougo.com/images/p157591-Greenwich-Royal_Observatory.jpg

Prime Meridian Sign: http://z.about.com/d/geography/1/0/r/x/London35.jpg

The Globe Theatre

2008-07-15T13:25:00.001-07:00

I knew I couldn’t possibly face my high school English classes next year if I didn’t go and visit London’s Globe Theatre, which is within walking distance of where I’m staying. Before beginning the tour, visitors walk through a Shakespeare and Globe museum, which shows this replica of the Theatre. Lots of information is here, much of it widely known, but the presentation was worth a walk-though.

Walking inside was indeed memorable. The Theatre can hold three thousand people, many of which stand as “goundlings,” but it feels small and intimate. While I already knew much of what the guide had to say—that Shakespeare’s plays were performed during the day, that the audiences were a rowdy group, that the smells were probably intense considering people rarely bathed, ate garlic, and drank ale, and that the most expensive seats actually faced the backs of the actors (the point was to be seen), I didn’t realize that the shape of the structure contributed to excellent acoustics, or that the actors’ experiences were quite different than today’s in that they could see every face of each person in the audience.

The guide was quick to give thanks to American Sam Wanamaker, without whom this reconstruction of Shakespeare’s theatre would have never been built. Wannamaker was an actor, who moved to the UK after McCarthy-era accusations. He was fascinated with Shakespeare and the Globe and wanted to build a new one, but ran into one obstacle after another. He did make progress, however, when he established the Globe Playhouse Trust in 1970, which purchased the land that was eventually used to build the new Globe, land that is just yards from the original Globe site. The Theatre was finally finished in 1997, but, unfortunately, Wanamaker didn’t live to see it.

Today, the Globe is the only thatched building in the city, which the guide seemed quite proud of, as well as the fact that over 25,000 school children visit each year. I wonder what Shakespeare would have thought of that. Like it was in Shakespeare’s day, today’s playgoer is allowed to bring in food and drink to the performance, attending to all the senses.

The next thing for me to do is see an actual play here. I’ll have time later this month, and looking at the calendar of events for The Globe Theatre, I see my choices will be Timmon of Athens and King Lear; maybe I can do both.

So next school year, as part of my unit introduction to Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, or The Taming of the Shrew, I can add my pictures to a quick PowerPoint presentation and hopefully inspire my students to appreciate Shakespearean theatre and make their own journey to London.

The National Art Library

2008-07-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

Like the British Library, the National Art Library, which is part of the Victoria & Albert Museum, is a national depository, but in this case, the library deals primarily in art books. Established in 1837 (at the Somerset house, where we had our King’s College welcoming reception), the Library actually pre-dates the museum, which was founded in 1857. The Library (within the museum) is now located in London's South Kennsington area, and with over two million items, it’s huge.

We were first taken on a tour of the galleries (reading rooms) and the behind the scenes stacks. This picture of the main room and circulation desk is from the V&A website as we weren’t allowed to take pictures. Like the British Library, researchers are not permitted to take items home. The procedure involves registering as a reader, signing the visitor’s book in which a seat number is declared, collecting a seat token from the board and taking a seat, searching the Library Catalog, completing a requisition form, and waiting for the book to be delivered to the seat by the reference staff. One interesting feature of this room is the camera that is set up for patrons to take pictures of book art.

We roamed around the periodical stacks; I think our guide said their were over eight thousand periodicals bound up there. The special collections stacks were filled with row after row of locked cabinets, for which we were told over twenty sets of keys existed. In these cabinets were original medieval manuscripts, examples of fifteenth century printing, Shakespeare’s First Folio, the original proofs of most of Charles Dickens’ novels, and other very valuable literature and art work. I was surprised that this library had such famous literature rather than the British Library, but it was all part of a donation by John Forster. The National Art Library also has original Beatrix Potter materials, which is kept at the Black House location. The final set of stacks we toured was filled with exhibition and catalogue publications dating back to the 1800s; with over 75% of these materials coming from abroad, this collection is extremely valuable.

After our tour, we were given the opportunity to see, touch, and actually photograph some rare, original, and very interesting books. We looked through the small, handwritten, personal journal of Henry Cole, the first directory of the Library in the 1800s. We found amusement in the Universal Catalogue of Art written during the Victorian era because they actually thought all the word’s art books could be cataloged in one publication. We saw one of the earliest printed books from the 1500s, some trade literature, some gorgeous Islamic bindings (the actual pages have been lost), some fascinating artist books, and my favourite, Jonathon Swift’s own, first edition copy of Gulliver’s Travels, complete with his handwritten annotations in the margins. You can see a picture of this book here, along with a picture of a book made out of an old school desk, complete with students’ scribbling.

At the end of this presentation, we were shown the examples of the various ways in which the National Art Library has tried to preserve materials, including pasting pages in a larger book, placing items in a phase box or envelopes, covering books with dust covers with ties or with plastic, creating copies of books for the book to use, and microfiche. Because digitalization is so expensive, the Library’s efforts here are minimal.

I finished the day with lunch in this amazing tiled, domed-ceiling room, followed by a walk through the rest of the museum, and a rest in this sunny courtyard.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

2008-07-14T09:37:00.001-07:00

Located off Fleet Street just blocks from the London Stock Exchange, Samuel Johnson’s house, built in 1700, is where he wrote the first comprehensive dictionary for the English language (other shorter dictionaries had been written previously).

Here is his prospectus for the plan, sixteen pages in which he suggested a timeline of three years. The project actually took nine years to complete, which seems like a short amount of time considering the book contains over 110,000 quotations to illustrate his 40,000 definitions.

The dictionary is interesting because of its subjectivity; I used to teach segments of it to my high school students, partly to illustrate the history of our language and partly to illustrate subjective writing. The two definitions that follow are good examples:

Oats: "A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
Marriage: "…a triumph of hope over experience".

Anyone can see that Dr. Johnson didn’t like the Scots but believed in marriage. Speaking of which, Dr. Johnson married someone twice his age, whom he outlived, and said of her “she could read comedy aloud better than anyone I have ever heard.” I learned this tidbit while watching a video during today's tour. These are all my pictures from the museum, except for the Dictionary itself, which I got from the King's College Library site (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/library/speccoll/littre/jd.html).

Anyone can read Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, online at books.google.com, which provides “full view” access.

The Museum of London

2008-07-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

.Today, our class visited the Museum of London, which is appropriately located at the edge of what was once known as Londinium, the Roman name for the city. Taking control around 50AD, the Romans began building a square-shaped wall on three sides of the city, with the Thames River forming the fourth side, and they finished the wall by 200AD. Very little of the wall remains, and you can see that this segment is now part of a little park where people socialize at lunch time. The Museum’s Roman exhibit is one of four permanents exhibits, which contains historical information and artifacts that trace the development of the city as one of the largest in Roman ruled Britannia.

The other three permanent exhibits are “Medieval London,” from which this model of bridge building is taken, “Tudor and early Stuart,” which is where I found this model of the Rose Theatre, and “London Before London,” which is the one discussed by our guide today, Senior Curator Jon Cotton. This exhibit on London’s prehistory (the time before written records—or pre-Roman) is composed of three main parts, the wall depicting London’s history from the perspective of the River Thames, which is a dominating feature; the landscape wall, containing history and objects taken from the land; and the plinths in the middle that contain many interesting archaeological items and videos. One of the most interesting items is a bust of a prehistoric woman rendered artistically from a skull, as well as casts of fingernails taken from imprints on a piece of pottery found in the Thames. These items culled from the artifacts, all with the objects themselves, help visitors see the prehistoric inhabitants in this area more dimensionally.

This facet of the exhibit, in fact, was one the goals of the designers, which included our guide. Mr. Cotton told us of how he and his team, who were primarily interested in conveying the ideas that the people of prehistoric London were actual people with intelligence and skill, collaborated with designers, who were interested in space, mass, color, and texture. Many hours of “bonding” had to take place before they came up with an exhibit as effective as “London Before London.” Along with satisfying their goals of how prehistoric people in this area are presented, the curators also were able to convey the power of the place, with the River Thames as London’s central identity.

The items found in the Thames are arranged chronologically, beginning with tools and weapons made of stone and wood, then bronze, then iron, and finally gold. During our lecture, Mr. Cotton indicated that the museum is till cataloguing items dredged up from the river, which now includes religious Hindu items, indicating the cosmopolitan nature of the city.

As I was leaving the Museum, I was topped by someone who wanted to ask me questions about my experience at the museum; she showed me her identify card, which I took a picture of (I think that made her nervous) and began asking me questions that were designed to improve the museum for future visitors. I wasn't able to give her anything valuable, however, as I thought the place was perfect.

Haworth Part III: The Moors

2008-07-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

As my last installment for my Yorkshire expedition, I have to include something about my experience walking the same moors that Emily did, the moors that are so much a part of Wuthering Heights. I spent a total of about seven hours in two days walking these moors in all kinds of weather: sun, wind, fog, and rain, and the terrain was as varied. Parts of it were flat and boggy, parts were dry, high, and flat, and parts were hilly, rocky, and craggy.

I walked to a place called Top Within which is about four miles from the parsonage; it is in ruins now, but it’s supposed to be the inspiration for the house, Wuthering Heights. It seems like a pretty long walk for Emily, who didn’t have my high tech hiking boots.

I also visited Ponden Hall, which is supposed to have inspired Emily’s Thrushcross Grange.

Nearby Pondon Kirk Crag is thought to be Pennistone Crag, and I found some falls, called Brontë falls, but I don’t think there are any falls in Wuthering Heights.

The Moors begin just behind the Parsonage, and Parsonage is just behind the church, both of which are at the top of the hill. Following a cobblestone road, made from rocks quarried from the moors, is the town, a beautiful town of ivy-covered stone buildings, iron fences, and flower-filled hollows. It’s a tourist town now, with B&Bs and pubs lined up and down Main St, but it still has a historic feel to it. Adding to this conviction was the fact that I couldn’t find any public access to a telephone or the Internet. I did enjoy two different B&B’s and three different pubs, which had rather good pub grub.

Haworth Part II: Brontë Parsonage Museum

2008-07-12T14:40:00.001-07:00

This museum, owned and maintained by the Brontë Society, is the former home of the Brontë family, including the famous writers Charlotte, Emily, and Ann. To walk from room to room and see the piano played by Emily, the kitchen in which she made bread while she learned German from a book, and the couch on which she died (of tuberculosis at the age of only twenty-nine) was completely entrancing.

The rooms were all relatively small, as were the Brontës themselves, and each room had a fireplace in which they burned primarily peat cut from the moors outside. The room just inside the front door was the one where the three girls did most of their writing and creative discussions. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey were all written in this room, which we know because of Emily’s diary entries. This parlour was filled with books and would have been lit by oil lamps and candles. There’s also a black horsehair sofa in this room, which is where Emily finally succumbed to her illness in 1848, never having admitted that she was ever really sick. Charlotte referred to her as stoic. Obviously, I thought this was the most interesting room in the house.

My second favorite was what became the study of Arthur Bell Nicholls, who married Charlotte only nine months before her own death. Nicholls had come from Ireland in 1845 to assist Charlotte’s aging father at the Parsonage; Patrick Brontë had refused to give the two permission to marry, citing Charlotte’s age (36) as the primary factor—childbirth would be very dangerous for her. He had a point—the average life expectancy in Haworth at that time was 25.8 years, 41.6% of the babies born never reached the age of six, and the overall death rate in Haworth was 44.3% more than that of the neighboring villages (E. Atkinson 1998). The reason had to do with the town’s poor habits in deposing waste and burying bodies in relation to the water supply. Patrick Brontë relented two years later, and Charlotte and Arthur were married in 1854. Charlotte converted a store room into a study for her new husband, and all evidence indicates that she was very happy in her marriage. She was in mid-pregnancy when she died, and since all her siblings had already passed away, the Brontë heritage died with Charlotte and her unborn baby. Her father, in fact, outlived his wife and entire family. Nicholls stayed on to take care of Patrick, but returned to Ireland after Patrick’s death in 1861, taking with him the famous “Pillar” Portrait of the three girls, painted by Branwell Brontë, now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. Nicholls ended up outliving Charlotte by over sixty years.

Finally, I have to talk about Charlotte’s room upstairs, not because it was her room, but because it is where the museum keeps so many interesting artifacts relating to Emily. Her dresses, for example, are really interesting to look at. It helps one know how diminutive a person she really was, as do her gloves—so tiny. Her writing is small, too, and perfectly uniform—and stylistically beautiful. I read letters and notes, the actual ones (under glass) that she wrote. Her needlepoint seemed a bit mundane; she probably hated it. Her drawings were stunning. I did not know that she was such a fine artist. Sketches of landscapes, animals, and Gondal characters were fascinating to look it; they were intricately done.

After leaving the museum, I took a stroll through the church, which is not exactly small, but not large either. In it are the remains of most of the Brontës.

Haworth Part I: The Bronte Library

2008-07-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

I traveled over four hours by train and bus from London to Haworth (pronounced How-arth) to visit the Brontë Library, which, along with the museum, is run privately by the Brontë Society. I was apparently very lucky to get the appointment necessary to visit the library on such short notice, so I valued my time there all the more.

The small, one-room library is located in the back of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which was the home of the Brontës up until the 1860s. Two walls are covered with glass enclosed shelves filled with probably every publication on the Brontës, one wall is lined with file cabinets and boxed papers; the remaining wall is a large window fronted by a cluster of three desks, where the curatorial staff work. The library contains the largest collection of Brontë material in the world and has been used by many scholars. The room housing the library was not part of the home when the Brontës lived here, but it is part of a wing added in the 1870s by Patrick Brontë’s successor, the Reverend Wade. The building and the glass bookcases were part of the gift of Sir James Roberts, who purchased the Parsonage and presented it to the Brontë Society in 1928. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the library, but I found this one online at justine-picardie.blogspot.com/2008/04/in-library-at-bronte-parsonage.html.

One of the younger librarians, Sarah Laycock, had pulled a number of books and journals for me, all of which were on or close to my target. One of them was dedicated to the library and its guests and signed by the author. I worked the whole day through reading and gleaning information for my research project. Around me, meanwhile, was a bustle of activity. A group of new museum assistants came in to see the library and be introduced to the staff—they wanted to know who I was, which was funny, and the two librarians were busy working away at their computers and making phone calls.

One particularly distracting activity that I found myself completely fascinated by was a phone call made by Ann Dinsdale to Fedex. She kindly allowed me to bother her about what she was doing later. Ann had been inquiring about how to get a valuable, antique letter packaged and shipped from California to the Museum. It was a letter from Charlotte Brontë to her editor, and it is worth $47,000, which the museum is paying, in part by a grant from the Victoria & Albert Fund. It’s hard to believe that a single sheet of paper could be worth that much money. It’s also hard to imagine how any amount of money could make up for its loss. The letter had been published in a book by a scholar, who had seen it in a private collection, but until recently, no one knew its whereabouts. I read later that many of Charlotte’s writings had been cut up by her father after her death and sent out to people who had requested samples of her writing. How crushing to think that so much is lost forever. The staff was obviously thrilled at this find, and Sarah Laycock's entire face lit up at the possibility of discovered the original manuscript of Wuthering Heights one day.

I did get a lot done, despite all this activity, and even with the bad lighting that not only was dim but caused a glare on all my pages, which is necessary for reasons of preservation. So, the three positives of the day were getting to be in the library that housed so many original works, learning about the new Charlotte Brontë acquisition, and finding so many resources, thanks to Sarah, right in line with my research focus.

The Barbican Libraries

2008-07-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

The Barbican Centre is Europe's largest multi-arts complex, offering not only three separate libraries, but concerts, theater, dance, visual arts, and education events. It is also home to the London Symphony Orchestra. It was built as "the City's gift to the nation," and opened in 1982, at a historical capital cost of £161 million.

Amanda and Liz were our guides today as we toured the Barbican Children’s Library and the Barbican Music Library, respectively. What I found most interesting about the children’s Library was what Amanda had to say about a national program called Book Start, which is administered by the National Book Trust. Under this scheme, every child in the United Kingdom is entitled to a pack of books at three stages of his or her life before the age of five. The well advertised program has ensured that the book packs, each containing “quite a lovely set of books and information leaflets,” has reached the hands of over ninety percent of the nation’s children. Since non-use is a frequent lament among American public librarians, I thought the Book Start program might be considered by us; Amanda indicated that many European nations have adopted the program.

Of course, the other common American complaint is a lack of funding, which is why I was surprised when Amanda stated that the Barbican Children’s Library was “well resourced.” I don’t think anyone in the class had ever heard a librarian utter those words before. Actually, a well-funded library appears to me congruous with what I’ve observed so far of this country’s attitudes regarding civic systems, such as transportation and other public services; the attitude seems to be one where the government humbly serves its public and strives to continually listen and address concerns. Along these lines, Amanda told us about the massive operation undertaken each year to administer the Plus Survey to make sure that the library’s goals are appropriate to the needs of its community. The BCL is obviously doing something right because its calendar is jammed packed with group visits, and when the community can’t come to the library, the BCL’s staff takes its services out into the community. For their efforts, the library has earned many Satisfaction Medals.

Because Barbican is an arts center, priority was given to its music library. Accessible by anyone who lives, works, or studies in the city of London, the Barbican Music Library, containing large collections of CDs, DVDs, periodicals, and hardbound scores, is one of the two largest such libraries in the city. The CD collection alone contains over 16,500 units with sixty to seventy CDs added each month. The collection was started from scratch in the 1980s, which parallels the history of CDs. Because it is a living collection, it is regularly weeded, making the collection’s strength its modern publications. This weeding philosophy does not carry over to the scores section, however, as the library staff realize that many of these works would be lost forever if they were not archived by the library.

My favorite part of the Barbican Music Library is the working piano right in the middle of the main room. Originally intended for patron’s to try out a score before checking it out, it is more popular with people who want to do their daily practice. The library now has a booking procedure where users reserve one hour blocks, and many days see the piano booked for the entire day. Headphones make it so only the player can hear his playing, but I think it might be fun to hear the practicing aloud sometimes.

The libraries at the Barbican Arts Centre are so rich in resources that it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that patrons can obtain their library cards as early as birth. The youngest British citizen to obtain a card at Barbican was two hours old, which was facilitated by his aunt, a librarian in the Barbican Children’s Library.

I stole the image of the outside of the Barbican Centre from static.flickr.com/92/278988263_e0ed18296f_o.jpg, and the one of the piano player from w3.univ-tlse2.fr/form-co/cfcb/imagescfcb/londres/barbican1f.jpg

Westminster Abbey

2008-07-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

While visiting this great church wasn’t part of my British Studies program, it was definitely on my list of must-sees. All the kings and queens have been crowned here since 1066, and many of them have been buried here, so the history of England is closely tied with this church’s history. Plus, I absolutely had to see Poet’s Corner.

Razing the former church, Henry III began building this cathedral in 1245 in the new Gothic style of architecture, which was all the rage across Europe. Actually, it’s neither a cathedral nor a church; technically, Westminster Abbey is a “Royal Peculiar” subject only to the monarchy, which is something Queen Elizabeth I did when she refounded the Abbey as a Collegiate Church—so that Bishops couldn’t fight over it—and the worship was, and still is, in the glory of a non-denominational God. Elizabeth was very cool. Regardless, the place looks like a great, big, beautiful cathedral to me. The name came from the 900s when it had to be distinguished from East Minster, now St. Paul’s, so it was called West Minster.

The church is huge and beautiful with the traditional central nave, transept, choir, and alter, which is all surrounded by little hidden chapels and burial monuments. The edges of the church are very crypt-like. Memorable graves include the royal ones, including Queen Elizabeth I, who is ironically buried with her half sister Mary; they didn't exactly like each other. I stole the picture of her grave from http://www.westminster-abbey.org/. Since I’ve become a watcher of the television series The Tudors, I was looking for her father’s grave, but I later found out that Henry VIII is buried at Windsor. The graves of famous people in science include Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin; musicians Handel and Wagner are represented, as well as the great Winston Churchill. After looking through Poets’ Corner, I see that some of the plaques are not all gravestones, but memorials. For example, Shakespeare and the Brontës were not buried in Westminster, so their plaques must be memorials; it’s hard to distinguish. Other names I saw in Poets’ corner were William Black, Robert Browning, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Lord Byron, Henry James, Lewis Carroll, Dylan Thomas, WH Auden, TS Eliot, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, Ben Johnson, John Milton, and Alfred Tennyson. It was all very moving.

I finished my tour by having a look at the beautiful Cloisters, which is a perfect, green law surrounded by gorgeous stone arches; the oldest door in England, an eleventh century vestibule entry into the Chapter House; and the Abbey Museum, which contained a lot of costumes, drawings, and monastery art. I also lit candles in honor of my Grandmother, Estelle Murphy, my aunt, Kathy Cuomo, and the mother of a loved one, Marie Nicosia, who died two weeks ago.

The British Library

2008-07-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

We visited the British Library today, which is the national depository for the United Kingdom. The Library has holdings of over 170 million items in its entire collection, sixty percent of which are housed in this ship-shaped building on Euston Road in London, which was, not surprisingly designed by an architect who served in the Royal Navy and apparently loved ships, Sir Colin Saint John Wilson. The remaining lesser used items are stored in the British Library’s West Yorkshire facility. Publishers are required by law to deposit each work within a month of publication, and, according to our knowledgeable guide, Kevin (the Library’s Donations Officer), they are cooperative. Over two million items are added each year. Most of the books are stored in the basement of the building, which extends down six floors and seventy-five feet in a space that is designed to protect the books from both fire and flood. Located below sea level, water does pose a threat to the vaults, but the pump system efficiently directs the natural flow of water away from the building and into the Thames. Kevin’s description of this pump system reminded me of the one used in New York City’s subway system.

The British Library may not be the largest library in the world—it ranks third behind the Leningrad Library in Moscow and the Library of Congress in Washington DC, but it is the most widely used, especially by international patrons. I found this fact a little surprising because the library is not exactly user friendly. Our guide even made a joke about this truth when he said that it’s easier to get into Heaven, if you consider the seven steps described by Catholicism, then it is to access a book at the BL, which requires eight steps. Basically, a patron must complete the online Reader Registration, sit for a physical interview where his or her documentation is checked, and finally be able to say precisely what item is needed. Since patrons do not have direct access to the stacks, they must do a thorough search of the catalogue before making a request.

Additionally, patrons may not leave the premises with an item, but must use it in one of the reading rooms. This system appears to be similar to that used at the New York Public Library in Manhattan.

Our behind the scenes tour was very informative as to how a requested book gets into the hands of a patron. Four integrated computer systems work together, which involve the patron records, the bibliographic records, the location records (primarily by size), and the tracking records after the item is removed from the shelves. We were showed a room with computers, scanning machines, crates, tables, shelves, and books where items pass through, all apparently very organized.

This efficiency has developed out of a long history. While the BL only recently celebrated its ten year anniversary in this building, it dates back to 1840 when the core of the collection, over eight million items, was donated. Up until 1961, the British Museum and the British Library were operated together, which must have been quite difficult to manage, especially considering that it takes over 2,300 staff just to run the library. Among the thirty-five million items stored on the premises, some of the world’s most priceless treasures exist, such as the most valuable stamp in the world, an 1847 Queen Victoria Stamp that contains an imperfection made during the printing process.

Other treasures include The Gutenberg Bible (1454), which was the first book printed in Europe using movable type; the Magna Carta (1215), which marked a major turning point in the history of British government, the King James Bible (1611), the Lindisfarne Gospels (698); the Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci, the only existing medieval manuscript of Beowulf (1000); Shakespeare’s First Folio; hand written letters by Jane Austen; Charlotte Bronte’s handwritten manuscript of Jane Eyre; and hand written music and letters by members of the Beatles.

I stole all the pictures for this post from the official British library web site, http://www.bl.uk.

St. Paul's Cathedral Library

2008-07-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

Today, my class of fourteen visited the library at St. Paul’s Cathedral, a beautiful church designed by Christopher Wren in the seventeenth century. It’s one of the few great churches that was completed during the lifetime of its architect, and one of my favorite facts from this story is that, at the age of seventy-five, Wren saw his son place the finishing touch on the church, the cross on top of the dome. I also like the fact that even though most of the structures around the church were levelled during the Blitz of WWII, the church survived.

Joseph Wisdom, St. Paul's Cathedral's librarian, guided us up the famous Geometrical Staircase, aka the Dean's Staircase, up to the Triforium, which includes two libraries: the Trophy room and the Library Chamber.
Walking the high terrace, we were able to get a spectacular bird's eye view of the nave, where we could see cear over to the altar at the eastern end. Mr. Wisdom referred to this spot as the "BBC View," as camera operators use this area to capture famous happenings at the church--the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, for example.

Faciendi Plures libros Nullus Est Finis (Ecclesiastes 12:12) greets visitors as they enter the Triforium, Latin for “of making many books there is no end.” St. Paul's, up until about WWII, was involved in publishing. Also conveying the importance of books are the stone carvings of books on the vertical friezes throughout the Triforium.

Two libraries exist at St. Paul’s, the Trophy Room, which contains framed reproductions of Wren’s designs and sketches, as well as a car-size model of the church. The Library Chamber, located opposite the Trophy Room, contains volumes collected since the first library’s destruction in the Great Fire of London in the 1600s. Reproductions are used in the Trophy Room for conservation reasons, and the newly renovated room is light and open.
The Library Chamber, on the other hand, with its woody, musty aroma, dark and ornately carved woods, marble and bronze busts of past Canons, and stacks of old, leather bound books gives the opposite feeling. The collection, containing books on theology—Bibles, liturgies, histories of saints lives, classics, journals, law, arts, and sciences, is constantly under conservation. Emphasis is on matching materials and lettering, doing only as much as is necessary, and using reversible stabilizing techniques. Classification appears to be done partly by subject and partly by size; there appears to be about 54 shelves used in the library. Anyone can use the library, but most of the inquiries made are now Emailed to the librarian. The oldest book in the library is a handwritten manuscript, probably non-monastic, dated between the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries. It is a Book of Psalms.

Mr. Wisdom was able to share some interesting facts about working in such an old library. One was that bugs and rodents have to be attended to; he told a story about a troublesome pigeon that was quite funny. Another concern is environmental issues, such as lighting, dust (which comes mostly from people), and air. Records are kept constantly regarding the comings and goings of all employees as they circulate through the building in the hopes that they can regulate the environment in a way that protects the building and everything in it for future generations. Finally, Mr. Wisdom made a distinction between conservation and restoration, the latter being a method that doesn’t always preserve. Preservation is so important at St. Paul's that photography in the library is not permitted, so I stole this last picture off the St. Paul's official web site.

Beginning...

2008-07-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited to be here. King's College is host to this British Studies program, which is located on the Southbank in the middle of everything. I've already been to the Old Vic Theatre, where I saw Michelle Vickery as Eliza Doolittle in Shaw's Pygmalion; to Leicester Square, where I investigated the half price theater tickets for next week, paid way too much for a movie that assigns seats, and eaten very spicy Indian food; and attended Sunday mass at St. Paul's Cathedral, which was doing its special Orchestral Eucharist, accompanied by the City of London Sinfonia Orchestra. Having secured the latest copy of Time Out magazine, I'm overwhelmed with the cultural possibilities from plays to concerts to exhibitions--not to mention the fun of walking the streets, visiting the must-sees--Westminister Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben--and cruising the Thames. Tonight, after the King's College welcoming reception for the students and faculty of this British Studies at the historic Somerset House across the Waterloo Bridge, we'll take a slow, thirty-minute, sunset spin on the London Eye, which should give me even more ideas.

And then there's the exciting class intinerary...with visits to the St. Paul's Library, the Museum of London, the Barbican Library, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, as well as day and overnight trips to Stratford-upon-Avon, Dover, Canterbury, Oxford, Greenwich, Winchester, Stonehenge, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Having planned to do my research paper on Emily Bronte, I'm also planning an independent trip up to Haworth, although I have no idea how I'll squeeze that one in. I've already got my mini-break booked up with more of London and a trip to Bath. Well, I better get to work!