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Going Underground

Though I was not able to visit Wales, the work done there in safeguarding the collections of so many institutions in the UK makes it worth mentioning. I am interested in how libraries and archives survive in times of conflict. The factors involved in: the initial decision to move the collection, the choice of where to move the collection, the work involved in preparing the chosen site, etc. are all things that could lead to saving priceless works or the destruction of so much. Many of the same places that house Britain's fine art also housed their library collections and archives. One example of wartime relocation of fine art was The National Gallery .  Image from The National Gallery website A slate mine in Wales was chosen and unused sections of it were converted into storerooms for the collection. The temperature controlled environments in these mines even led to adjustments to how works of art were stored and displayed once the war was over back at the museum. The...
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Royal Geographical Society Library and Archive

Our final journey to the Royal Geographical Society 's (RGS) Library and Archive brought us to a quiet little corner north of the bustling sidewalks outside The Victoria & Albert Museum and The Natural History Museum and directly across the street from an entrance to Hyde Park. Upon entering we made our way downstairs to the reading room and settled in for a briefing on the history of the RGS, given by the Principal Librarian, Eugene Rae. A table in the Reading Room laid out with the items Mr. Rae discussed. In 1830 the Geographical Society of London was formed and its precursor was the Raleigh Club, a sort of dinner club for gentlemen who traveled and explored and would share their findings. It was a way to gather and then disseminate data by publishing articles and journals to exchange their data information with other geographical societies. The RGS also offered training in the use of navigation instruments. The items that Mr. Rae shared with us are rare or o...
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St. Paul's Cathedral Library

The view of St. Paul's from Millennium Bridge Our trip to St. Paul's was a vertical one as we ascended higher towards "the heavens" or more precisely into the archives and library of the St. Paul's Cathedral . Upon entering the cathedral we went upstairs to the triforium level. The "triforium" as defined by Merriam-Webster , is "a gallery forming an upper story to the aisle of a church and typically an arcaded story between the nave arches and clerestory". Our lovely guide, Yvonne, told us that the timbers above us in the triforium level are 300 years old. Yvonne also pointed out this cataloged wall of fragments of the cathedral. One issue that was discussed was the issue of dust not from age and time but from the constant need for repairs on the cathedral that finds its way into the room where our group ventured next . Joseph Wisdom, the Librarian of St. Paul's for about the last 20 years, talked about the curr...
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Bletchley Park : Information Safehold

After our class visit to The National Museum of Computing  some of us ventured on to Bletchley Park . The location of the codebreakers and all of the vital and top secret work that was done there echoes the value of relocating collections for safekeeping during times of conflict. Heading towards the Mansion at Bletchley Park Due to London being such a target, and this new tactic of fighting a war through decoding of messages and information, removing such work to the country was imperative. The cultural and historical significance of the collections of museums, libraries, and archives that were moved to remote locations elsewhere in the UK mirrors this concept of removing what is deemed high-priority from high risk zones. Approaching the Mansion across the lawn The top secret nature of what went on at Bletchley Park during the war echoes how the stores of collections were kept secret so as to increase their safety in case of invasion. The Library and Archives at...
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The National Museum of Computing

One train ride and a short walk was all it took to arrive at a place which houses and cares for machines that helped to bring the power of information into the global arena. Our guide at  The National Museum of Computing , Sheridan Williams, led us through the eras of computing and the machines with which companies were able to exponentially streamline their industries. Before this though, Mr. Williams took us to the rooms containing the coding machines of World War II. One example was The Lorenz SZ42, which used a complex combination of 12 rotors to encrypt a message. Every individual message was encrypted in a different way by changing the start position of each rotor before transmitting the message. Mr. Williams asked us how many combinations of unique sets of start positions there could be, but none of us being mathematicians (far from it) we couldn't guess. The answer is 1.6 million, billion. And no, the "billion" following that "million" is not a typo...
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Smack Dab in the Middle Temple Law Library

Garden outside of Middle Temple Library Another sunny day and another journey to a lovely library. The Middle Temple Library, built in 1958, is a legal reference library but also holds a variety of other material that deal with biography, history, literature and a variety of other topics because the original purpose of the schools also provided "a generalist education" . Inside Middle Temple Law Library According to their website is currently contains over 250,000 volumes covering the whole range of British, Irish, EU and US legal research resources, including law reports, journals, textbooks, loose-leafs, e-books and databases. As a part of its older collections it holds 9,000 early printed books, 300 manuscripts, is home to the Molyneux Globes, and a group of Prime Minister portraits dating from the 18th to 21st centuries. Long ago, the library was faltering but a member of the Inn, Robert Ashley (1565-1641) bequeathed his large and varied personal library...
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The National Art Library at the V&A

Walking into The National Art Library located at the Victoria & Albert Museum  is like walking onto a movie set for a period film. If it weren't for the contemporary and studious patrons, seated at the desks with their laptops and smartphones, it would seem like an untouched time capsule. The reading room, which was the first room in the V&A to have electric lighting. (Image source: Megan Doyle ) We were separated into two groups and off we went on our tour of the back rooms of The National Art Library. My group's guide, Cassandra Gilbert-Ward led us to the rooms that house the majority of the collection and from which the librarians retrieve materials. There are 25 staff members and they fall under the Word & Image Department within the museum and there are about 10 individuals staffed daily public retrieval. She went on to tell us that the collection is publicly accessible and all an interested researcher needs to do is become a registered member. The lib...
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