Visiting London Libraries

Image of Thomas Carlyle, the inspiration for the founding of The London Library, by steeljam

This week I've visited two very different libraries.

First off was The Law Society Library in Chancery Lane serving solicitors in England and Wales. This was my first visit to a law library, although there had been a well stocked Law Reading Room when I worked at Sidney Sussex College Library in Cambridge. The Law Society Library is a reference library which opened in 1832, with some 45,000 volumes, in a Grade II listed building. Their enquiry service is geared towards speed and efficiency with highly qualified and experienced law librarians.

The Library Online resource is run in partnership with LexisNexis and includes access to a Queries and Enquiries Database with over 4000 past questions answered by the library. This digital service, requiring a large amount of staff time, was seen as a crucial and constantly developing part of the library and a service which made the library relevant to solicitors regardless of geographical location. There was, however, a strong feeling that printed material was certainly still alive and kicking within the field of law. The reasons for this seemed to stem from the secure sense of ownership and preservation of their book holdings in contrast to their digital formats. It could well be that the switch from print to digital is taking slightly longer in this sector due to the demographics and search preferences of practising solicitors. The library had considered becoming a lending library but this had been rejected because of the cost involved (obviously as a reference library only one copy of each book is needed.) We were also told about the in-house classification system and the reasoning behind this, including the rejection of the Moys classification system.

The visit was very useful in terms of networking with librarians from the Cataloguing and Indexing group and for giving me an insight into the work of a law librarian.

Second visit of the week was to the independent London Library, St James's Square, Piccadilly. Watch the video below to see why I and many other people are in love with this library!

The London Library from Jeremy Riggall on Vimeo.

Feeling much more at home in a humanities based library we were told the delightful history of the institution, including the story of the charismatic Librarian Charles Theodore Hayberg Wright, whose influence is still felt in the library today. I was greatly impressed by the knowledgeable staff we met and took away a real sense of a traditional library (with a collection now exceeding one million books, as no books were ever thrown away) which was forward looking and successful in fundraising and planning for the future. The library had embraced the need for promotion and acknowledged that there was more they could do, for example publicizing the wealth of collections in over 50 languages.

At £395 for membership per year the library is not an option open to all, but as a charity they are keen to allow access to as wide a range of members as possible and there were various concessionary rates available. Any other school librarians reading this might like to read why Patrick Ness uses the library. This was a wonderful opportunity, organised by the Career Development Group, to soak up the increasingly rare experience of being surrounded by history and literary riches.