British Library Visit

To gain certification in CILIP, it is important to do several library visits, preferably in libraries that are not in one's sector. Being that I had gained a contact for the British Library, I thought it would be a good idea to have my first visit to be to the most important library in the nation.

The British Library gives lots of public tours, but I got my own personal tour from a very nice science librarian. We were even able to discuss several topics at length over tea and biscuits--it was all very lovely and civilized.

In the Knowledge and Skills Base, CILIP provides several key questions to help guide the library professional when looking at the wider organizational and environmental context of libraries. That is, I knew that I needed to gain an understanding of the following in the British Library:

• Strategic plans and policies.

• The wider political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors which may impact organization and service.

• The information society and the implications and opportunities that presents to the profession.

At first this may seem a bit daunting, but really all I needed to do was form some questions related to all three of these topics and let discussion flow from there. It became apparent once I had finished this visit how useful having knowledge of the wider library context actually is. I have since been able to participate much more in team meetings when it comes to improving our services and promoting ourselves. I also feel that I am in a better position to contribute to the Kent CILIP committee which I have recently joined (more on that later).

So on to the visit itself. The British Library is, as one might imagine, magnificent. It's huge, vibrant, and puts one in awe as soon as they walk through the front doors. There is a square column going up through the center filled with books once owned by King George III. This area was to be designated to the card catalogue, but by the time the building had been constructed, the catalogue had gone digital. This is a fine example of practical art for a library, as the books can moved via a turn-able shelf. I am fascinated by library design and am always on the lookout for clever artistic touches that enhance the space.

The library's collection policy is simple. National libraries have legal deposit. This is where most of their physical and digital copies come from and then they purchase the rest. All books in the lending library in York are purchased.

The British Library has several reading rooms--one for each collection. Readers can look up a book on the OPAC, but do not usually go looking for the book on the shelves. They need to go ask a librarian for assistance as the book could be anywhere in the library and will need to be sent to the reading room via the network of conveyer belts running throughout the building.

Readers can be just about anyone. There are people there doing genealogical research, looking up illnesses to challenge their doctors, finding legal records for a case, etc.

The political environment has a large influence on the BL's budget--they need to justify their normally large budget in a time of austerity, for example.

E-books have been a bit of an issue for the BL. Through legal deposit, British publishers are required to provide the BL with published ebooks, but they have greatly restricted their use by making it impossible to lend them and requiring that only one reader can read them at a time in the reading rooms.

The medical/science portion of the BL was put together in 1861 due to the large amount of manuals in the British patent office. The classification system for medical/science books has changed. It used to be an in-house creation, but has recently gone to Dewy since that is a system that most people are familiar with. Unfortunately, this means that now there are 2 classification systems as there are simply too many books to relabel all of them.

Other changes have been brought about due to the interest in patron involvement. Curators now teach classes or put on demonstrations. Their attention is not completely devoted to the objects they curate or the information about and within them, but is patron driven. While I was there, I walked into a demonstration on exercise for sedentary workers, and both my tour guide and I stopped to participate.

The man who gave me a tour was not a subject librarian as such, although he worked only in the science section. Like most librarians I have met, he just sort of drifted into the field and then became an expert in referencing science material.

Unlike my own small library, the BL has many employees and my guide lamented on how this can become restrictive. Each person has their own small area of expertise and can rarely go on to learn or do something new. This can also cause tension between departments as each librarian works in their own little world and may have difficulty seeing the bigger picture. Lately the BL has tried to tackle this issue by forming work groups whereby librarians from different areas come together to work on shared problems. So far this has had a positive impact.