Last week a smaller group than usual – others of us caught
up in the start of summer term rush – journeyed to South Kensington to visit
the Natural History Museum Library. And sorry to say it, but those who couldn’t make it
missed a treat. So much so that I am going to write this blog post as a top ten
reasons why being a NHM librarian is such a splendid and glamorous thing.
Starting with:
1.
The Museum itself. What a place to work! Usually
I am more of a V&A girl and haven’t crossed over to this side of Exhibition
Road for many years, but those dinosaurs got me as soon as we walked in. Aside
from the obvious attractions, the details in Waterhouse’s
architecture keep you continually entertained. Terracotta animals and
plants are dotted about the building, with extinct creatures in the east wing
and living in the west. The NHM started life in the 18th century as
part of the British Museum, moving to the current site in the mid-19th
century, and now houses the most important natural history collection in the
world, an animatronic T.rex, and a library.
2.
The variety of visitors. The primary role of
library is to support the research of the museum – there are PhD students based
there, and MSc students at nearby Imperial College who are linked with the
museum. Alongside the academic research that is done in the library, visitors
ranging from families from Australia wanting to know more about the first
fleet, to Sir David Attenborough
himself come to access the library’s collections. Anyone can register and is free
to join. Visits are by appointment only so they don’t have many casual callers,
and a quiet, serious research environment is fostered. Readers can request anything from the
collections, but first edition Darwins needs a good reason before they are
retrieved!
3.
Working in a museum library. This is a bit
different to many people’s experience and perception of library work. There are
elements of the academic environment (working with students and academic staff)
as well as other facets that might usually be associated with public library,
such as public outreach. The library also serves a number of independent
researchers, including art students. NHM library and archives are members of MLAG, the UK Museum Librarians and
Archivists Group – a good place to start looking if you are interested in working
in the sector.
4.
Learning opportunities. As a reference library
where material is retrieved in advance and invigilated, staff here have an amazing
opportunity to interact with visitors and talk to them about their research. We
spoke to staff about their own academic backgrounds, and found that not everybody
had a science background. The best way
to learn about the subjects covered by the library is to get to know the collections
– the more you retrieve from the store, the more you can absorb, often by
learning from readers and their research. Again, did I mention Attenborough? NHM staff can gain specialist
subject knowledge in various areas. Which leads me on to…
5.
Moonlighting as an author. NHM used to have several
small libraries littered across the museum, covering various the subject areas
of natural history: botany, zoology, ornithology, entomology anthropology,
palaeontology, and mineralogy. Each library had its own team, and staff came to
specialise in these areas. Some years ago it was decided that the libraries should
merge and centralise into a more conventional academic-style structure. Still,
the various expertises remained, and to make use of this library staff are now
heavily involved in curating the Images
of Nature gallery within the museum, and in the publication of the
accompanying catalogues. We met special collections librarian Andrea Hart who spoke to us about her involvement in the soon-to-be-installed
exhibition and catalogue, utilising the women’s collection (we had a sneak-peek
at some amazingly vibrant coloured drawings of natural history and ethnography by
Olivia Tonge from the early 1900s). Andrea is able to make use of her knowledge
and research skills to write and be published – an unusual opportunity. Similarly,
Hellen Sharman was able to write on her own specialist subject of ephemera, in
an article in the museum’s magazine Evolve.
6.
Art collections. Unlike in many other museum and
gallery structures, the art collections in NHM come under the wing of the
library and archives. The library’s special collections (more of which shortly)
encompasses rare books, manuscripts and art works. You might not think of it,
but the museum has the third largest art on paper collection in the UK. You can
have a look at their online picture library
for an idea of NHM image collections.
7.
Conservation.
Now for some photos. This is one of the special collections items that Andrea
was kind enough to get out for us. I’ve gone for the oldest, which is in fact
the second oldest book in the collection: Pliny’s Natural History from 1472.
Note the vellum binging and handsome furniture.
We also saw botanical illustrations by Arthur Harry Church, Kew Gardens botanical
artist Franz Bauer, Ferdinand Bauer and Georg Ehret. With such important, and
in many cases delicate, examples in the collection, staff take conservation seriously.
All prints are mounted on acid-free boards, and hinged with Japanese paper
& wheat starch paste. This means that should they be needed for exhibition,
water can be applied to the hinge, and the artwork removed from the board
without damaging the paper. All boards are tissue interleaved and stored in solander
boxes, and kept in the special collections store which has UV-filtered lights.
Perspex mounts and book supports are used to display rare books; and smaller pieces
such as photographs are stored in polyester archival sleeves, meaning that any
annotations or other useful content on the reverse of the item can be seen
whilst minimising manual handling of the originals.
8.
Digitisation. Having been involved in the Biodiversity Heritage Library
(BHL) since its inception five years ago, the NHM is still working as part of
this project which aims to digitise biodiversity literature to create an open
access resource for researchers. Within the library there is a digitisation workstation,
including this hard-to-miss scanning unit known as a scribe.
Out of copyright published material can be requested, and any of these
requests held by the library can be digitised here and uploaded to BHL website
as tiffs, later converted to JP2 files. The
pressure that these units put on the books is potentially quite destructive, so
special collections items are not included in this project.
9.
Social media. They are ever so modern at the
NHM, and have all the social media covered. I could make a pun here (something on
the subject of tweeting about ornithology...); instead I will draw your
attention to the NHM blog, NaturePlus.
The library’s part of this blog is
widely used, with new acquisitions updates and special items of the month, as
well as more discursive pieces written by different library staff. They do also
use Twitter... @NHM_Library. If you look closely you might
even see a twitpic of us “lovely graduate trainee librarians”!
10. Performing. As if all of this wasn’t exciting
enough, the library also get involved in the public engagement programme in the
museum. There have been live video links to lecture theatre (on the other side
of the museum) to showcase interesting items from the collection that can’t be
removed from the controlled conditions of the reading room – for example William
Smith’s geological map from 1815 (for a sense of the scale of it, see this blog
post). Joining up the library with the museum’s public events is a really
effective way of unlocking the collection, and must be great fun for the staff
members who get to show their extrovert side in doing it!
So there we have it. Huge thanks to Hellen Sharman for
organising such a great visit.
Harriet.
