I love libraries (Part One) by Cally Phillips

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

The London Library

The London Library stacks

As the Beatles once crooned ‘there are places I’ll remember’ and for me, number 2 in the places I love in the world (the first being the Che Guevara Mausoleum in Santa Clara) is the London Library. This is what a library should be.  When I became a member you still had to have references to join – now they let anyone in who will pay.  It was, and still is to some degree I’m sure, like a gentleman’s club. But open not primarily to gentlemen but to bibliophiles.  It has large wooden desks, huge leather chairs, a cataloguing system which is unique, baffling and frankly inexplicable (that may have changed now as they may have digitised everything) but this in itself gave the place another charm AND meant that you had the excuse to hide in the stacks ‘browsing’ which is what I love to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of the Dewey Decimal system and of knowing exactly what book you are looking for, but there is another pleasure in just roaming the stacks looking through ‘subject’ matter and finding all kinds of things you’d never heard of.  For the last several years I was in London I nearly lived in the London Library when I wasn’t working or at the theatre.  It is the only thing I regret about not living in London. I couldn’t live in London any more than I could live on the moon, but I could live in the London Library. As long as I never had to go out. And I would die happy. And more knowledgeable.

The London Library is probably very different now than it was in the 1990’s and like all such experiences in life, I wouldn’t want to go back and see that change. But I still rate it as one of the all time great places to be, and my favourite library of all time.  I am jealous of anyone who is still a member. Especially now they have online access. Online libraries is something I’ll talk about another time but the combination of the ‘live’ and the ‘online’ London Library is my idea of perfection in books.

Lots of famous people have been members of the London Library. And lots who are not and never will be famous. But like an alma mater, I’m sure we all share one thing – a deep and profound love and respect for this most wonderful and enlightening of libraries.

The  British Library

The 'old' British Library Reading Room.
Nice roof, shame about the rest of it. 

By contrast the British Library is one of my personal greatest disappointments. I had seen the domed reading room. I knew of all the greats (am I allowed to consider Marx a ‘great’) who had spent time there and for years I was desperate to get myself a readers ticket. The day I achieved this I really thought I’d ‘made it’.  I should have quit while I was ahead.  So what was wrong with the British Library reading room?  I couldn’t work there. The noise of all the silence reverberating round was bad enough. But the ‘organisation’ of it was more than I could bear.  First having to go through some form of US passport control before you got in there, where I felt like they were not just going to go through my bags but check my fingernails were clean (they rarely are) before allowing me into the hallowed portals was just the beginning of it.  Once there, I could not get my head round the system that meant you had to ‘ask’ for books to be delivered to your desk.  You could ‘wait’ or nominate a desk for them to be sent to.  The inherent problems here 1) you might have to wait for hours for the book you wanted – of course I could have brought another book in with me to work from – but why would I bring books into the Reading Room when I’d gone there to read books that were in it!  or 2) if you left your place then you’d have to go back and ‘lurk’ round the spot because inevitably someone else was sitting working there by the time your books were delivered.  And I didn’t like sitting there when someone else was lurking behind me waiting for their books to come to the desk I was sitting at.  I don’t think libraries should be like Musical Chairs.  I just didn’t like it. 

‘Feart o’ the Library’

Bus stop. Less appealling than
a library! 

This post is about how I love libraries. So how can I write about the ‘ugly’ in a library. Well, unfortunately I can. I’ve done it in my collection ‘It Wisnae Me.’ It’s a true story of what happened to me (spoiler alert we are talking flashers here) at the Children’s Library in Edinburgh in the 1970’s.  If you want to know more you’ll have to read it yourself. I’ve written enough now.  Next month, I shall be writing about the Academic Libraries I have loved.