Libraries in 1900 London: The British Museum Reading Room

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his survey of libraries in Imperial London, published in 1901, with a look at the British Museum Reading Room:

Strangers at the British Museum will notice that certain persons, instead of pausing to deposit their umbrellas, sticks, etc, in the prescribed receptacles as they enter, walk straight on, pass through the swinging glass doors, and disappear at the end of a short corridor by way of other doors.

These individuals are "readers," privileged by ticket to make use of the great Reading Room that covers almost the whole of the quadrangle which the entire building forms.

This celebrated room is circular in shape, and has a domed glass roof 140 feet in diameter - twelve inches larger than that of Santa Maria at Florence.

There are incandescent electric lights at the desks, side-shelves, and in the upper space; the temperature is skilfully regulated, though generally rather too high for personal comfort, however conducive to the preservation of the books.

Desks and chairs are comfortable, each of the former being large enough to hold all the volumes that a reasonable student could desire, while inkstands, pens, and blotting-pads are, of course, provided.

Volumes for reference, over 25,000 in number and accessible to readers, encircle the ground-floor walls of the dome; the galleries above, not accessible to readers, containing the balance of 80,000 books located in the dome itself. Outside the domed Reading Room, between it and the walls of the Museum, are the "suburbs" or surrounding libraries, where the bulk of the volumes are kept.

These suburbs consist of a series of iron galleries approached by latticed metal staircases; the bookcases themselves, miles in length, being also of iron.

The books are arranged in presses according to the subjects, but having outgrown their accommodation, movable presses have in addition been provided in front of the old fixed ones.

To the girders supporting the floor, pieces of iron are attached in the form of lodges, upon which the movable presses run on wheels.

When the old presses are full, new presses are put in front of them, and can be moved at pleasure.

They do not turn on hinges, but pull straight out, and are really suspended from above.

Some of the more recent movable presses run on wheels along the ground, but these are used in the basement for heavy bound volumes or newspapers.

The catalogue, however, enables one better to realize what 2,000,000 books mean.

With an ordinary catalogue, Mudie's, for instance, we are all tolerably familiar, and consider it a rather formidable compilation to wade through.

But picture a series of low shelves arranged in sections around the Superintendent's enclosure in the centre of the Reading Room, wherein are placed as close as they will fit, stoutly-bound brass-edged thick volumes to the number of about 1000 (before type was employed, more than 2000), and which constitute the Catalogue of this magnificent Library!

The gigantic growth of this department in recent years may be gathered from the fact that the shelves occupied by London journals alone exceed 1000 yards in length, whilst those devoted to the provincial, Colonial, and foreign Press are more than 3600 yards, the total measuring close upon three miles.

In a single year the British newspapers have been known to fill 111 yards of shelving, which is at the phenomenal rate of one mile in sixteen years; so that one of the greatest problems besetting the trustees of the British Museum is how to dispose of these fast-accumulating journalistic files.

Next: Libraries in 1900 London: Public Libraries