National Art Library

The National Art Library is a public art reference library located in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This library is open to anyone who desires information on art. It has two stories of books in two rooms open to the public, then many more periodicals and books in the massive storage space which is not open to the public. This library would be a spectacular place for a fashion student to be inspired, there are many years of fashion magazines bound together for storage in stock. Patrons may request books and every half hour an employee will pick up the requests to retrieve the needed items. One of the rooms is for silent reading while the other room has the inquiry desk and patrons do not have to be completely quiet. There are copy machines available with a "Binder Minder" which allows patrons to easily copy pages from books. If a color photo is preferred, there is also a digital camera station that allows patrons to take a snapshot which can either be printed out, or stored on a memory stick. Conservation is the books is an important issue, and many actions are taken to protect the books.

Even with what seems like a great deal of storage area, space is still very limited, and often when the museum needs more room, it will be taken from the library. An example was the west room that was once part of the library, was now turned into the 20th century exhibit for patrons to view. The walls are still lined with books, but the floor, which was once full of book shelves is now full of art. The library had to put bars over the wall book shelves so museum patrons cannot steal the books. If a book is requested form this area, a screwdriver must be used to first remove the bar, so the library employee can get to the book.

Since many books are in areas not accessible to the public, the OPAC is used to request books. Patrons are expected to use the OPAC and find what they need, and only if they need more help are they to ask a librarian. The librarians are there for the more in depth research questions. The cataloging system uses numbers and a "findings list" to locate the books. This is more efficient since the books are shelved according to size, rather than genre or anything else. This makes it easier and quicker to add new books to the shelf. This system does not make for good browsing, but in this case it does not matter since most books are away from the public's view anyway. I like the benefits of this system, however I see one big downfall, if a book is re-shelved in the wrong place, it would be very tricky to find it in the masses of shelves. Any person re-stocking books must be very careful and pay close attention to detail. This is also why the public is not allowed to re shelf the items they use.

If I lived near this library, I would probably regularly spend my free time in the reading room, reading old fashion magazines and design books.