Britain plans vast national library

Press, 18 October 1978, Page 12

Britain plans vast national library

By

ALEC FORREST

L for the

London Press Service

An appreciable proportion j of the world's store of knowledge will eventually be i concentrated in one building i — the new British Library. Formed ip July, 1973, from four major national institutions, the British Museum Library, the National Central Library, the National Lending Library for Science and Technology, and the British National Bibliography, the library has its possessions housed in 17 build- ■ ings in London alone, its finest treasures being at the British Museum with its famous reading room and | King’s Library. A national library clearly demands a national building, ■ so with the Government’s authorisation a 9.5 acre (3.8 ha) site, largely disused exI cept for parking spaces and a few light industrial buildings, has been selected ; a’ongside St Pancras railway station. It is only 15 minutes’ walk, northwards, from the British Museum. For this site Professor Colin St John Wilson has designed a Y-shaped building of great ingenuity to house the library’s dispersed resources. The monumental red brick building will accommodate 25 million books spread over 450 miles (725 km) of shelves, the greater part stacked in three floors below ground level. Designing these floors posed special difficulties because the tunnels of two London tube lines (the Victoria and Northern) run under the site and a third railway line flanks its southern boundary at the Euston Road.

In skirting these tunnels Professor Wilson’s blueprints also make provision for shock barriers to absorb vibration from trains.

Railway considerations also count above ground. The architect has designed a build9ng whose skyline does not obscure the high Victorian Gothic facade of St Pancras station, a notable landmark, nor does it impede views from housing and public buildings on the west flank. He achieves this desirable symmetry by relatively low level roof lines for the library blocks, eadh of which are planned to make the best use of daylight. The new building’s reading

rooms are designed on a three tier level and will have seats for 3500 people, compared with the 385 seats in the domed reading room at the British Museum.

This Victorian masterpiece opened in May, 1857, with a champagne breakfast laid out on the catalogue shelves. Those whose life work was enhanced by studies there or in previous reading rooms include Thackeray, Carlyle, Marx, Lenin, Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw. Now more than 500,000 reader visits are recorded yearly, 75 per cent of the users being univesity academics and postgraduate students, the remainder mainly historians, freelance writers and professional researchers working for authoris. When the new building’s reading rooms are in service readers will benefit from a fast delivery of requested books to their desks. They should enjoy also the lighting conditions: the maximum use is being made of naturally lit ceilings to soothe or stimulate questing minds. Construction will begin on the new building in 1979. The initial cost is estimated at 164 million ($320 , million), but by the time it is completed in the 1990 s it may be far higher. From a piazza which leads to the main entrance, the visitor will step into a spacious catalogue hall, its tiers opening out like a fan to give access to exhibition galleries, restaurants, publication shops, meeting rooms and other facilities.

The building’s right wing wifi house technology, science and patent records, and the left wing will contain rare books, manuscripts and musical works, the whole watched over by a staff of 2500 with authorities preeminent in their disciplines serving users in each department.

It is doubtful if even the ablest minds can do more than dimly visualise the incomparable hoard of written treasure to be transferred to Professor Wilson’s edifice. A short time ago the library acquired the account books of two English kings, Henry VII and Henry VIII. That of Henry VII for the years 1502-1505, with observations in the king’s handwriting, is the more inter-

esting. It itemises revealing aspects of Henry’s private life, his payments to jesters, musicians and his barber, fines imposed on subjects, gifts to the poor, his gambling losses and rewards fqr presents of woodcock arid lampreys.

Both documents, hitherto kept in private collections, are significant material for students of early Tudor England.

The library’s department of Oriental manuscripts and printed b books covers the languages and literature of Asia and North Africa. It is outstandingly rich in Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Indian Mughal manuscripts, many lavishly ornamented, and in ancient versions of the Bible. Tie Chinese section contains more than 60,000 manuscripts and printed rolls, of which the Diamond Sutra of ADB6B, a long scroll printed from skilfully cut wood blocks, is the

world’s oldest dated printed document.

Special collections in the music department include the Paul Hirsch library, which was acquired in 1946. With 20,000 items devoted to music of all periods, it is richest in works of musical theory, opera full scores and first editions of the Viennese classics. Priceless works will include the earliest of English manuscripts, such as the illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels of about AD69B, the works of artistic monks living at the Northumbrian island monastery of that name.

One of the more recent acquisitions consists of a chest of documents relating to the Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was once the property of the Reverend Scrope Davies who embarrassed by creditors, deposited the box in Barclay’s Bank before fleeing overseas in 1820. There, in the bank’s Pall

Mall, London, branch the chest stayed, disregarded and unopened for 150 years, until unlocked during some structural alterations. Its contents included Byron’s manuscript of the Third Canto of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and a fair copy of “The Prisoner of Chillon’’ with amendments in the poet’s handwriting. Another prize among a mass of correspondence between Byron and his circle was a notebook by Shelley in which he had written his “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and two poems not pre viously known.

In the royal music library students can pore over a unique collection of Handel’s autograph scores in 97 volumes. Altogether the department has mmore than 12,500,000 items of printed music and these are add d to at the rate of 6000 to 7000 a year.

A copy of a Gradual (a srespond sung between Epistle and Gospel in the

service of the Mass) is almost certainly the first piece of music ever printed. It was printed probably at Constance in 1473.

Having appropriated from the British Museum one of the world’s top stores of wisdom in the form of books and manuscripts, not to mention maps and postage stamps, the library aims to give scholars the means to bring this knowledge to life.

To that end it is using modern technology to make its services readily accessible, supplying information to all who can make use of it. Newly published books alone, pouring into it under the copyright deposit provisions, require two miles (3.2 km of new shelves each year.

The Royal Fine Art Commission, a body of experts not easily satisfied, has called Professor Wilson’s design “a brilliant solution to an extremely complex problem.”