MANY BOOKS FOR ARCHITECTS

Southland Times, Issue 23395, 30 December 1937, Page 6

MANY BOOKS FOR ARCHITECTS

GREAT CATALOGUING TASK ENDED CHRISTOPHER WREN RELIC The Royal Institute of British Architects has completed the cataloguing of its extensive library, a task upon which its experts have been engaged for several years. It has been a costly undertaking, and the publication of this elaborate catalogue has been made possible by the generosity of Sir Banister Fletcher, a past president of the institute. The first of the two volumes will be issued within the next few weeks, says a special correspondent of The Sunday Times, London. It is nearly. 40 years since this library —reputed to be the largest collection of books, manuscripts, and drawings of its kind in existence —was last catalogued, and since then it has more than trebled in size. It now contains nearly 40,000 books relating to architecture from the earliest times down to the present day. Among the rarer volumes are muchprized editions of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One rarity is “Parentalia,” the account of Sir Christopher Wren’s life and work published by his grandson in 1750. There are also MSS. of Wren, and among the thousands of drawings are designs by Inigo Jones, who planned for Charles I the great Palace of Whitehall, of which only the Banqueting Hall was built. All the leading English architects of the past—Sir John Vanbrugh, Lord Burlington, Sir William Chambers, Sir Robert Taylor, and Sir Charles Barry, for example—are represented in the library either by books, manuscripts, or drawings. The books include a large number of authoritative works in French, German, Italian and other languages. The catalogue in printed form will cover about 2300 pages, and will be the most complete architectural bibliography ever published. The index to authors alone, with a brief descriptive note attached to each entry, will extend to 1500 pages. This up-to-date record will be of great value not only to the architectural profession but to students, writers, and others engaged in research work in building and design. Books from the lending library are in great demand, and are sent out to members not only in this' country but all over the world. The postal business done in the United Kingdom has grown to large dimensions, and inquiries about books, magazines, pamphlets, etc., have multiplied tremendously. There are nearly 200 current technical periodicals, British and foreign, in the library, and all the important articles in these are also indexed.

Another activity of the institute which is making good progress is that of the Graphic Records Department. This is the card-indexing of all tl ' -ictures, drawings, and prints of buildings to be found in public art galleries, museums, and libraries throughout the country.

The collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in most of the London libraries have already been covered, and the recorders are shortly to begin work on the architectural subjects in the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and other public art collections. The provincial museums and libraries will be dealt with later on.