Today was our first class trip to a public lending library, finally. The Barbican Library is part of the Barbican Center in the City of London and is the major lending library for the city. It opened in 1982 and serves the City of London or the "square mile" (the heart of Britain's Business Center). The library is open to all the public but its main patrons are those who live and/or work in the City of London. The library employs 44 staff, 36 full-time and houses a collection of over 200,000 books and other materials. Amazingly, the library averages 1200 visitors per day. Our visit today, included the main library, the Music Library and the Children's Library.
My thoughts
I was so happy to finally visit an actual lending library and have a scheduled tour. I've enjoyed the other libraries but have been anxious to visit a "real" lending library. The librarians were of course wonderful. Very informative and even provided packets with information on the library as well as my favorite, a morning "tea" break. The library looked and functioned much like our public libraries. And the library does use the Dewey classification system unlike the reference libraries we have visited which use size. I liked the look and feel of the Children's Library. It was cozy with comfortable bean bags for sitting and rolling crates full of books, wonderful for kids to browse.
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