Finally, after a month of visiting other libraries and thinking about my Darwin project, I had a free day to visit London's Natural History Museum and Library! I made it there around 11:00 because I wanted to look around for a few hours before my appointment with the zoology librarian, Paul Cooper. (Hi Paul!)
As you can see, the line was... substantial. The main line for the front door was at least 1.5 hours long. Luckily, I found a super-secret (not really) side entrance with a much shorter wait, about 20 minutes!
I can't even describe how great this place was! I could've easily spent a whole day there. I didn't even get to see the dinosaur exhibit, since that exhibit had its own line and I was running short on time. I was mostly in search of their Darwin stuff, and there was plenty to see. There is a life-size statue of Darwin on the landing of the big main staircase, and there is even a whole Darwin store! I bought a plush Darwin.
Have I mentioned that Darwin is on the £10 note? Observe:
I of course made my way to investigate the exhibit on salamanders. It wasn't that extensive, but they had the important stuff!
The building (designed by Alfred Waterhouse) that houses the museum is well known for its stunning architecture. It opened in 1881, and many of its features were built with nature and natural history in mind. For example, most of the ceiling tiles have elaborate pictures of plants or animals on them.
In one area, there are stone monkeys on the walls, and I found one that looks like Darwin! I doubt this was intentional, but since Origin of Species would've been hot stuff when it was designed and built, it's tough to say for sure. You can see it, right? Unfocus your eyes a little. See? It's like it has a little beard and everything!
For comparison:
At 2:00, I made my way to the library for my interview with Paul Cooper. First, I had to sign up for a reader's card, which made a nifty souvenir (wee plush Darwin is holding it in the picture above). Then I was taken through a maze of hallways hidden from the public and delivered to Paul's desk in the corner of a reading room. We talked for well over an hour (Paul's generosity knows no bounds!), and covered many of the same topics that other librarians have talked to use about. The library is run by the Department of Culture, Sports, and Media, so it is subject to the same budgetary pressures as the V&A National Art Library. Paul's daily duties consist of a mix of staffing the inquiry desk, answering email queries, and special projects such as digitizing some older items. He has also occasionally traveled for the library, escorting rare or special materials. We joked about his metal briefcase handcuffed to his wrist with rare scientific documents inside!
There are several cataloging issues the library is facing. Some parts of the collection are catalogued using different systems. There are also some journals that are not fully catalogued, but the 200 million items have been in an automated catalog system since 1989.
In addition to our little chat, Paul was also kind enough to pull some Darwin-related materials for me to peruse. These were great, and I intend to use the materials he showed me in my Darwin paper, but they were overshadowed by some other things that happened. When Paul gave me the materials (a first edition of Origin of Species! Darwin's correspondence!), I sate down at a table with an older gentleman. He greeted me, I said hello, that was that. After a few minutes, he got up and told Paul he had a brief meeting to attend with the library director, and he would return in a few minutes. Once he got up, I saw what he'd been looking at: a box with the words "ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT, 5 SHEETS" on it. Do you know what that means? That means that there were 5 sheets of Darwin's original handwritten draft in that box! This is like the holy grail for an evolutionary biologist/librarian such as myself! Paul allowed me to touch it, and I think he laughed a little at me for being so excited.
Even more exciting: it turns out that the man who'd been using the manuscript was Randal Keynes, one of Darwin's great-great-grandchildren!
Overall? Not a bad afternoon. :)