The Barbican Library

           The Barbican Library is a part of the Barbican Centre, is the major lending library for the City of London, and it opened in 1982.  When we got there, we were split into two groups: one to go with Jonathan Gibbs and the other one went with Geraldine Pote.  They split us up by handing out red and yellow pieces of paper and depending on what color you got decided whose group we were.  I got the color for Jonathan Gibbs’s group.  Jonathan started our wonderful tour with leading us downstairs to the music library to get a tour from Richard Jones, who is in charge of that section.  The music library has two pianos that patrons can book in advance to use to practice with or to try out some of the sheet music that they have in the library.  This is a really cool concept to help promote music.  Also, they have the largest music library in the United Kingdom and they have the largest collections of CDs. 

           

            Next, we went back upstairs to a sitting area where we met up with the other group to have a snack of biscuits and juice or water.  While we were having our snack, Natalie, the library assistant that helps a lot with the children’s library, came and talked to us because the children’s library was being used during our visit.  She told us about the different programs that they do there.  After that, he gave us a tour of the rest of the library where they have the London collection, the crime collection, fiction, nonfiction, and more.  In their London collection, they have a lending book that dates back to 1739.  Also, they have about 200,000 books for lending with self-service machines that the patrons can use to renew or to checkout materials. 

            This library was one of my favorites to visit because first: it is a public library and we had not visited many in our time here and second: our tour guide.  He made the tour.  He was funny and informative and you could tell that he has good relationships with his coworkers just by how they interacted with each other.  Also, it was nice to see how public libraries differentiate from academic and special collection libraries.