The clunker was a rather imprecise security tool. If you became confused about which books were being returned and which books loaned out, you could potentially put demagnetised books back on the shelf, or cause embarrassment by having to recall the patron you just served back to the desk as they set the alarm off with an incorrectly clunked book. You were emphatically told not to use the clunker on cassette tapes and videos, as the magnet would wipe the tapes. I probably did it anyway once or twice on autopilot, but I never heard of anyone complaining that the video they borrowed was mysteriously blank. I also remember working in at least one other library which had a more labour-intensive magnetic block, which instead of clunking, required an unspecified amount of rubbing the front and back of the book on the block as if you were polishing it.

If you have ever bought an ex-library book and you can see a thin metallic strip stuck through the spine, now you know that once upon a time, the book encountered a clunker. I’m sure that some libraries still have this once-innovative system, but radio-frequency identification tags are probably more commonly used.

Mabel Dawes (1908 – 1991) was a Hospital Librarian and lived in Feltham with a Branch Librarian, Irene Thornley (1916 – 2002).

Henry Wilson Robinson (c1846 – 1924) was Librarian at Bury Athenaeum, which was an educational and recreational institute in the town of Bury, Lancashire.

Jessie M Barrett (b1898) was a ‘Librarian for Music Rolls for Player Pianos’ who lived in Croydon. I thought it was a quite unusual role but then I found several more with similar titles on the 1911 Census. Player pianos (or Pianolas) used perforated rolls to automatically play tunes and were very popular in their heyday.

Marjorie C Mills (b1912) was described as a Chartered Librarian in 1939, presumably a Chartered Member of the Library Association, which was formed in 1877 and is now known as CILIP. I’m guessing it was a big deal for a woman to be Chartered in the 1930s.

Gwennie M Johnson (b1914) was a Cook Shop Librarian who lived in Finchley. Perhaps the role involved cataloguing a variety of baked goods?

Ella H Howarth (b1910) was a Librarian at W H Smith who lived in Harrow. W H Smith are best known for their shops selling books and stationery, but once upon a time, libraries were also part of their service.

Harold Bell (b1893) was a Librarian Assistant at Mudie’s in 1911. Mudie’s were a competitor of W H Smith and their selection of books was a byword for middle-class taste.

Philip Box (b1876) was a ‘Door to Door Librarian’ who lived in Staines. I was puzzled by the description and found several ‘Travelling Librarians’ in other records. Were these an early form of mobile library and who were they working for?

Dorothy Brown (1907 – 1976) was Head Librarian at Boots the Chemist who lived in Hornchurch, Essex. Boots are best known for cosmetics, pharmacy, opticians and photo services, but they also used to run libraries.

Constance M Stern (b1906) was a Children’s Librarian in Willesden. I encountered quite a few more children’s librarians (all women, of course) in my search. I discovered that Constance published an article, ‘Children’s libraries: why and whither?’ in Librarian and Book World, 1938.

Olive E J Perry (b1912) was a Picture Librarian for the Daily Express in 1939. She would have managed the newspaper’s collection of photographs, a role which for some organisations still exists today.

Edmund Gosse (1849 – 1928) was Chief Librarian of the House of Lords from 1904 – 1914. Although I knew he was a famous writer, I didn’t previously know of his librarian role.

Ernest H Lindgren (1910 – 1973) was a Film Librarian who lived in Barnet. He even has a page on Wikipedia, as he was the first curator of the National Film Archive (later the BFI National Archive) and wrote articles about the preservation of film.

Cyril J Davenport (1849 – 1941) was Assistant Librarian at the British Museum in 1881. I found further traces of him on the web, as he was an expert on book bindings and wrote on many other arts topics.

Edgar Phillips (b1892) was a ‘Travelling Librarian and Poultry Farmer’ in Surrey. Librarianship and poultry farming do not really seem like they go together, although perhaps it was handy to deliver eggs and books at the same time!

Quite often I encountered the blending of a librarian role with other occupations, for example, with bookselling, newsagents, caretaking, photography, clerk and postal services. I also found some listings of ‘librarian’s wife’, as if that were an occupation. I suppose it does have a respectable sound.

I liked how there was a focus on Florence Boot (whose idea it was to have library services) and the kind of books that the library stocked. It was interesting to learn that public libraries at the time didn’t tend to buy enough, if any, of the ‘light fiction’ (romances and family stories) that female customers liked, so there was a gap in the market for Boots, who became important customers of the romance publishers. I also learned that some people would avoid public libraries because they thought the books carried diseases. Boots took this seriously; any of their books returned from suspected infectious households were sent to the library headquarters to be burnt!

One of the nice things about this social history book is the contributions from people who either worked at Boots libraries (young women for the assistant roles and older ‘spinsters’ for the managers – the head librarian was male, of course) or remembered using them. It was quite sad to read contemporary reactions to the announcement that the libraries were closing.

I would have liked some images included in this book, other than those on the front cover. A little more proofreading was needed to sort out the punctuation. Other than that, definitely worth reading.

Independently published in 2016.

The examples range from the deliberate destruction of great libraries, to book burnings as part of cultural genocide, to the archives of individuals who wanted their own works destroyed, to the problems curating the mass of unstable digital data today. It’s terrible to consider how much information has been lost from the human record, while at the same time it’s heartening that at least some has survived, often at great cost to the people who saved the materials.

If you’re interested in the history of libraries and related topics such as censorship, democracy, ‘alternative facts’, archiving the internet and cultural heritage, this book is a must-read. Although it’s academic enough to be suitable for study, the writing is accessible, if not always elegantly expressed. The coda, ‘Why We Will Always Need Libraries and Archives,’ should be required reading for everyone in government.

First published in 2020.

This book is about the history of libraries, mostly in the western world, from ancient times until the current era. The authors, I have found, specialise in the history of early printed books, Reformation Europe and the book trade. It seems to me that they have written a book focusing on these topics while presenting it as a broader history of libraries. Only the last part (of 6) was about the 20th century, which after the devastating impact of the Second World War on libraries, saw the biggest technological revolutions since the invention of moveable type and printing presses – that is, the provision of computers for library users, electronic library management systems, barcodes, radio-frequency identification, the internet, ebooks – and which gets so little attention.

It really bugged me how the authors mention ebooks (or ereaders, they don’t differentiate between the two) perhaps once or twice and seem to dismiss them as a passing fad which will soon be obsolete, like CD-ROMs. They don’t think that ebooks count as proper books, clearly. Libraries are, in their opinion, defined as buildings or rooms containing physical printed books. No mention of audiobooks, e-journals which are a vital part of university library provision, the changing roles of modern librarians (teachers, community links, promoters of information literacy), how libraries now accommodate users with disabilities or even the differences between libraries and archives. Dewey Decimal Classification is incorrectly described as a cataloguing system. Classification is barely looked at, anyhow. The book is preoccupied with books as objects and with reeling off lists of how many works various libraries lost in fires. The writing style is dry and academic, suitable for students of book history but for the casual reader it’s about as exciting as the lint on a librarian’s cardigan.

Published in 2021.

The darkness of the permanent Treasures exhibition felt almost like an aquarium, but with books and manuscripts behind the glass instead of marine creatures. In the respectful hush, visitors peered into the cases, which were organised into themes such as music, historical documents and maps. Most of the material was the same as I remembered, although there was some new content, such as the latest acquisition, the archive of Andrea Levy.

Illuminated medieval manuscripts glinted under the spotlights. Every major faith was represented in the sacred texts on display, the calligraphy painstakingly elegant on vellum or parchment. One could imagine the scribes labouring over them. What would they think of the 21st century? Would they consider our technology to be sorcery, or a miracle?

I pored over the Shakespeare First Folio, with its archaic print and brown age spots. I tried to decipher Jane Austen’s handwriting in a letter displayed on her writing desk. I didn’t even try to read the tiny faded writing of the Magna Carta, which was under very low light, or the Papal bull which annulled it. I smiled at Mervyn Peake’s illustrated Gormenghast manuscript, which showed Irma and Alfred Prunesquallor. I played the Beatles songs in my head as I looked at the handwritten lyrics, although the listening station was not in use any more. I examined work by Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Leonardo da Vinci, Lewis Carroll and many others.

Emerging from the Treasures, I let my eyes adjust to the brighter light. I went over to the centrepiece, the King’s Library, a column of rare books with gilt bindings which rises up through the levels. In front of it was a display of prints by Khadija Saye, a British-Gambian artist who perished in the Grenfell Tower fire at the age of 24. They were self-portraits, atmospheric and strangely timeless.

I didn’t visit the current ticketed exhibition, which was about Paddington Bear. In the past, I’d been to the science fiction exhibition – which featured a crashed flying saucer – and one about propaganda. The next logical thing was to look at the British Library shop. It was beautifully presented and very tempting, but I eventually bought only one book.

Euston Road was just as busy, dirty and noisy as I remembered. As always, the number of homeless people camped on the pavement was concerning. There was even a zipped-up tent between two public phone boxes. Despite the panic about petrol shortages, the road was nearly gridlocked. Cyclists weaved around the myriad buses, which advertised London musicals and the new Bond film. Taxi occupants stared out of the windows and wondered if it wouldn’t be quicker to walk. The BT Tower loomed into view as I walked past graffiti and unlovely buildings. Finally, I reached Regent’s Park, where I had about 40 minutes to spare.

After a quick sandwich on a bench, I was on my increasingly-weary feet again to find Queen Mary’s Gardens, where the roses would still be in bloom, arranged into single variety beds like at Kew Gardens. I wandered around, marvelling at the differences in scent. After photographing some roses and a random moorhen, it was time to head back to St Pancras station.

Susan Orlean’s extraordinary book is partly an investigation into the cause of the devastating fire and the character of the suspected arsonist, an aspiring young actor named Harry Peak. It’s also about the idea of the library, considering what libraries are for, what they mean to us, the vital role they play in our culture and society.

The narrative alternates between the story of the fire and the history of the LA Central Library to the present day. If Susan only wrote about the fire, the book would be quite thin. Far from ‘padding out’ the book, the other material puts the fire into context. We can truly understand the impact of the fire if we understand the library’s history and functions.

The author spent years researching and writing this book; it’s a fantastic achievement and one of the best aspects is how she talks to people involved with the library and the fire, ranging from librarians to firefighters to friends and family of the suspect. She arranges interviews, tags along to meetings, rifles through archives, even ends up helping to register homeless people in the LA Central Library. Oh, and she burns a book (it’s research, you understand). Her description of the books burning in the library fire is horrific, yet gripping. I also found it interesting to read about the recovery and conservation of the books that survived.

If you love libraries and learning, then read this book! Quite appropriately, I borrowed it from a library.

Thanks to Jee @ Hooked on Bookz for bringing my attention to this book with her review last year.

In my bedroom, I’d sort the books alphabetically by author name. This solved the problem of which to read first. Then I’d get on with the serious business of reading. I remember literally spending all day absorbed in books (and much of the night sometimes). I must’ve done other things too, other than read and go to the library, but obviously they haven’t impacted as much on my memories.

I was willing to try most things in the YA section, which was divided into books for younger and older teenagers. I borrowed a lot of the Point Horror series (if you’ve read those, you’ll know that some of them were good, some were mediocre and others were rubbish), plus books about vampires, magic and aliens. As well as fantasy and horror, I liked gritty realism and historical novels. I didn’t read much of the chick lit books about crushes and friends and fashion, but I gave them a go.

Do I wish those days were back? No – while it would be nice to have more time to read and relax, I no longer have the concentration span required for hours of uninterrupted reading. I suspect it’s because there are more claims on my attention now. I still love to read though – offer me a book or a chocolate bar, and I’ll always choose the book.