The Barbican

Today we visited the Barbican which was given as a gift to the United Kingdom and is located in the International Arts Center. John Lake, the librarian, took us on a tour of the library and gave us a brief history of the building and collections. The library is used primarily by the residents which live nearby and those working nearby who come on their lunch breaks. User demographics are slanted toward male English speakers who are currently employed.

In order to increase use they have employed several devices: quick pick displays to entice, propellers to lead to other sections, upholstered chairs to encourage reading, and reading groups. There are currently 7 reading groups; 4 for adults and 3 for children. In the past the library has tried to generate interest for a teen group but there was never much interest.

After viewing the main part of the library we met with Richard Jones, Assistant Librarian of the Music Library. As a musician, I really enjoyed seeing some of the scores that they had as well as the diverse selection of CDs. According to Richard, since the creation of the Music Library in 1983 the users have been mostly comprised of students and researchers. They have the largest selection of CDs in London at 16,000. Classification has proved difficult as it can be troublesome to group some works under one specific genre.

The tour of the Barbican ended at the Children’s Library with Amanda, the Children’s Librarian. This library caters specifically to those users from age birth to 14 years. The fiction section is broken up into three groups: 5-10 years, 10-12 years, and younger teens. Non-fiction is loaned out to teachers for school projects as there are no school library services in London which can cater to this need. Also, the library hosts reading groups three times a week for different age ranges: birth-18 months, 18 months-3 years, and 3-5 years. Every summer they host a reading challenge which gives prizes to the children after they read each book. This year they got an artist, Guy Bass, to illustrate Space Munglers Trumps cards which are played like Pokemon.

At the end of the evening we all met back at the Barbican to view a performance about Edgar Allen Poe’s life entitled Nevermore. The best way to describe this fantastic piece is that it was like Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands meets Stanley Kubrick’s The Clockwork Orange. I heard someone say it was coming to the states and if that is the case I will definitely be seeing it again. I have not seen anything at all like it before and I loved it.