Hidden within the heart of Penzance, obscured from view by
the twisty turning paths of the sumptuously furnished foliage of sub-tropical
gardens, is Morrab Library where recently I spent two days on a sort of AMA work-experience-awareness
adventure. I’ve not blogged anything about my AMA museum course so far,
choosing to concentrate on ‘Citizen Curators’, but I will be at some point. I’m
still very much in the infancy of my AMA, thus my two pre-arranged days at the
library was seen by myself as an opportunity to familiarise myself with a
totally different setting and witness first-hand what exactly goes on at this
library. The aim being that this will help sow the seeds of thoughts in my rather
muddled mind as to what possible directions I could take my AMA. In the meantime,
however, I was here to learn and absorb everything around me.
Morrab library is absolutely delightful to behold. I’ve
visited a few times in the past whilst doing my own historical research and
loved its quiet, still, ye oldie rooms full of wooden decor and walls of books.
When I say the walls are full of books, I’m not in any way making light of the
view. Every room of this house is adorned with hundreds of books sitting like soldiers
on parade, from shelves down along the floor, right up to the ceiling. If you
are a lover of books, this place will mesmerise you. It’s like a work of art in
itself, as you are surrounded by knowledge and history. The charm of this building
is much like the gardens it is nestled within, for the corridors and rooms have
lots of character, and somewhat meander, gracefully guiding you in different
directions, with always something to stop and see, and surprises in the nooks
and crannies. Quite simply, for me, this is a place of beauty, where I could
just walk around day after day and never bore of seeing what’s on offer; there’s
always something new to learn here.
As with a lot of smaller museums, libraries and heritage
centres, Morrab Library only has a few paid members of staff, 1.5 in fact, with
every other duty and responsibility performed by the tens of volunteers who
produce all the magic. This is also a private library, relying solely on subscriptions
(for book loans), grants and donations. Over the decades they’ve been blessed
with some very wealthy benefactors, whom it’s safe to say, if they hadn’t been
so amazingly generous, not only would a lot of knowledge have been lost by now,
but the library itself would most likely not exist today.
I spent a good portion of time wandering the corridors
looking at random books, although spending most of any free time in what I
called the Cornwall Room. As you can probably guess this contains everything
and anything about the county itself. I was given a tour on my first morning, going
upstairs, downstairs, looking through the numerous rooms and stores that
sometimes seem sporadically positioned but simply add to the quaintness and delightfulness
of this building. The history of this establishment is as intriguing as the
contents: from its foundation in 1811, the male/female book clubs it originated
from, its financial struggles and its various movements in location to where it
ended up now.
In very recent years, a Photo Archive has been created as
part of a rear extension to the building and is fully equipped with everything
you’d need to scan the vast majority of photos and negatives. There’s an
ongoing project to digitalise every photo from the numerous collections of
photos the library has acquired over the years. My eyes popped out of my head
when I saw not one, but three, what I call ‘super-duper’ scanners capable of scanning
A4 sized negatives. There’s enough Apple Macs to start a small orchard,
photography equipment to capture the more awkward of objects and several
metallic heavy-duty storage cabinets tightly packed in the middle of a room
that has modern lighting, decent workspace and oodles of photos to be scanned.
There’s about 5,000 already scanned and automatically uploaded onto their
public photo archive website. It’s an impressive operation and one that really
is never ending, much like every collection management project I’ve come across.
How does one organise knowledge? This is the question asked of
me by one of the volunteers tasked with teaching me the ways of the library. If
it’s regarding knowledge in my head, the answer is probably that one doesn’t
bother to try, and simply uses my phone to record more important facts and
reminders but in a library they don’t just throw everything on the shelves and
let you go hunting. In a surprisingly interesting hour or so discussion, I was
introduced to the Dewey Decimal System by one of the volunteers who had 35 odd
years of experience in libraries. I know from my collections management work
thus far about classification systems such as SHIC (for Social history) and
although I’d been aware of the numbers on the sides of library books all my
life, I’d never really thought too much about them. The Dewey system is
absolutely fascinating. More so than I could possibly have imagined. So much in
fact that I will be looking into it further and even the man himself who
started it going many decades ago although I’m told he’s probably not as
interesting as the system he created. Basically, everything comes down to being
grouped within ten distinct areas of knowledge using everyone’s modern friend,
decimal. One of the many things that instil my enthusiasm in my museum
collection’s management work thus far, is the fulfilment I gain from my desire
to bring order to chaos, and also to maintain some degree of organisation. This
might well explain why I lapped up everything about Dewey as if I’d been given
my favourite chocolate bar. To see how knowledge can be ordered, structured and
“attributed” to every book in the library is simply amazing to me. Even more
amazingly, the library itself did only in relatively recent times adopted the
Dewey system (Version 19 if you’re in the know) which I think was ~ 20 years
ago, which is about as long ago I’m told as this version of Dewey, which is
around version 24 now. As the world changes around us, thus knowledge changes,
and what we know about everything alters. This means how we group and classify
knowledge has to adapt too. I imagine countless librarians in fear of the next
version of Dewey and the work involved in reclassification that it entails,
although I’m told that it’s usually minor on each revision. In keeping with its
ye oldie charm, the library itself still uses the old paper ticket style for
loaning books in and out, with their database of books stored on numerous cards
in drawers. That will change in the coming years I’m told, and although it’s a
shame in some ways, it’s I feel necessary, because if you don’t easily know
what you have, how can you plan how to look after it?
On my second day I got the opportunity to rehome some books
which had come in off the streets (ok, they were donated) and needed to be
found a home on a relevant shelf in one of the many rooms in the library. This
task is a learning experience in many ways. I helped assist two volunteers who
had the weekly task of finding some 30 books good homes to go to within the
library. This involves assigning them a Dewey number, which isn’t quite as
simple as it sounds. Now, I know from my discussion the previous day that it is
possible to find out a Dewey number for a book online (or on the inside pages
of a book), however, given the library is using an older version Dewey, that there
are no free computers available to utilise within the library itself, and that
exactly what Dewey number a book gets can be a matter of personal choice and
the library’s own setup, we weren’t going down that route. I was quite happy in
this instance that there were three Dewey reference books for us to palm
through for help as this is a much better way to learn not only about Dewey,
but the library itself and the book’s subject matter. I was looking though
books about real life murders and sexuality in art – two genres I would not in
a month of Sundays readily pick up and browse through. Yet, here I was, reading
inside pages, back covers, flicking through the odd pages in order to gain an
appreciation of the subject matter, as an aide to knowing more about the book
so I could assign it a relevant Dewey number. The Dewey reference books are
magical in themselves for if there’s any subject area you wish to learn about,
these books really break things down and also introduce you to topics you
really would not know about unless you had to classify a book. Even in these
two areas that are normally no interest to me, the books I worked through
became amazingly more interesting when it came to be classifying their
knowledge. Being within a library full of thousands of books, one of the aides
in helping to determine a book’s Dewey number, is to go find similar books and
see what they have been assigned. This provides further opportunity to not only
learn the layout of the library but also the subject matters. It’s also
interesting to find books with questionable Dewey numbers which provokes yet
more conversation about the classification of knowledge which quite frankly
anyone can get involved in, regardless of their own knowledge, because how to
align a book with the Dewey system is down often to interpretation and we can
all interpret things in our own unique way.
Later on in my second day I went down into the depths of the
library, where in one of the stores there is some fascinatingly hard work going
on by volunteers in helping repair and maintain books that have, shall we say,
seen much better days. Deteriorating leather, broken spines, detached pages –
these inflict all ages of books but no more so than the older statesmen of books
that are pre-1900. There’re some massive bound books that newspaper companies
brought out pre-1940s that are like doorstops. Thankfully the inner contents
are in very good condition on the ones I saw, but the spine and covers were
not. They were horribly faded, crumbling and in desperate need of some support.
I’ve had training and experience with looking after certain paper-based items, and
repairing minor tares, but here were more advanced techniques although still
thankfully familiar. The vast majority of techniques used for repairing books
are Japanese based and far more ancient than the books themselves that are being
conserved. Here, the use of very fine but super tough Japanese paper, starch
glue, grit and determination, along with every trick of the trade, produce
amazing results that ensure these books see the next 100 years. Some of these
large heavy books have had new “jackets” made for them using expensive conservation
standard material which felt almost like decent quality wallpaper. The
technique for strengthening the inner open spine of a book was a new one to me
but relatively simple and effective. Some of the books that had been recently saturated
by leaks and/or accidents by customers, but looked surprisingly in good health,
as if they’d merely dipped their toes in the ocean rather than having been
totally submerged as they previously were. There’re only 3 dedicated volunteers
working on this project each week and a never-ending number of books that need
their attention, but despite knowing their work is never done, they carry on enthusiastically
and passionately with their task. I admire them and praise their efforts as they
help keep precious knowledge intact for future generations. As I’ve witnessed
in many places I’ve visited in recent months, volunteers are the heartbeat of
many libraries, museums and heritage centres, often plugging away on thankless
underappreciated tasks, but helping to keep not only the establishment going
but also preserving knowledge for future generations to enjoy.
Morrab Photo Archive http://photoarchive.morrablibrary.org.uk/
Morrab Library https://morrablibrary.org.uk/
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