We are delighted to welcome members back to the Reading Room. 

Now officially open with a new, plush green carpet and improved power points.

You can find more information on the latest improvement works at the Library by clicking the button below.

 Read the full details here

 

We are pleased to update that access to periodicals 4to and folio onsite has now been restored.  

You can also locate the volumes in this section by searching online via Catalyst. 

Search on Catalyst

Should you need anymore information or assistance, please do speak to a member of our staff at the Issue Hall desk.  

 

 

We are delighted to announce our 10 London Library Ambassadors, who will help raise awareness of the Library and expand the Library’s reach and impact.

The Ambassadors were chosen for their longstanding support in which each member has, on numerous occasions, voluntarily offered their time, expertise and platform for the Library. Their work spans genres, from historic writing to poetry and academia, reflecting our wonderfully creative and diverse community.

We are glad to publicly extend our gratitude for their valued, ongoing commitment to the Library.

Find out more about the Library Ambassadors

 

On Wednesday 12th July there will be a re-hang of the sculptural 'Wasted Books' exhibition by artist Jacqueline Nicholls as we welcome the works from the Art Library into the Art Reading Room.

There will be some disruption in the Art Reading Room for the hanging of the works on the 12th July, however the room will remain open and accessible to all members throughout the day. 

There will be a total of twenty-one sculptural works by Jacqueline Nicholls, each taking their form from the different ways that books carry this ambiguity and transform. Some show how earlier readers have left their trace, marking the once pristine book with their ghostly presences. And some push the definition of a book to the limit. 

Disintegrating to a stage of disrepair, while retaining their essential ‘bookness’, each book sculpture plays with a fragment from TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, the text merging into the form of the book. 

We do not receive our culture untainted; it comes to us laden with the attitudes, contexts and perspectives of the past and we can be left with the complexity of grappling with work that is beautiful yet damaged. And damaging. TS Eliot’s writing, full of illusions, fragments and multiple voices, is profoundly poetic, but it can also be deeply discomforting.

Jacqueline Nicholls is an artist, award-winning visual poet, and cultural events producer. Her art practice explores writing systems, and books as objects. This interest is informed by her Jewish heritage, a tradition that values scholarly word-play as a sacred act. Jacqueline has exhibited internationally, and her work is held in public and private collections. Artist residencies include Beit Venezia in Venice, Italy, and Manchester University Jewish Studies Department’s project ’50 Jewish Objects’. Jacqueline has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins.

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