Library Secrets

What a silly title, right? If I told you all my library secrets they wouldn't be secret anymore!

Once again I'm racking my brains for something I can say - and this time it's got to be something I can say without giving away too many state secrets. So...hmm. Let's go behind the scenes a bit and talk about the side of the library that most people never see - the really grotty, dank and shadowy side that even I try not to think about too hard most of the time..

Secret The First: We actually have a lot more books than you might think.

Although I've actually got no idea of the exact figure, I'm fairly confident that we have over 350,000 books and catalogues. And the reason why I have no idea of the exact figure is

Secret The Second: We have never done a stocktake.

For many logistical reasons, including multiple catalogues (including two card catalogues!), too many books, too many locations and not enough staff. One other of those logistical reasons is

Secret The Third: Most of our books are NOT in classmark order.

A good majority of the books are held in departments across the museum. They're roughly organised by subject where there's been space to do so, but librarians past (curse you guys!) used some very rough classifications at times, not being consistent at all (we have at last count 5 separate classification systems for all our books, catalogues and periodicals), and where they've been consistent has actually been a bane too - for example we have around 300 books on maiolica all with an identical classmark (42 NK4315). So when I'm fetching a book, I'm drawing on a lot of skills to locate it!

There - three secrets. And now I've said too much!

Shhh...