Barbican Library is an unique library to say the least. It's a public library located on the second floor of the Barbican Arts Center nestled in the finance district in the City of London. The libraries there do a lot with limited space and a limited budget but they're passionate about what they do and that's always encouraging. Geraldine(I think) and Jonathan gave us our tour and it was very obvious that they loved their job and their library, despite projects they can't complete because of budget cuts. Barbican has its own peculiarities as a library and British library. In Britain, the government controls what age children can be allowed to buy/rent videos unlike our suggested rating. For a librarian in the States this would cause a lot of consternation because the ALA would view that as censorship so we were all a bit intrigued. On top of that, said DVDs cost 2.50 to check out but only if they were entertainment dvds; dvds for teaching/learning are free. I may have to look into why this is; I find it very interesting. I can't say I completely oppose it because I understand the possible idea behind, the difference between information and entertainment, but I'd still like to know more.
I really enjoyed their music library; its very strange to have subject special libraries in public libraries; its usually found in an academic libraries because of the specialized student populations. It's a very impressive but small library; they have two digital pianos which people can reserve, plug in headphones and practice. It's awesome.
What I liked the most was the
Barbican Song Index. The staff at the music library worked for a few years to create an index of all the songs/scores that library holds so the patron and librarian can easily find it. From what I've heard about other music libraries where scores/songs are very difficult to find and catalog, this system is time consuming but wonderful. I love seeing how these individual libraries are working on new ways to making information easier to access.
And then we went to St. Paul's Cathedral which was very grand.
