#libraryofcongress — Public Fediverse posts

Library News

https://barland7.wordpress.com/2026/09/06/library-news-25/

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

Congress Just Rushed Through A Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/18/congress-just-rushed-through-a-disastrous-copyright-office-overhaul/

What To Watch On YouTube Right Now – Part 138

Welcome back my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching.

Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination?

I recommend you check out the following videos I found.

#1 How To Get The Strongest And Most Optimized Spaceship Crew In Starfield – This year, Bethesda launched several important updates to make their 2023 science fiction role-playing game Starfield better and they also offered new DLC for those who crave for new content. One of the more defining aspects of the game is space travel and this includes setting up your own crew for your spaceship and there is impact on its functions and capabilities. If you want to learn how to get the stronger and most optimized crew for your ship, I encourage you watch the video below.

https://youtu.be/vy8iOx7eqVU?si=gn7W1mZxTOQ4SSrd

#2 Mari Iijima And The Defining Song of Macross: Do You Remember Love? – I really love watching the 1984 anime feature film Macross: Do You Remember Love? Apart from the great animation, the spectacle, the memorable characters and the solid storytelling, the movie also has a great soundtrack made to delight the long-time Macross fans. Still, the movie has its very own song performed by none other than Mari Iijima (Minmay) and it is a classic among Macross fans. In the videos below, you will see Mari Iijima perform the song live in a 1980s TV broadcast and the song playing with selected footage of Macross: Do You Remember Love? Enjoy these!

https://youtu.be/OfuW_Wbt73c?si=Q1DE8eJxo4Zk90pc

https://youtu.be/uJBMYV9e1Nc?si=veDGYU4r7s0flQ_H

#3 The Tuna City In Japan Is Changing With Tourism In Mind – If you plan to visit Japan at all, you might want to discover Miura City located in Kanagawa Prefecture. Miura City is famous for its fresh tuna and in recent times there has been a series of changes as several room-only hotels and new trends have sprouted as the locality is finding new ways to turn visitors into overnight guests. This is a place I would like to visit someday if ever I get the opportunity to return to Japan. Watch and learn from the Nippon TV video below.

https://youtu.be/fUPP30fYH78?si=MrC6Dml3IRVe7fcV

#4 Women’s Rights Activist Marries Islamist And Things Went Wrong – Did you notice that there is a gradual rising number of feminists and women’s rights activists who not embrace Islam (wicked and ugly) but also marry Islamists believing that things will be alright and they can just continue their activism. Of course, many of them activists and feminists do not fully understand Islam nor the full content of the Quran. As such, when things go very wrong, they are get into deep trouble. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/bx3YvoyP6cw?si=omxqhyR8CQfpfhYK

#5 Islamists Violate Hindu Women In India And Get Arrested – Let’s be very clear here. Islamists are oriented to conquer others even though they may not be numerous within a locality. Believe it or not, a group of such people who wielded power inside a business violated the Hindu women (plus at least one male employee) with regards to cultural norms and doing things that go against their faith. Even forced religious conversion happened. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/9xjFS-3Vuws?si=xuDIivIonrp9tQux

#6 Meatballs Reaction And Retrospective – When it comes to cinematic comedy, Bill Murray is iconic and his early work in 1979’s Meatballs already involved the late Harold Ramis and the late director Ivan Reitman. That said, there is something about Meatballs – produced for less than $2 million – that helped it achieve tremendous commercial success with ticket sales of $70 million. Remember, three of the creative minds behind the classic Ghostbusters are involved in this old movie and you will see how You, Me and The Movies react to it in the video below. Be aware that as of this writing, there are not too many movie reaction videos about Meatballs on YouTube. Also posted below is an in-depth retrospective about Meatballs by GoodBadFlicks.

https://youtu.be/nhR9xUCvpAI?si=Zh6gjAX0SdIrtSfT

https://youtu.be/D0BS-K3K_vE?si=HtyR_VThLUKv0Wj6

#7 Ashleigh Burton Reacts To The Thin Man – Have you ever heard of The Thin Man? It’s not a UFO reference. It’s the 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery movie that was eventually named to the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress having been deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1997. Apart from its reputation in American film history, The Thin Man also resulted in five sequels. If you want to discover the 1934 movie but you don’t have the time nor resources to watch the movie, watch Ashleigh Burton’s reaction video and see how it impacts her.

https://youtu.be/IJRQXuw–20?si=mSYY7_Eb4EK6reBY

+++++

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Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

The Roberts court broadly expanded Trump’s power in 2025, with these key exceptions – Los Angeles Times

Politics

The Supreme Court broadly expanded Trump’s power in 2025, with key exceptions

By David G. Savage, Staff Writer Follow. Jan. 1, 2026 3 AM PT

• For much of the year, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the five other conservatives were in the majority ruling for Trump.
• The court has been criticized for handing down temporary unsigned orders with little or no explanation.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ended the first year of President Trump’s second term with a record of rulings that gave him much broader power to control the federal government.

In a series of fast-track decisions, the justices granted emergency appeals and set aside rulings from district judges who blocked Trump’s orders from taking effect.

With the court’s approval, the administration dismissed thousands of federal employees, cut funding for education and health research grants, dismantled the agency that funds foreign aid and cleared the way for the U.S. military to reject transgender troops.

But the court also put two important checks on the president’s power.

In April, the court twice ruled — including in a post-midnight order — that the Trump administration could not secretly whisk immigrants out of the country without giving them a hearing before a judge.

Upon taking office, Trump claimed migrants who were alleged to belong to “foreign terrorist” gangs could be arrested as “enemy aliens” and flown secretly to a prison in El Salvador.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-12-23/supreme-court-trump-national-guard-chicago – See more at the above link.

Politics

Supreme Court rules against Trump, bars National Guard deployment in Chicago, Dec. 23, 2025

Roberts and the court blocked such secret deportations and said the 5th Amendment entitles immigrants, like citizens, a right to “due process of law.” Many of the arrested men had no criminal records and said they never belonged to a criminal gang.
Those who face deportation “are entitled to notice and opportunity to challenge their removal,” the justices said in Trump vs. J.G.G.

They also required the government to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador. He is now back in Maryland with his wife, but may face further criminal charges or efforts to deport him.

And last week, Roberts and the court barred Trump from deploying the National Guard in Chicago to enforce the immigration laws.

Trump had claimed he had the power to defy state governors and deploy the Guard troops in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Chicago and other Democratic-led states and cities.

The Supreme Court disagreed over dissents from conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Roberts court broadly expanded Trump’s power in 2025, with these key exceptions – Los Angeles Times

Trump’s sweeping 2020 election pardon raises alarms ahead of the midterms – Politico

Trump’s sweeping 2020 election pardon raises alarms ahead of the midterms

The language in the pardon also underscores that Trump’s clemency is not limited to people named in the document.

By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, 11/10/2025 07:21 PM EST

President Donald Trump’s adversaries say his sweeping pardon for dozens of alleged co-conspirators in the plot to subvert the 2020 election sent an unmistakable signal: If you do it again, I’ll protect you.

The extraordinarily broad pardon, signed Friday but revealed Sunday night, has little substantive effect for its recipients. Trump can pardon only federal crimes, and his administration had already pulled the plug on any lingering investigations stemming from the 2020 election. Some of the clemency recipients are still facing state-level criminal charges in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin — though some Trump allies argue the pardons could derail those cases.

The mass pardon — the first in history to cover people accused of criminally conspiring with the president who issued it — comes as Trump continues to stoke false claims about rampant cheating by Democrats and sow doubts about the integrity of future elections. And his opponents see the pardon as a permission slip for similar efforts in 2026 and 2028.

“Trump is sending a message to his supporters that if you commit a crime in the name of Donald Trump, I’ve got your back,” said Liz Oyer, the former U.S. pardon attorney, whose successor Ed Martin announced the sweeping clemency on X and released a 15-page statement explaining the move.

Oyer said the pardon was written so broadly that it could apply to countless people who aided Trump’s effort to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election — and the vaguely worded document permits Martin and other Justice Department officials to decide for themselves who receives a pardon certificate.

“That’s just not how pardon paperwork is written,” Oyer said.

The move also appeared to be a way for Trump to test the well-settled boundaries of the pardon power itself, with allies like Martin and election attorney Cleta Mitchell suggesting it should cause the pending state cases to crumble. The pair argue that the presidential pardon could cover state-law crimes because the purported electors were engaged in activity related to a federal election, though legal scholars say that rationale is a stretch. A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Trump’s pardon would not influence her handling of the case there, which has remained in limbo as she fights a judge’s ruling that the grand jury process was flawed.

Mayes’ office charged 18 of Trump’s allies last spring for their efforts to subvert the 2020 election and labeled Trump an unindicted co-conspirator. Mayes brought her case last year, several months after Fulton County prosecutors in Georgia charged Trump himself with orchestrating a conspiracy to corrupt the state’s election results. State prosecutors in Nevada and Wisconsin have charged people connected to Trump’s alleged conspiracy. All of the cases remain pending, though they’ve been mired in varying degrees of dysfunction and protracted litigation.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s sweeping 2020 election pardon raises alarms ahead of the midterms – POLITICO

#2020ElectionPardons #2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #January6AttackOnUSCapitol #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Pardons #Politico #Politics #Resistance #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpPardons #UnitedStates

Supreme Court has empowered Trump. How much further will it go? – The Washington Post

Supreme Court has expanded presidential powers under Trump. How far will it go?

The justices will hear arguments Wednesday on the legality of most of the president’s tariffs — the first in a series of tests of sweeping claims of authority.

November 2, 2025 at 8:36 a.m. EST, Today at 8:36 a.m. EST, 10 min

By Justin Jouvenal

For nine months, in a flood of emergency orders, the Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump to expand his power.

The justices have permitted Trump to slash the federal bureaucracy, fire the heads of nominally independent agencies and exercise powers traditionally ascribed to Congress.

How much further will the court go?

That will be the overriding question Wednesday when the court hears arguments on the legality of most of the president’s tariffs — the first case to reach the justices in a series of high-stakes tests of Trump’ssweeping claimsof authority.

His asserted tariff powers are uniquely dear to Trump, who has repeatedly warned of economic devastation if the court were to rule against one of his signature policies. But the other tests of presidential power could also have major impact.

In November, the court will considerwhether to strike down a 90-year-old precedent that insulates independent agencies from White House interference. In January, it will explore whether Trump can remake the Federal Reserve, with its vast powers over the economy.

Taken together, the cases will determine the extent to which the Supreme Court will embrace Trump’s view of a presidency constrained by few checks and wielding the type of authority typically only seen in times of war or national crisis. Decisions are expected in the cases by the summer.

“I think the court so far has been more deferential to President Trump than most Supreme Courts in modern times,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “It’s very hard to point to a significant way in which the court has said ‘stop’ to the White House. It raises the pressure on the court, and it raises the stakes for the term ahead.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement the high court’s rulings have corrected erroneous decisions by “far-left liberal activist judges” and thatthe president is doing what he was elected to do.

“The President will continue implementing the policy agenda that the American people voted for in November and will continue to be vindicated by higher courts when liberal activist judges attempt to intervene,” Jackson said.

Trump’s claim that he can unilaterally impose massive tariffs, a cornerstone of his economic agenda, is among his most aggressive moves to date. His assertion rests on a 1977 law that grants the president emergency powers to regulate international commerce. Trump’s argument that the law can be used for tariffs is one no other president has made in the statute’s 50-year history.

The administration has asked the justices to overturn federal court rulings that found the law did not convey authority to impose tariffs. Trump said the levies, some of which he announced at an event he dubbed “Liberation Day,” will help stem the flow of fentanyl across the border and restore America’s manufacturing base.

Small businesses and states have sued to block the levies, arguing they will cause widespread economic harm.

Arguably, no institution has set the stage for Trump’s efforts to expand his poweras much as the Supreme Court and in particular its chief justice. John G. Roberts Jr. has written decisions in recent years declaring the president a uniquely powerful figure.

In a 2020 ruling, Roberts wrote the “entire ‘executive Power’ belongs to the President alone.” He has also intimated the president should have a free hand to fire low-level government employees and made it easier for the president to remove the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Supreme Court has empowered Trump. How much further will it go? – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #ChiefJustice #ConservativeMajority #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Roberts #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UncheckedPower #UnitedStates

One Trillion Web Pages Archived: Internet Archive Celebrates a Civilization-Scale Milestone | Internet Archive Blogs

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One Trillion Web Pages Archived: Internet Archive Celebrates a Civilization-Scale Milestone

Posted on October 31, 2025 by Caralee Adams

One trillion! There was no mistaking the number that was center stage at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on October 22.

“We are celebrating a major goal of one trillion web pages…shared by people all over the world, wanting to make sure that what they know is passed on,” said Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian. “It’s a fantastic, phenomenal success story.”

Watch the livestream: https://archive.org/embed/the-web-weve-built-2025?start=525

Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been saving the digital history of the internet. In October, it surpassed the threshold of preserving one trillion web pages—a fact that was met with enthusiastic applause each time it was mentioned at the party held at the non-profit research library’s Funston Avenue headquarters in San Francisco.

People should not take for granted the important role that libraries, including the Internet Archive, have played in compiling accurate information and making it accessible to all, said California State Senator Scott Weiner, who presented a Certificate of Recognition from the State of California Senate to the Internet Archive. “We’re seeing now in this country people trying to rewrite history and come up with alternative facts,” he said at the event. “What the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine does is to make clear that everything is there. I am so deeply grateful.” [watch remarks]

In a video message, Vint Cerf, creator of the Internet and vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google, said the one-trillion-page mark is an incredible milestone. “[The Internet Archive] has preserved an enormous amount of history over the course of their data collection, something which I feel is absolutely essential,” he said. “In the absence of what they have done, the 22nd century will have no clue what the 21st Century was all about.”

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

The program included a glimpse back at early days of the web and a hopeful vision for the future.

“There was this dream of an internet that was made for us, by us, to be able to make us better people,” Kahle said. “Yes, using technology. Yes, having games with lots of different players and winners—a fun and interesting world, and that is very much still within our grasp.”

Audrey Witters, a veteran of the early web, brought the audience back to 1994—when all existing websites could still fit on a single “What’s New” page. Reflecting on her early days at NCSA and her creative experiments on GeoCities, Witters shared the story of how a small animated alien GIF she helped create became an unlikely icon of the early web. “It’s so important for us to remember that context, that spirit, that joy of creation—what happens when you give people the tools and invitation to publicly and exuberantly celebrate themselves,” she said. Thanking the Internet Archive for preserving that era’s spirit of discovery and collaboration, Witters urged the next generation of creators “to look for new opportunities to promote exploration, collaboration, and joyful expression. Here’s to the next trillion!”

Lily Jamali, an investigative journalist with BBC News, said she appreciates the Archive’s public service mission and tools that are “absolutely fundamental” to hold the powerful to account. “They help us journalists fact check claims,” she said from the Great Room stage. “They help us see how companies and governments may have selectively edited online materials, or even deleted statements or social media posted that they would rather that the public didn’t see.” [watch remarks]

Journalists can no longer rely on their news outlets to store their work, Jamali said, so many turn to the Wayback Machine to access past articles and inform their reporting.

In a highly entertaining segment full of Wikipedia screen shots and laughs, Annie Rauwerda, creator of Depths of Wikipedia, spoke about the crucial partnership between Wikipedia and the Wayback Machine. She highlighted how archived pages make citations stronger and more durable by ensuring that even when the original source disappears, the evidence remains. “If Wikipedia is worth anything at all, it’s because of the citations,” Rauwerda said.

CEO of National Public Radio Katherine Maher offered her congratulations via video for the event. “One trillion web pages. That’s one trillion artifacts and snapshots of our interconnected world,” she said. “It’s a testament to the Internet Archives’ unwavering commitment to safeguarding the integrity of the open web and its history, ensuring that this vast digital record remains free and open for everyone.”

NPR and the Internet Archive share a deep commitment to providing access to information, a dedication to public service and a belief in strengthening societies through information and dialog, Maher said. “We live today in an era in which information is unstable. It emerges suddenly, decays rapidly, disappears instantly,” she said. “In this moment, the Archive’s role in preserving news, public discourse and our shared stories is more critical than ever.”

With Wayback Machine, ‘Knowledge Will Not Be Lost’

When the U.S. government websites started going offline after the change in presidential administrations earlier this year, Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, said he wasn’t panicking. Why? Because since 2004 the Internet Archive has collaborated with many partners to save federal web pages, through the End of Term Web Archive effort. Since last fall, Graham described efforts to preserve more than 400 million web pages, 2 million videos and hundreds of thousands of data sets—all published by the U.S. government, and therefore available to the public. [watch remarks]

With the Wikimedia Foundation, the Archive has identified and fixed more than 28 million broken links from Wikipedia. It also added more than 4.2 million links to books and papers available from www.archive.org. Graham announced the new partnership with Automattic Inc. to make it easy for WordPress operators to automatically find and repair broken links with the Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer.

The Internet Archive faces challenges with the advent of AI. More services are blocking access, Graham said, making it harder for memory institutions, like the Internet Archive, to do their  jobs—yet, the team remains diligent in its efforts.

“We’re going to keep on building the library that the world deserves, one that remembers, one that connects us, and one that ensures no matter how much the web changes, that knowledge will not be lost,” Graham said.

The Path Forward

Luca Messarra, a humanities scholar and educator at Stanford University, said preserving webpages is important because the past is always shaping the present moment. “History is essential because it helps us understand how our own lives came to be. But more importantly, for me, history helps us understand how our lives can be made different,” he said. “The past tells us that the present does not need to be the way that it is.” [watch remarks]

Messarra said he has used resources from the Internet Archive to write conference papers, recover his old chat messaging history and recover a favorite family biscuit recipe.

“The Wayback Machine has tended to one trillion seeds that will nourish our future. All that remains is for us to harvest and use them,” Messarra said. “One trillion pages are one trillion opportunities to change our present moment. That requires that we look at the past not with nostalgia, but with initiative.”

The largest repository of internet history ever assembled is possible thanks to thousands of donations to the Internet Archive and 200,000 unique donors, said Joy Chesbrough, director of philanthropy. At the event, she announced a new campaign that encourages individuals to create their own fundraising teams to support the Internet Archive. See https://donate.archive.org/1t [watch remarks]

It was the largest gathering for the Archive’s annual party in years, said Chris Freeland, director of library services, and he hoped the gathering fostered a sense of connection.

“It was a nostalgic throwback, but it also showed people a path forward for a web that we want,” Freeland said. “I hope people come away with this sense of optimism and a thought that this is our web, and we can be in control of it again.” Posted in Announcements, Event, News, Wayback Machine – Web Archive | Tagged celebration, Wayback1T | Leave a reply

Continue/Read Original Article Here: One Trillion Web Pages Archived: Internet Archive Celebrates a Civilization-Scale Milestone | Internet Archive Blogs

#2025 #America #Books #CivilizationRecord #Education #History #HistoryPreserved #InternetArchive #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Milestone #Movies #October22 #Opinion #Preservation #Reading #SanFrancisco #Science #Technology #Television #UnitedStates #WaybackMachine

Vanderbilt Student Government and the Vanderbilt chapter of American Association of University Professors host campus Teach-In in response to Trump administration’s higher education compact – The Vanderbilt Hustler

Vanderbilt Student Government and the Vanderbilt chapter of American Association of University Professors host campus Teach-In in response to Trump administration’s higher education compact

Professors and graduate students gathered at the Teach-In to speak out against the compact.

By Ella Crocco, Staffer-in-Training, Oct 24, 2025

Vanderbilt Student Government and members of Vanderbilt’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors hosted a Teach-In on Oct. 17 regarding the higher education compact Vanderbilt was sent from the Trump administration. Students and faculty at the event discussed how they believe the compact could endanger academic freedom, education policy and the university’s core values, among other topics.   

Jessie Hock, associate English department chair and associate professor of English, opened the Teach-In with contextual remarks. Carwil Bjork-James, associate professor in social movements, indigenous rights and political anthropology, then spoke to the crowd about how he believes that if Vanderbilt agrees to the compact, it could have negative financial impacts for the university.  

“I think that our administrators are being misled by the promise of more research funding by an administration that is clearly cutting off research funding and restricting it at every level,” Bjork-James said.  

In an interview with The Hustler, Bjork-James said that the compact will not help ensure Vanderbilt is a space where students and faculty can freely express their thoughts.  

“I would say faculty are really committed to maintaining this campus as a place where [students] can speak freely, where [students] can come here with any political opinion, with any perspective, get an open education and where there are viable places to do scholarship and research and this compact is not the right way to do that,” Bjork-James said. 

Jada Benn Torres, associate professor in genetics, race and genetic ancestry, followed by speaking about how she believed Vanderbilt signing the compact would limit scientific research and free speech. In a message to The Hustler, Benn Torres said that the compact could contribute to the marginalization of communities and hopes Vanderbilt will continue to be a place where freedom of discussion is practiced.  

“I am very concerned that the compact will upend academic freedom and freedom of expression. Additionally, there are elements of the compact that further marginalize communities that are already marginalized,” Torres said. “Overall, I think that the university needs to be a place where we are free to ask difficult questions and grapple with uncomfortable answers.” 

Rebecca Epstein-Levy, assistant professor of Jewish studies and gender & sexuality studies, spoke about how she believes the compact has anti-trans provisions which would limit her ability to teach and research certain topics about Judaism and sex, sexuality, gender and disability.   

“I’m a Jewish ethicist, and I research and teach courses at the intersection of Jewish text, Jewish thought, and sex, sexuality, gender and disability,” Epstein-Levy said. “The compact’s claim that there are only two genders — a claim which is bigoted, venal and spectacularly wrong — would make it impossible for me to teach these subjects accurately and responsibly.” 

Jonathan Gilligan, earth and environmental studies and civil and environmental engineering professor, spoke about how he believes the compact could limit research and what is taught in science classes because topics may offend conservative policies. 

Gilligan shared in an interview with The Hustler that he and many of his colleagues are worried about government overreach. They believe that if the government enforces politicized versions of science upon universities, they will not stop with the biology of sex and gender.

Editor’s Note: I am proud of hopeful of American higher education. Stand up for your rights, and protect us all with your views and passion for Democracy. –DrWeb

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Vanderbilt Student Government and the Vanderbilt chapter of American Association of University Professors host campus Teach-In in response to Trump administration’s higher education compact – The Vanderbilt Hustler

#2025 #AAUP #AcademicFreedom #America #DEI #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #StudentGovernment #TeachIn #TheVanderbiltHustler #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpSCompact #UnitedStates #VanderbiltUniversity

Opinion – Amy Coney Barrett Is Looking Beyond the Trump Era – The New York Times

Opinion Interesting Times

Amy Coney Barrett Is Looking Beyond the Trump Era

The Supreme Court justice isn’t making decisions based on public opinion.

 There’s a roster of cases before the Supreme Court that could reshape the entire Trump presidency and redefine executive power. And my guest this week, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is likely to be the decisive vote in some of these cases.

Unfortunately but predictably, that means that she couldn’t or wouldn’t respond to my most direct questions about the Trump administration.

But my goal was to push the justice on a question that she can answer, and one that she addresses at length in her new book, “Listening to the Law.” I wanted to know whether her preferred legal theory, originalism, can bend and flex in response to prudential and political concerns.

Barrett believes strongly that it shouldn’t, that justices should rule without worrying about public opinion or who happens to be in the White House. But I tend to think real-world politics constantly tests and limits that ideal. So in our conversation, I’m trying to find those limits and the ways in which even justices devoted to the original meaning of the Constitution have to deal with the highly unusual pressures of right now.

Amy Coney Barrett Doesn’t Need You to Like Her

The Supreme Court justice isn’t making decisions based on public opinion.

Below is an edited transcript of an episode of “Interesting Times.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Editor’s Note: Embedded from Spotify below.

Ross Douthat: Justice Barrett, welcome to “Interesting Times.”

Amy Coney Barrett: Thank you for having me, Ross.

Douthat: I honestly would never have said no. [Barrett chuckles.]

Your book is mostly about — and we’re mostly going to talk about theories of jurisprudence, the place of the Supreme Court in American life, possibly some issues related to the Trump presidency and executive power — but it does start with a little window into the personal world of Amy Coney Barrett, so I’m going to start with a couple of questions about that terrain.

We looked it up, and you are the first guest we’ve had on the show who has more children than I do — which is only because we haven’t yet succeeded in booking Elon Musk, I should say.

Barrett: [Laughs.] There’s still time for you to catch up with me.

Douthat: That’s a bold statement. I appreciate your confidence in my youthful energy and vigor.

When you were being nominated, this newspaper, The New York Times, ran a story that talked about your mix of personal and professional obligations and how it made you a certain kind of trailblazer. And the story described you — and you can accept this description or not — as “a woman who is both unabashedly ambitious and deeply religious, who has excelled at the heights of a demanding profession,” even as she speaks openly about prioritizing her faith and family.

I’m curious if you actually see yourself this way at all? Do you see yourself as a particular kind of trailblazer or role model in that kind of balancing act?

Barrett: I don’t see myself as a trailblazer, nor do I love the word “ambitious,” because I feel like the word “ambition” puts a focus on success or ambition for its own sake, which isn’t how I’ve ever conceived of my career.

When I was growing up — I was born in 1972 — my mom stayed home, and the parents of most of my friends had a working dad and a stay-at-home mom. My kids have had a mix, and for them, it’s become unexceptional to have a mom that worked, whereas it felt like a big thing for me to make the choice because my own mother had a large family — I’m one of seven — which is, I say in the book, that’s what I always wanted. That was my No. 1 priority. And I wasn’t sure that I could do that and work at the same time, but I always have, since I had our first child.

So I think my life looks different than the life of my mom and my aunts and my friends’ parents at the time, but it’s one that my own daughters and sons and their friends, I hope, can just treat as unexceptional. Like, you can stay home if you want. You can work if you want. You can do both.

Douthat: Do you think of yourself as a feminist — a conservative feminist, if that is a category that you would accept?

Barrett: I don’t know, labels are so dangerous because they mean different things to different people. I mean, if being a feminist simply means having the view that women can do whatever it is they put their minds to and have opportunities open to them, then yes, I am.

But I think any stripe of feminism that you describe is going to have — labels are risky. So I’ll just say: Yes, yes, labels are risky.

Douthat: Labels are risky, especially when you are charged with the interpretation of the entire U.S. Constitution.

Barrett: [Laughs.] It’s so true.

Douthat: How do you actually do it? And I say this as someone who, obviously, works. Here I am working. My wife is a journalist and writer, and we do a lot of the same kind of balancing that you and your husband have done, and it takes some strange forms. But it’s very challenging. Any number of kids is challenging, but to have a large family and have a busy professional life — I’m just curious: As a Supreme Court justice, how do you feel like you guys make it work?

Barrett: A lot of people ask. That’s probably the question that I get asked most often.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Amy Coney Barrett Is Looking Beyond the Trump Era – The New York Times

#2025 #America #AmyConeyBarrett #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #InterestingTimes #Interview #JusticeBarrett #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Podcast #Politics #Resistance #Science #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #Technology #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpEra #UnitedStates

Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis” – Daily Kos

by TheCriticalMind

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 4:45:27p PDT

The current Supreme Court is making unprecedented use of the ‘shadow docket’. Reaction has been mixed. Liberals say the Court is a rubber stamp enabling Trump’s imperial presidency. MAGAs argue that SCOTUS’s conservative bloc is doing God’s work by thwarting anti-democratic rulings by unelected, activist, lower court judges.

However, politics aside, Supreme Court rulings impact how the Judiciary does business. To understand the practical effect of the Court’s use of the shadow docket, the New York Times polled US District and Appeals Court judges.

It reported its findings in an article titled: Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders.”

The subhead summarized the substance of the piece. To wit:

Dozens of sitting judges shared with The Times their concerns about risks to the courts’ legitimacy as the Supreme Court releases opaque orders about Trump administration policies.

The Times wrote to “hundreds of federal judges across the country” — and 65 replied. The respondents are not named. But the paper said presidents of both parties had appointed them. And that, while there was a difference in degree, Judges across the political spectrum worried about SCOTUS’s high-handedness. In the NYT’s words:  

Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats.

Adding: While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns.

The paper asked the judges if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: The Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket since President Trump returned to office. Overall 72% said SCOTUS’s use was inappropriate, 9% hedged, and 18% (all Republican) said it was appropriate.

Tellingly, while almost all Democrats said SCOTUS was on the wrong side of the line, nearly half the Republicans concurred. The conclusion is inescapable. When half your team thinks your side stinks, it stinks.  

 Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

#2025 #America #DailyKos #DonaldTrump #Education #EmergencyOrders #FederalJudiciary #Health #History #JudicialCrisis #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RuleOfLaw #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

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Legislative Recap Oct. 10, 2025: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes »

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Shutdown Update; Senate Votes, Oct. 10, 2025 · by Amy West

Shutdown Update

Still going. 

The Senate voted for a seventh time on the two competing continuing resolutions in front of it to allocate funds to federal agencies (one Democratic, one Republican) and both failed again to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It’s possible that Republicans are beginning to soften their positions. On X, Igor Bobic posted about Democrats’ ask to extend expiring health care subsidies:

“[Sen.] Tillis says a deal on ACA subsidies wouldn’t be hard once government is funded, with mix of retiring senators & those up for reelection. “You’re telling me you can’t find eight people that could walk the plank?” “As a veteran plank-walker, it’s not near as bad as it seems””

One might reasonably ask why not walk the plank now in order to end the shutdown? However, if Senate Republicans have been asked this kind of question, no one has publicly recorded their responses.

(By the way, in a previous post we incorrectly wrote that these subsidies would affect low-income Americans. But that was wrong: It would affect middle class Americans who get health care through the ACA marketplace exchanges.)

The House remains in recess. Many House Democrats are in D.C. anyway to make a messaging point and to push Speaker Johnson on why Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva hasn’t been sworn in yet. Earlier this year, Republican representatives-elect Patronis (FL-1) and Fine (FL-6) were sworn in immediately after election while the House was in recess. Why won’t Johnson swear her in? Punchbowl takes a stab at answering the question. Maybe it’s not about Epstein files; maybe Johnson is just really committed to this stop-work action he’s making the House take during the shutdown. A few Republican House members are expressing dissatisfaction with Johnson’s strategy.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #GOP #GOPShutdown #GovTrack #GovTrackUs #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RepublicanShutdown #Resistance #Science #SenateVotes #Shutdown2025 #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSenate #UnitedStates

Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

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Legislative Recap Oct. 10, 2025: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes »

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Shutdown Update; Senate Votes, Oct. 10, 2025 · by Amy West

Shutdown Update

Still going. 

The Senate voted for a seventh time on the two competing continuing resolutions in front of it to allocate funds to federal agencies (one Democratic, one Republican) and both failed again to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It’s possible that Republicans are beginning to soften their positions. On X, Igor Bobic posted about Democrats’ ask to extend expiring health care subsidies:

“[Sen.] Tillis says a deal on ACA subsidies wouldn’t be hard once government is funded, with mix of retiring senators & those up for reelection. “You’re telling me you can’t find eight people that could walk the plank?” “As a veteran plank-walker, it’s not near as bad as it seems””

One might reasonably ask why not walk the plank now in order to end the shutdown? However, if Senate Republicans have been asked this kind of question, no one has publicly recorded their responses.

(By the way, in a previous post we incorrectly wrote that these subsidies would affect low-income Americans. But that was wrong: It would affect middle class Americans who get health care through the ACA marketplace exchanges.)

The House remains in recess. Many House Democrats are in D.C. anyway to make a messaging point and to push Speaker Johnson on why Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva hasn’t been sworn in yet. Earlier this year, Republican representatives-elect Patronis (FL-1) and Fine (FL-6) were sworn in immediately after election while the House was in recess. Why won’t Johnson swear her in? Punchbowl takes a stab at answering the question. Maybe it’s not about Epstein files; maybe Johnson is just really committed to this stop-work action he’s making the House take during the shutdown. A few Republican House members are expressing dissatisfaction with Johnson’s strategy.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #GOP #GOPShutdown #GovTrack #GovTrackUs #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RepublicanShutdown #Resistance #Science #SenateVotes #Shutdown2025 #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSenate #UnitedStates

Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

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Legislative Recap Oct. 10, 2025: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes »

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Shutdown Update; Senate Votes, Oct. 10, 2025 · by Amy West

Shutdown Update

Still going. 

The Senate voted for a seventh time on the two competing continuing resolutions in front of it to allocate funds to federal agencies (one Democratic, one Republican) and both failed again to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It’s possible that Republicans are beginning to soften their positions. On X, Igor Bobic posted about Democrats’ ask to extend expiring health care subsidies:

“[Sen.] Tillis says a deal on ACA subsidies wouldn’t be hard once government is funded, with mix of retiring senators & those up for reelection. “You’re telling me you can’t find eight people that could walk the plank?” “As a veteran plank-walker, it’s not near as bad as it seems””

One might reasonably ask why not walk the plank now in order to end the shutdown? However, if Senate Republicans have been asked this kind of question, no one has publicly recorded their responses.

(By the way, in a previous post we incorrectly wrote that these subsidies would affect low-income Americans. But that was wrong: It would affect middle class Americans who get health care through the ACA marketplace exchanges.)

The House remains in recess. Many House Democrats are in D.C. anyway to make a messaging point and to push Speaker Johnson on why Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva hasn’t been sworn in yet. Earlier this year, Republican representatives-elect Patronis (FL-1) and Fine (FL-6) were sworn in immediately after election while the House was in recess. Why won’t Johnson swear her in? Punchbowl takes a stab at answering the question. Maybe it’s not about Epstein files; maybe Johnson is just really committed to this stop-work action he’s making the House take during the shutdown. A few Republican House members are expressing dissatisfaction with Johnson’s strategy.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #GOP #GOPShutdown #GovTrack #GovTrackUs #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RepublicanShutdown #Resistance #Science #SenateVotes #Shutdown2025 #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSenate #UnitedStates

Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

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Legislative Recap Oct. 10, 2025: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes »

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Shutdown Update; Senate Votes, Oct. 10, 2025 · by Amy West

Shutdown Update

Still going. 

The Senate voted for a seventh time on the two competing continuing resolutions in front of it to allocate funds to federal agencies (one Democratic, one Republican) and both failed again to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It’s possible that Republicans are beginning to soften their positions. On X, Igor Bobic posted about Democrats’ ask to extend expiring health care subsidies:

“[Sen.] Tillis says a deal on ACA subsidies wouldn’t be hard once government is funded, with mix of retiring senators & those up for reelection. “You’re telling me you can’t find eight people that could walk the plank?” “As a veteran plank-walker, it’s not near as bad as it seems””

One might reasonably ask why not walk the plank now in order to end the shutdown? However, if Senate Republicans have been asked this kind of question, no one has publicly recorded their responses.

(By the way, in a previous post we incorrectly wrote that these subsidies would affect low-income Americans. But that was wrong: It would affect middle class Americans who get health care through the ACA marketplace exchanges.)

The House remains in recess. Many House Democrats are in D.C. anyway to make a messaging point and to push Speaker Johnson on why Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva hasn’t been sworn in yet. Earlier this year, Republican representatives-elect Patronis (FL-1) and Fine (FL-6) were sworn in immediately after election while the House was in recess. Why won’t Johnson swear her in? Punchbowl takes a stab at answering the question. Maybe it’s not about Epstein files; maybe Johnson is just really committed to this stop-work action he’s making the House take during the shutdown. A few Republican House members are expressing dissatisfaction with Johnson’s strategy.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #GOP #GOPShutdown #GovTrack #GovTrackUs #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RepublicanShutdown #Resistance #Science #SenateVotes #Shutdown2025 #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSenate #UnitedStates

Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

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Legislative Recap Oct. 10, 2025: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes »

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Shutdown Update; Senate Votes, Oct. 10, 2025 · by Amy West

Shutdown Update

Still going. 

The Senate voted for a seventh time on the two competing continuing resolutions in front of it to allocate funds to federal agencies (one Democratic, one Republican) and both failed again to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It’s possible that Republicans are beginning to soften their positions. On X, Igor Bobic posted about Democrats’ ask to extend expiring health care subsidies:

“[Sen.] Tillis says a deal on ACA subsidies wouldn’t be hard once government is funded, with mix of retiring senators & those up for reelection. “You’re telling me you can’t find eight people that could walk the plank?” “As a veteran plank-walker, it’s not near as bad as it seems””

One might reasonably ask why not walk the plank now in order to end the shutdown? However, if Senate Republicans have been asked this kind of question, no one has publicly recorded their responses.

(By the way, in a previous post we incorrectly wrote that these subsidies would affect low-income Americans. But that was wrong: It would affect middle class Americans who get health care through the ACA marketplace exchanges.)

The House remains in recess. Many House Democrats are in D.C. anyway to make a messaging point and to push Speaker Johnson on why Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva hasn’t been sworn in yet. Earlier this year, Republican representatives-elect Patronis (FL-1) and Fine (FL-6) were sworn in immediately after election while the House was in recess. Why won’t Johnson swear her in? Punchbowl takes a stab at answering the question. Maybe it’s not about Epstein files; maybe Johnson is just really committed to this stop-work action he’s making the House take during the shutdown. A few Republican House members are expressing dissatisfaction with Johnson’s strategy.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #GOP #GOPShutdown #GovTrack #GovTrackUs #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RepublicanShutdown #Resistance #Science #SenateVotes #Shutdown2025 #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSenate #UnitedStates

In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

Donald Trump Politics Immigration

Federal judge hits Trump administration credibility in siding with city and state against National Guard deployment

Judge’s order bars ‘federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois’ for at least 14 days.

By Jon Seidel and Tina Sfondeles Oct 9, 2025, 6:02pm PDT

For U.S. District Judge April Perry,

it all came down to credibility.

Should she believe local law enforcement officials, who say they have protests over President Donald Trump’s immigration campaign well in hand? Or Trump, whose aides claim a “brazen new form of hostility” targeting federal law enforcement had broken out in Illinois?

In the end, Perry concluded the Trump administration’s “perception of events” around Chicago “are simply unreliable.” She’d seen “no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” nor that Trump “is unable … to execute the laws of the United States.”

Related

• Judge refuses to immediately block National Guard deployment to Illinois

And after a historic hearing that lasted more than three hours at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”

Perry ruled orally from the bench and promised a written opinion Friday. The order is effective for two weeks, and Perry set a hearing for Oct. 22 to determine whether it should be extended for two more. Trump’s lawyers are sure to appeal in the meantime.

Gov. JB Pritzker reacted in a statement by saying, “Donald Trump is not a king — and his administration is not above the law.”

“Today, the court confirmed what we all know: There is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

#14Days #2025 #America #AprilPerry #Chicago #ChicagoSunTimes #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Illinois #JBPritzker #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Travel #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

Donald Trump Politics Immigration

Federal judge hits Trump administration credibility in siding with city and state against National Guard deployment

Judge’s order bars ‘federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois’ for at least 14 days.

By Jon Seidel and Tina Sfondeles Oct 9, 2025, 6:02pm PDT

For U.S. District Judge April Perry,

it all came down to credibility.

Should she believe local law enforcement officials, who say they have protests over President Donald Trump’s immigration campaign well in hand? Or Trump, whose aides claim a “brazen new form of hostility” targeting federal law enforcement had broken out in Illinois?

In the end, Perry concluded the Trump administration’s “perception of events” around Chicago “are simply unreliable.” She’d seen “no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” nor that Trump “is unable … to execute the laws of the United States.”

Related

• Judge refuses to immediately block National Guard deployment to Illinois

And after a historic hearing that lasted more than three hours at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”

Perry ruled orally from the bench and promised a written opinion Friday. The order is effective for two weeks, and Perry set a hearing for Oct. 22 to determine whether it should be extended for two more. Trump’s lawyers are sure to appeal in the meantime.

Gov. JB Pritzker reacted in a statement by saying, “Donald Trump is not a king — and his administration is not above the law.”

“Today, the court confirmed what we all know: There is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

#14Days #2025 #America #AprilPerry #Chicago #ChicagoSunTimes #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Illinois #JBPritzker #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Travel #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

Donald Trump Politics Immigration

Federal judge hits Trump administration credibility in siding with city and state against National Guard deployment

Judge’s order bars ‘federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois’ for at least 14 days.

By Jon Seidel and Tina Sfondeles Oct 9, 2025, 6:02pm PDT

For U.S. District Judge April Perry,

it all came down to credibility.

Should she believe local law enforcement officials, who say they have protests over President Donald Trump’s immigration campaign well in hand? Or Trump, whose aides claim a “brazen new form of hostility” targeting federal law enforcement had broken out in Illinois?

In the end, Perry concluded the Trump administration’s “perception of events” around Chicago “are simply unreliable.” She’d seen “no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” nor that Trump “is unable … to execute the laws of the United States.”

Related

• Judge refuses to immediately block National Guard deployment to Illinois

And after a historic hearing that lasted more than three hours at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”

Perry ruled orally from the bench and promised a written opinion Friday. The order is effective for two weeks, and Perry set a hearing for Oct. 22 to determine whether it should be extended for two more. Trump’s lawyers are sure to appeal in the meantime.

Gov. JB Pritzker reacted in a statement by saying, “Donald Trump is not a king — and his administration is not above the law.”

“Today, the court confirmed what we all know: There is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

#14Days #2025 #America #AprilPerry #Chicago #ChicagoSunTimes #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Illinois #JBPritzker #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Travel #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

Donald Trump Politics Immigration

Federal judge hits Trump administration credibility in siding with city and state against National Guard deployment

Judge’s order bars ‘federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois’ for at least 14 days.

By Jon Seidel and Tina Sfondeles Oct 9, 2025, 6:02pm PDT

For U.S. District Judge April Perry,

it all came down to credibility.

Should she believe local law enforcement officials, who say they have protests over President Donald Trump’s immigration campaign well in hand? Or Trump, whose aides claim a “brazen new form of hostility” targeting federal law enforcement had broken out in Illinois?

In the end, Perry concluded the Trump administration’s “perception of events” around Chicago “are simply unreliable.” She’d seen “no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” nor that Trump “is unable … to execute the laws of the United States.”

Related

• Judge refuses to immediately block National Guard deployment to Illinois

And after a historic hearing that lasted more than three hours at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”

Perry ruled orally from the bench and promised a written opinion Friday. The order is effective for two weeks, and Perry set a hearing for Oct. 22 to determine whether it should be extended for two more. Trump’s lawyers are sure to appeal in the meantime.

Gov. JB Pritzker reacted in a statement by saying, “Donald Trump is not a king — and his administration is not above the law.”

“Today, the court confirmed what we all know: There is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

#14Days #2025 #America #AprilPerry #Chicago #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Illinois #JBPritzker #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Travel #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

Donald Trump Politics Immigration

Federal judge hits Trump administration credibility in siding with city and state against National Guard deployment

Judge’s order bars ‘federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois’ for at least 14 days.

By Jon Seidel and Tina Sfondeles Oct 9, 2025, 6:02pm PDT

For U.S. District Judge April Perry,

it all came down to credibility.

Should she believe local law enforcement officials, who say they have protests over President Donald Trump’s immigration campaign well in hand? Or Trump, whose aides claim a “brazen new form of hostility” targeting federal law enforcement had broken out in Illinois?

In the end, Perry concluded the Trump administration’s “perception of events” around Chicago “are simply unreliable.” She’d seen “no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” nor that Trump “is unable … to execute the laws of the United States.”

Related

• Judge refuses to immediately block National Guard deployment to Illinois

And after a historic hearing that lasted more than three hours at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”

Perry ruled orally from the bench and promised a written opinion Friday. The order is effective for two weeks, and Perry set a hearing for Oct. 22 to determine whether it should be extended for two more. Trump’s lawyers are sure to appeal in the meantime.

Gov. JB Pritzker reacted in a statement by saying, “Donald Trump is not a king — and his administration is not above the law.”

“Today, the court confirmed what we all know: There is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

#14Days #2025 #America #AprilPerry #Chicago #ChicagoSunTimes #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Illinois #JBPritzker #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Travel #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Social Security plans to make it harder to get disability benefits – The Washington Post – Exclusive

WP Exclusive

Trump plan would limit disability benefits for older Americans

Trump administration officials are considering eliminating age as a factor in deciding whether someone is capable of working.

Updated, October 5, 2025 at 4:58 p.m. EDT, today at 4:58 p.m. EDT, 9 min

By Meryl Kornfield and Lisa Rein

The Trump administration is preparing a plan that will make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older and disabled people that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits, according to people familiar with the plans.

Currently, the Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.

But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. They also plan to modernize labor market data used to judge whether claimants can work, replacing an outdated jobs database that includes obsolete occupations like nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks, following a Washington Post investigation in 2022.

It is unclear exactly how many Americans could lose access to disability benefits under the proposed rule changes.

🏛️Following Politics

Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits due to the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent. That would lead to $82 billion less paid out in benefits over 10 years, Smalligan estimated.

Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don’t get another job. If the rule didn’t consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits, significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Social Security plans to make it harder to get disability benefits – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #Disability #DonaldTrump #Education #HarderToGet #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #SocialSecurity #SocialSecurityAdministration #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Opinion | Rail trails offer space to reconnect with community – The Washington Post

Opinion

Meet us on the rail trail

A place to gather as Americans, not partisans.The Island Line Trail on the Burlington, Vermont, waterfront, which Howard Dean played a role in creating. (Courtesy From Rails to Trails Film, LLC)

By Tommy Thompson and Howard Dean – Tommy Thompson, a Republican, is a former governor of Wisconsin. Howard Dean, a Democrat, is a former governor of Vermont.

September 28, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDT, Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT, 3 min

Life in much of America today seems fractured, offering fewer opportunities for people to meet, mingle and feel part of the same community. But there is at least one exception: local rail trails — quiet, leafy greenways that follow the paths trains once traveled.

Over the past six decades, a citizen-led movement has transformed more than 26,000 miles of abandoned rail corridors into thousands of public paths for walking, biking and recreation. Tens of millions of people use these trails each year — in the countryside, in small towns and in big cities. This successful effort to convert rails to trails has never belonged to just one political party.

We know this because we’ve lived it; rail trails have been important to both our lives. One of us (Thompson) grew up along the nation’s first rail trail: the Elroy-Sparta State Trail in Wisconsin, which ran through his family farm. The other (Dean) helped create the Island Line Trail in Vermont, which swings from Burlington out onto a causeway far into Lake Champlain.

It was Thompson’s father who helped bring the Elroy-Sparta trail to life, setting in motion a project that revived local communities and became a model for the nation. And it was Dean whose leadership helped secure a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that validated the concept of saving rail corridors.

These trails do more than repurpose land. They restore communities. They promote health, tourism and local business. They give Americans a place to meet as neighbors, not partisans.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Rail trails offer space to reconnect with community – Washington Post

#2025 #America #Biking #community #Education #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #OpenSpaces #Opinion #PublicPaths #RailTrails #Railroads #Rails #Reconnect #Recreation #Science #TheWashingtonPost #Travel #UnitedStates #Walking

Opinion | Tariffs are the Supreme Court’s biggest test yet – The Washington Post

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion | Jason Willick

The fate of Trump’s tariffs hinges on this Supreme Court doctrine

Will justices rein in presidential power or entrench suspicions of partisan bias?

September 12, 2025 at 7:45 a.m. EDT, Today at 7:45 a.m. EDT, 5 min

There will be plenty of legal clashes in the next three-plus years of Donald Trump’s term in office, but it’s hard to imagine that any will be more significant — for the presidency or the Supreme Court — than the tariff case the justices agreed to hear this week.

For the presidency the case is crucial because, even though executive power has swelled in the 21st century, one key constraint remains: Congress’s exclusive power to fund the government. The president might control “the sword,” as the Founding Fathers put it, but the people’s elected representatives can always withhold the money he needs to use it. If the president can spontaneously impose tariffs at any level, at any time, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year without congressional approval, that fundamental constraint is not holding.

For the Supreme Court the case is crucial because Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has vigorously applied a doctrine against the last two Democratic administrations aimed at limiting precisely this kind of executive adventurism. The “major questions doctrine” basically says that executive actions with a huge political and economic impact are legally suspect if they are not clearly authorized by Congress or the Constitution.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Tariffs are the Supreme Court’s biggest test yet – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #Tariffs #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpSTariffs #UnitedStates

Court Temporarily Stops Trump-Vance Administration’s Unlawful Attempted Takeover of the Library of Congress – Democracy Forward

Court Temporarily Stops Trump-Vance Administration’s Unlawful Attempted Takeover of the Library of Congress

Press Release September 10, 2025

Washington, DC — In a significant victory for the separation of powers, a federal court today granted an injunction pending appeal, temporarily preventing the Trump-Vance administration from unlawfully removing the Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, from her position, and from installing Executive Branch officials to run the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office. Democracy Forward is representing Perlmutter in this case. 

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia pauses, for now, what the court said might constitute a “grave intrusion by the President into the constitutional powers of a coordinate branch of government.” The ruling confirms that the President does not have the legal authority to fire or replace the Register of Copyrights — a position that can be filled only by the Librarian of Congress.

“This is a significant victory for the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the independence of Congress. The President does not have the authority to remove the Register of Copyrights or to install his own officials to run the nation’s library. We are proud to represent Shira Perlmutter in defending the integrity of our democratic institutions, and we will continue this fight as it proceeds,” said Brian Netter, Legal Director at Democracy Forward.

–Democracy Forward

This case challenges the President’s unlawful actions, including attempts to appoint a Justice Department official as Acting Register of Copyrights and to name an Acting Librarian of Congress under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act — an action that is legally invalid because Congress structured the Library of Congress to be part of the Legislative Branch under the Act, not the Executive.

The court’s order ensures that Perlmutter remains the lawful Register of Copyrights, and that any actions taken by improperly appointed officials at the Library of Congress have no legal effect, while the case continues.

The case is Perlmutter v. Blanche. Perlmutter is represented by Democracy Forward’s Brian Netter and Allyson Scher, and Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.

The court’s decision can be read here [and PDF below], and Democracy Forward’s initial complaint and motion for a preliminary injunction can be read here. 

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Court Temporarily Stops Trump-Vance Administration’s Unlawful Attempted Takeover of the Library of Congress – Democracy Forward

#2025 #America #Books #BrianNetter #CopyrightOffice #DemocracyForward #DistrictOfColumbia #DonaldTrump #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RegisterOfCopyrights #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USCourtOfAppeals #UnitedStates

Judge alleges Trump admin misled SCOTUS about injunction – Law & Crime

The Trump administration provided incorrect information to the U.S. Supreme Court in a recent high-profile case about firing federal employees, according to a federal judge sitting in San Francisco.

On Monday, in a terse, two-page filing, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a Bill Clinton appointee, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that the U.S. Department of Justice substantially mischaracterized the reach of a preliminary injunction the lower court issued in response to one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

That injunction, issued in late May, came on the heels of a temporary restraining order issued in early May. Later that same month, a three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit upheld the lower court order, rejecting the government’s request to stay the injunction.

Then, in early June, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a 147-page application for an emergency stay with the nation’s high court.

In that application, Sauer described Illston’s injunction in the following terms: “In fact, this Office has been informed by OPM that about 40 [reductions in force] in 17 agencies were in progress and are currently enjoined.”

Now, Illston says Sauer protested a bit too much.

The district court judge, in her Monday statement, alleges the fourth-highest ranking DOJ official got both sets of numbers wrong.

“Petitioners provided this information to argue that the preliminary injunction was causing them irreparable harm,” Illston writes. “Now that petitioners have filed their RIF list, it is apparent that the figure presented to the Supreme Court included numerous agencies that are not defendants in this case and therefore were not enjoined by the District Court.”

The document goes on to list seven “non-defendant” agencies and nine RIFs which were incorrectly included in the government’s representations before the justices in its June stay application.

Illston then crunches the numbers – using bold to highlight the math.

Based on this list, petitioners’ application to the Supreme Court should have stated that the injunction paused 31 RIFs in 10 agencies, not 40 RIFs in 17 agencies. This discrepancy is not insignificant. In this Court’s view, this further underscores the Court’s previous finding that any deliberative process privilege, if it exists at all, is overridden by ‘the need for accurate fact-finding in this litigation[.]'”

While the Supreme Court stayed the injunction itself, other business in the litigation has been moving forward at the district court level.

The underlying lawsuit, filed by a coalition of labor unions, nonprofit groups, and municipalities, challenges the 45th and 47th president’s Feb. 11 executive order, “Implementing The President’s ‘Department Of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative.” The order, on its own terms, purports to “commence” a “critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy” by “eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity.” In real terms, Trump’s plans ask agency heads to quickly “initiate large-scale reductions in force,” or massive layoffs, in service of a goal to restructure the government.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Judge alleges Trump admin misled SCOTUS about injunction

#2025 #America #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #History #LawAndCrime #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #SCOTUS #SusanIllston #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Judge alleges Trump admin misled SCOTUS about injunction – Law & Crime

The Trump administration provided incorrect information to the U.S. Supreme Court in a recent high-profile case about firing federal employees, according to a federal judge sitting in San Francisco.

On Monday, in a terse, two-page filing, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a Bill Clinton appointee, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that the U.S. Department of Justice substantially mischaracterized the reach of a preliminary injunction the lower court issued in response to one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

That injunction, issued in late May, came on the heels of a temporary restraining order issued in early May. Later that same month, a three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit upheld the lower court order, rejecting the government’s request to stay the injunction.

Then, in early June, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a 147-page application for an emergency stay with the nation’s high court.

In that application, Sauer described Illston’s injunction in the following terms: “In fact, this Office has been informed by OPM that about 40 [reductions in force] in 17 agencies were in progress and are currently enjoined.”

Now, Illston says Sauer protested a bit too much.

The district court judge, in her Monday statement, alleges the fourth-highest ranking DOJ official got both sets of numbers wrong.

“Petitioners provided this information to argue that the preliminary injunction was causing them irreparable harm,” Illston writes. “Now that petitioners have filed their RIF list, it is apparent that the figure presented to the Supreme Court included numerous agencies that are not defendants in this case and therefore were not enjoined by the District Court.”

The document goes on to list seven “non-defendant” agencies and nine RIFs which were incorrectly included in the government’s representations before the justices in its June stay application.

Illston then crunches the numbers – using bold to highlight the math.

Based on this list, petitioners’ application to the Supreme Court should have stated that the injunction paused 31 RIFs in 10 agencies, not 40 RIFs in 17 agencies. This discrepancy is not insignificant. In this Court’s view, this further underscores the Court’s previous finding that any deliberative process privilege, if it exists at all, is overridden by ‘the need for accurate fact-finding in this litigation[.]'”

While the Supreme Court stayed the injunction itself, other business in the litigation has been moving forward at the district court level.

The underlying lawsuit, filed by a coalition of labor unions, nonprofit groups, and municipalities, challenges the 45th and 47th president’s Feb. 11 executive order, “Implementing The President’s ‘Department Of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative.” The order, on its own terms, purports to “commence” a “critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy” by “eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity.” In real terms, Trump’s plans ask agency heads to quickly “initiate large-scale reductions in force,” or massive layoffs, in service of a goal to restructure the government.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Judge alleges Trump admin misled SCOTUS about injunction

#2025 #America #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #History #LawAndCrime #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #SCOTUS #SusanIllston #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Letters from an American – July 15, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson

By Heather Cox Richardson, July 15, 2025

Without any explanation, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court yesterday granted a stay on a lower court’s order that the Trump administration could not gut the Department of Education while the issue is in the courts. The majority thus throws the weight of the Supreme Court behind the ability of the Trump administration to get rid of departments established by Congress—a power the Supreme Court denied when President Richard M. Nixon tried it in 1973.

This is a major expansion of presidential power, permitting the president to disregard laws Congress has passed, despite the Constitution’s clear assignment of lawmaking power to Congress alone.

President Donald J. Trump has vowed to eliminate the Department of Education because he claims it pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” Running for office, he promised to “return” education to the states. In fact, the Education Department has never set curriculum; it disburses funds for high-poverty schools and educating students with disabilities. It’s also in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding.

Trump’s secretary of education, professional wrestling promoter Linda McMahon, supports Trump’s plan to dismantle the department. In March the department announced it would lay off 1,378 employees—about half the department. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued to stop the layoffs, and Massachusetts federal judge Myong Joun ordered the department to reinstate the fired workers. The Supreme Court has now put that order on hold, permitting the layoffs to go forward.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan concurred in a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, noting that Trump has claimed power to destroy the congressionally established department “by executive fiat” and chastising the right-wing majority for enabling him. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” they say.

“The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them. That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers. Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief.”

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: July 15, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson

#1973 #2025 #America #Children #DepartmentOfEducation #DonaldTrump #Education #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Nixon #Politics #PresidentialPower #PublicSchools #Resistance #Science #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit | Reuters

By Andrew Goudsward, July 14, 20256:29 AM PDT, Updated July 14, 2025

• Summary
• Companies

• Federal Programs Branch loses nearly two-thirds of staff since Trump’s election
• Exodus strains unit defending Trump’s policies amid legal challenges
• Political appointees fill vacancies

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

The tally has not been previously reported. Using court records and LinkedIn accounts, Reuters was able to verify the departure of all but four names on the list.

Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump’s administration.

“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump’s second term. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit | Reuters

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #LawyersLeavingTrump #Legal #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #ResigningDOJ #Resistance #Reuters #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpLawsuits #TrumpLawyers #TrumpPolicies #UnitedStates

Democrats and Republicans Unwilling to Hand Copyright Office to Big Tech https://petapixel.com/2025/05/14/democrats-and-republicans-unwilling-to-hand-copyright-office-to-big-tech/ #artificialintelligence #libraryofcongress #copyrightoffice #Technology #copyright #congress #News #Law #law #ai

Beiträge rund um die Library of Congress -Bibliothekarisch.de
https://bibliothekarisch.de/blog/2025/05/13/neue-beitraege-rund-um-die-library-of-congress/
#LibraryofCongress #CopyrightOffice #stopTrump #loc

❛❛“Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models,” Joe Morelle, a New York House Democrat, said in a statement Saturday.❜❜

#uspol #trump #libraryofcongress #musk #theft #ai #genAI #llms #theft #doge #copyrightoffice #copyright

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/library-congress-doge-trump-takeover-b2749631.html