#railroads — Public Fediverse posts

For Decades, NASA Has Relied On Trains So Much To Transport Rocket Boosters Across America That It Even Has Its Own Railroad

For many people, the wonder of spaceflight begins at the launchpad, where heroic astronauts blast off atop some…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Space #ArtemisII #ArtemisProgram #NASA #NASARailroad #railroads #Rockets #Science #trainhistory #Trains
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/626606/

For Decades, NASA Has Relied On Trains So Much To Transport Rocket Boosters Across America That It Even Has Its Own Railroad

For many people, the wonder of spaceflight begins at the launchpad, where heroic astronauts blast off atop some…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Space #ArtemisII #ArtemisProgram #NASA #NASARailroad #railroads #Rockets #Science #trainhistory #Trains
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/626606/

https://www.europesays.com/ie/470253/ For Decades, NASA Has Relied On Trains So Much To Transport Rocket Boosters Across America That It Even Has Its Own Railroad #ArtemisII #ArtemisProgram #Éire #IE #Ireland #nasa #NASARailroad #railroads #rockets #Science #Space #TrainHistory #Trains

#traintracktuesday

Red Rock, Arizona

(Details In The Alt Text) - (A Repeat)

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #Old #TravelPhotography #Arizona #US #USA #Landscape #Railroad #BNW #Disused #Urbex #RedRock #LandscapePhotography #Street #StreetPhotography #Monochrome #BlackAndWhite #Railroads #Abandoned #Historic #Historical #History #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography

#traintracktuesday

Red Rock, Arizona

(Details In The Alt Text) - (A Repeat)

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #Old #TravelPhotography #Arizona #US #USA #Landscape #Railroad #BNW #Disused #Urbex #RedRock #LandscapePhotography #Street #StreetPhotography #Monochrome #BlackAndWhite #Railroads #Abandoned #Historic #Historical #History #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography

#traintracktuesday

Red Rock, Arizona

(Details In The Alt Text) - (A Repeat)

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #Old #TravelPhotography #Arizona #US #USA #Landscape #Railroad #BNW #Disused #Urbex #RedRock #LandscapePhotography #Street #StreetPhotography #Monochrome #BlackAndWhite #Railroads #Abandoned #Historic #Historical #History #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography

#traintracktuesday

Red Rock, Arizona

(Details In The Alt Text) - (A Repeat)

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #Old #TravelPhotography #Arizona #US #USA #Landscape #Railroad #BNW #Disused #Urbex #RedRock #LandscapePhotography #Street #StreetPhotography #Monochrome #BlackAndWhite #Railroads #Abandoned #Historic #Historical #History #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography

#traintracktuesday

Red Rock, Arizona

(Details In The Alt Text) - (A Repeat)

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #Old #TravelPhotography #Arizona #US #USA #Landscape #Railroad #BNW #Disused #Urbex #RedRock #LandscapePhotography #Street #StreetPhotography #Monochrome #BlackAndWhite #Railroads #Abandoned #Historic #Historical #History #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Ferrocarril.net - Servidor de Mastodon, operado por aficionados al ferrocarril, para aficionados al ferrocarril.

:Fediverse: https://social.ferrocarril.net

Acerca de: https://social.ferrocarril.net/about
Administrado por: @garridinsi

#FeaturedServer #Ferrocarril #Español #Railways #Trains #Railroads #Mastodon #Fediverse #FreeFediverse

The #NewYorkCentral and an Amtrak #Acela Avelia Liberty next to each other, just as God intended 🥲

#MBTA #Railroads #Railfan

#TrainTrackTuesday

Indian Railways - Always A Great Adventure

(Details In The Alt Text) (Scanned 35mm Negative)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matheran_Hill_Rail

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #TravelPhotography #India #Street #IndianRailways #Rail #Tracks #Rails #Landscape #Track #IndianRail #LandscapePhotography #BNW #BlackAndWhite #Asia #Asian #People #Monochrome #Railroad #Railroads #StreetPhotography #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography #Train #Trains #CamelCase

#TrainTrackTuesday

Indian Railways - Always A Great Adventure

(Details In The Alt Text) (Scanned 35mm Negative)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matheran_Hill_Rail

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #TravelPhotography #India #Street #IndianRailways #Rail #Tracks #Rails #Landscape #Track #IndianRail #LandscapePhotography #BNW #BlackAndWhite #Asia #Asian #People #Monochrome #Railroad #Railroads #StreetPhotography #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography #Train #Trains #CamelCase

#TrainTrackTuesday

Indian Railways - Always A Great Adventure

(Details In The Alt Text) (Scanned 35mm Negative)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matheran_Hill_Rail

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #TravelPhotography #India #Street #IndianRailways #Rail #Tracks #Rails #Landscape #Track #IndianRail #LandscapePhotography #BNW #BlackAndWhite #Asia #Asian #People #Monochrome #Railroad #Railroads #StreetPhotography #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography #Train #Trains #CamelCase

#TrainTrackTuesday

Indian Railways - Always A Great Adventure

(Details In The Alt Text) (Scanned 35mm Negative)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matheran_Hill_Rail

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #TravelPhotography #India #Street #IndianRailways #Rail #Tracks #Rails #Landscape #Track #IndianRail #LandscapePhotography #BNW #BlackAndWhite #Asia #Asian #People #Monochrome #Railroad #Railroads #StreetPhotography #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography #Train #Trains #CamelCase

#TrainTrackTuesday

Indian Railways - Always A Great Adventure

(Details In The Alt Text) (Scanned 35mm Negative)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matheran_Hill_Rail

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #Photography #Photo #POTD #PhotoOfTheDay #Travel #TravelPhotography #India #Street #IndianRailways #Rail #Tracks #Rails #Landscape #Track #IndianRail #LandscapePhotography #BNW #BlackAndWhite #Asia #Asian #People #Monochrome #Railroad #Railroads #StreetPhotography #Railway #Railways #BlackAndWhitePhotography #Train #Trains #CamelCase

From ⁨⁨⁨⁨⁨#AnnafromUkraine⁩⁩⁩⁩⁩ @[email protected]

🧵 👇

RUSSIAN BANKRUPT GIANTS: LUKOIL ROSNEFT GAZPROM RZD Vlog 1322: War in #Ukraine

russian giants #Lukoil, #Rosneft, #Gazprom and Russian #Railroads are on the brink of #bankruptcy, losing up to 50% of their annual revenue and begging #Kremlin for help. But the russian federal #budget and national #wealth #fund are empty, so the companies will go down together with #russia`s #economy.

1/2

#traintracktuesday

California Street

(Details In The Alt Text) - (Described At Great Length)

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #photography #photo #potd #photooftheday #travel #travelphotography #bnw #usa #sf #sfba #BlackandWhite #us #railroad #leftcoast #monochrome #street #railroads #tram #cablecar #blackandwhitephotography #railway #railways #streetphotography #rail #tracks #rails #california #sanfrancisco

#traintracktuesday

Tempe, Arizona

(Details In The Alt Text) - (Described At Length)

#AltText #NoAI #No2AI #photography #photo #potd #photooftheday #travel #travelphotography #bnw #usa #tempe #BlackandWhite #us #railroad #arizona #monochrome #street #railroads #blackandwhitephotography #railway #railways #streetphotography #rail #tracks #rails #phoenix

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

Ferrocarril.net - Servidor de Mastodon, operado por aficionados al ferrocarril, para aficionados al ferrocarril.

:Fediverse: https://social.ferrocarril.net

Acerca de: https://social.ferrocarril.net/about
Administrado por: @garridinsi

#FeaturedServer #Ferrocarril #Español #Railways #Railroads #Rail #Mastodon #Fediverse #FreeFediverse

Google Blog: Explore 200 years of the railway with Google Arts & Culture and AI. “Celebrating its 50th anniversary and the railway bicentenary, the UK’s National Railway Museum launches on Google Arts & Culture. Explore 1,000 artifacts, take 360° tours and uncover the powerful stories that shaped the modern world.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/27/google-blog-explore-200-years-of-the-railway-with-google-arts-culture-and-ai/

Teach with My Music with Rhiannon Giddens and Wu Man to introduce students to Chinese musician Wu Man, her instrument the pipa, Chinese music, American Transcontinental Railroad History and the experience of Chinese Immigrants.

Get your free My Music Episode One Learning Guide!

https://journeysinfilm.org/teach-with-my-music-with-rhiannon-giddens-with-wu-man/

@histodons @music

#Education #Homeschooling #WuMan #Pipa #China #MiddleSchool #History #Histodons #Railroads #Trains #PBS #RhiannonGiddens #TV

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

Trans-Afghan Corridor Becomes Central Asia’s New Trade Gateway Amid Competition

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://timesca.com/trans-afghan-corridor-becomes-central-asias-new-trade-gateway-amid-competition/

Myra Canyon Trestles in Kelowna, British Columbia

Cross towering trestles and tunnels on a historic canyon rail trail.#canyons #railroads #trails #section-Atlas
Myra Canyon Trestles

Train fans!

You can watch lots of PeerTube videos about railways, metro systems and other forms of rail transport on this playlist:

🚆 https://fedi.video/w/p/exaVr36h3yiPpmdiCL4Goq

- Watching on a phone: Swipe up first two videos at bottom to browse rest of playlist

- Watching on a computer: Choose video by scrolling through playlist on right of screen

- Watching embedded: Click ⏭️ or ⏮️ to see next or previous videos in playlist

cc @trains

#FeaturedPlaylist #Trains #Railways #Rail #Railroads #Metros #PeerTube

🎢🚂 Breaking news: Dolly Parton is now the queen of #railroads, and 27 states' transit systems are quaking in their boots. Who needs #infrastructure when you have rhinestones and a steam train? 😂 America's transit plan: just add more sequins! 🌟
https://thetransitguy.substack.com/p/dolly-parton-runs-a-train-busier #DollyParton #TransitSystems #Sequins #HackerNews #ngated

The Conversation: How remembering railway accidents from 100 years ago can make the industry safer today. “The Railway Work, Life & Death project has added nearly 70,000 cases of worker accidents in England and Wales to its database of staff accidents from before 1939. Until now the records have been available only in hard copy. But digital access via the project website will mean insights […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/05/the-conversation-how-remembering-railway-accidents-from-100-years-ago-can-make-the-industry-safer-today/

[Paywall] 𝗩𝗼𝗼𝗿 𝟭𝟬 𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼 𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗿𝗶𝗷𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗻𝗮𝗮𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗷𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗷𝗻? 𝗗𝗮𝘁 𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗷𝗸𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗸𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗷𝗸𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗲𝘇𝗲𝗴𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝗻 𝗴𝗲𝗱𝗮𝗮𝗻

2025 moest hét jaar worden van #Spoorbedrijf #GoVolta, dat voor 10 euro treinen door #Europa wil gaan rijden. Albert Heijn, Hema en Kruidvat stonden te springen om de kaartjes te verkopen, maar er gaat dit jaar geen enkele #Trein het #Spoor op. Waar ging het mis?

https://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/voor-10-euro-een-trein-laten-rijden-naar-parijs-of-berlijn-dat-blijkt-makkelijker-gezegd-dan-gedaan~b50b95d5/ via @volkskrant

#Treinreizen #Railways #Railroads #Travel #Europe #Parijs #Paris #Berlijn #Berlin

[Paywall] America Has a #HotSteel Problem

#Railways, #roads, #PowerLines, #batteries—the heat of #ClimateChange is making them all falter.

By Zoë Schlanger
August 14, 2024

"A basic fact of thermodynamics is coming to haunt every foot of train track in the United States. Heat makes steel expand, moving its molecules farther apart, and as hot days become hotter and more frequent, rail lines are at risk of warping and buckling more often.

"Any fix must deal with this fundamental truth of physics. #Railroads can slow their trains down, which avoids adding more heat. Or they can leave gaps in a rail (or cut them as an emergency measure), which relieves pressure that causes track to bulge but means a potentially bumpier and slower ride. Painting tracks white would help deflect heat, but the paint would need to be reapplied frequently. Adapting to this reality will be expensive, and might ultimately just look as it does now: slow the trains, cut the track, issue a delay.

"Our #infrastructure is simply becoming too hot to function, or at least function well. High heat can also cause bridges to fail, for the same reason as with train tracks. Roads can buckle, thanks to the thermodynamics of concrete and asphalt. In Alaska, where permafrost is thawing into a substrate more akin to a waterbed, roads can resemble an undulating line of ribbon candy. Heat has two effects on #PowerTransmission, and 'both of them are bad,' Bilal Ayyub, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Maryland, told me. One, heat reduces how much electricity power lines can deliver. Two, heat increases demand—everyone turns on their #AirConditioners in unison—further straining an already heat-strained grid, sometimes to its breaking point."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/america-infrastructure-climate-change/679458/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

#ExtremeHeat #GlobalWarming #HeatWaves #HeatStress

[Paywall] America Has a #HotSteel Problem

#Railways, #roads, #PowerLines, #batteries—the heat of #ClimateChange is making them all falter.

By Zoë Schlanger
August 14, 2024

"A basic fact of thermodynamics is coming to haunt every foot of train track in the United States. Heat makes steel expand, moving its molecules farther apart, and as hot days become hotter and more frequent, rail lines are at risk of warping and buckling more often.

"Any fix must deal with this fundamental truth of physics. #Railroads can slow their trains down, which avoids adding more heat. Or they can leave gaps in a rail (or cut them as an emergency measure), which relieves pressure that causes track to bulge but means a potentially bumpier and slower ride. Painting tracks white would help deflect heat, but the paint would need to be reapplied frequently. Adapting to this reality will be expensive, and might ultimately just look as it does now: slow the trains, cut the track, issue a delay.

"Our #infrastructure is simply becoming too hot to function, or at least function well. High heat can also cause bridges to fail, for the same reason as with train tracks. Roads can buckle, thanks to the thermodynamics of concrete and asphalt. In Alaska, where permafrost is thawing into a substrate more akin to a waterbed, roads can resemble an undulating line of ribbon candy. Heat has two effects on #PowerTransmission, and 'both of them are bad,' Bilal Ayyub, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Maryland, told me. One, heat reduces how much electricity power lines can deliver. Two, heat increases demand—everyone turns on their #AirConditioners in unison—further straining an already heat-strained grid, sometimes to its breaking point."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/america-infrastructure-climate-change/679458/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

#ExtremeHeat #GlobalWarming #HeatWaves #HeatStress

[Paywall] America Has a #HotSteel Problem

#Railways, #roads, #PowerLines, #batteries—the heat of #ClimateChange is making them all falter.

By Zoë Schlanger
August 14, 2024

"A basic fact of thermodynamics is coming to haunt every foot of train track in the United States. Heat makes steel expand, moving its molecules farther apart, and as hot days become hotter and more frequent, rail lines are at risk of warping and buckling more often.

"Any fix must deal with this fundamental truth of physics. #Railroads can slow their trains down, which avoids adding more heat. Or they can leave gaps in a rail (or cut them as an emergency measure), which relieves pressure that causes track to bulge but means a potentially bumpier and slower ride. Painting tracks white would help deflect heat, but the paint would need to be reapplied frequently. Adapting to this reality will be expensive, and might ultimately just look as it does now: slow the trains, cut the track, issue a delay.

"Our #infrastructure is simply becoming too hot to function, or at least function well. High heat can also cause bridges to fail, for the same reason as with train tracks. Roads can buckle, thanks to the thermodynamics of concrete and asphalt. In Alaska, where permafrost is thawing into a substrate more akin to a waterbed, roads can resemble an undulating line of ribbon candy. Heat has two effects on #PowerTransmission, and 'both of them are bad,' Bilal Ayyub, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Maryland, told me. One, heat reduces how much electricity power lines can deliver. Two, heat increases demand—everyone turns on their #AirConditioners in unison—further straining an already heat-strained grid, sometimes to its breaking point."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/america-infrastructure-climate-change/679458/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

#ExtremeHeat #GlobalWarming #HeatWaves #HeatStress

[Paywall] America Has a #HotSteel Problem

#Railways, #roads, #PowerLines, #batteries—the heat of #ClimateChange is making them all falter.

By Zoë Schlanger
August 14, 2024

"A basic fact of thermodynamics is coming to haunt every foot of train track in the United States. Heat makes steel expand, moving its molecules farther apart, and as hot days become hotter and more frequent, rail lines are at risk of warping and buckling more often.

"Any fix must deal with this fundamental truth of physics. #Railroads can slow their trains down, which avoids adding more heat. Or they can leave gaps in a rail (or cut them as an emergency measure), which relieves pressure that causes track to bulge but means a potentially bumpier and slower ride. Painting tracks white would help deflect heat, but the paint would need to be reapplied frequently. Adapting to this reality will be expensive, and might ultimately just look as it does now: slow the trains, cut the track, issue a delay.

"Our #infrastructure is simply becoming too hot to function, or at least function well. High heat can also cause bridges to fail, for the same reason as with train tracks. Roads can buckle, thanks to the thermodynamics of concrete and asphalt. In Alaska, where permafrost is thawing into a substrate more akin to a waterbed, roads can resemble an undulating line of ribbon candy. Heat has two effects on #PowerTransmission, and 'both of them are bad,' Bilal Ayyub, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Maryland, told me. One, heat reduces how much electricity power lines can deliver. Two, heat increases demand—everyone turns on their #AirConditioners in unison—further straining an already heat-strained grid, sometimes to its breaking point."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/america-infrastructure-climate-change/679458/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

#ExtremeHeat #GlobalWarming #HeatWaves #HeatStress

[Paywall] America Has a #HotSteel Problem

#Railways, #roads, #PowerLines, #batteries—the heat of #ClimateChange is making them all falter.

By Zoë Schlanger
August 14, 2024

"A basic fact of thermodynamics is coming to haunt every foot of train track in the United States. Heat makes steel expand, moving its molecules farther apart, and as hot days become hotter and more frequent, rail lines are at risk of warping and buckling more often.

"Any fix must deal with this fundamental truth of physics. #Railroads can slow their trains down, which avoids adding more heat. Or they can leave gaps in a rail (or cut them as an emergency measure), which relieves pressure that causes track to bulge but means a potentially bumpier and slower ride. Painting tracks white would help deflect heat, but the paint would need to be reapplied frequently. Adapting to this reality will be expensive, and might ultimately just look as it does now: slow the trains, cut the track, issue a delay.

"Our #infrastructure is simply becoming too hot to function, or at least function well. High heat can also cause bridges to fail, for the same reason as with train tracks. Roads can buckle, thanks to the thermodynamics of concrete and asphalt. In Alaska, where permafrost is thawing into a substrate more akin to a waterbed, roads can resemble an undulating line of ribbon candy. Heat has two effects on #PowerTransmission, and 'both of them are bad,' Bilal Ayyub, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Maryland, told me. One, heat reduces how much electricity power lines can deliver. Two, heat increases demand—everyone turns on their #AirConditioners in unison—further straining an already heat-strained grid, sometimes to its breaking point."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/america-infrastructure-climate-change/679458/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

#ExtremeHeat #GlobalWarming #HeatWaves #HeatStress

Tacoma Union Station in Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma's historic Beaux-Arts train station is now a federal courthouse featuring large-scale glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly.#glassflowers #dalechihuly #architecture #government #station #railroads #glass #art #section-Atlas
Tacoma Union Station

Railway electrification in Europe is a mess.
Ought the EU provide funding to help (smaller?) ones change over to the modern standard?
(I.e. 25 kV, 50 Hz)
#rail #trains #electrification #electrified #railways #railroads #EU #Europe #infrastructure

#MonochromeMonday
From Sept 2021, Union Pacific's #X4014 #BigBoy steam engine coming into Greeley Colorado as part of a tour of middle America.
I followed it across part of Colorado over two days. Judge me as you will, I was not alone.
I believe this is the largest steam engine in the US. Was built in the 1940’s to haul loads over the rockies more efficiently.

#photography #BlackAndWhite #BWPhotography #b&w #steamlocomotive #railroads #trains #railway_photography

Today in #Connecticut History, July 4: A Waterway to Prosperity

Read the Story and Subscribe for Daily Updates
TODAYINCTHISTORY.com

https://todayincthistory.com/2023/07/04/july-4-a-waterway-to-prosperity-2/

#19thcentury #avon #benjaminwright #canals #cheshire #connecticuthistory #connecticutriver #eriecanal #farmington #farmingtoncanal #Granby #hamden #irish #july #newhaven #northampton #oliverwolcott #Plainville #railroads #simsbury #Southington

Today in #Connecticut History, July 4: A Waterway to Prosperity

Read the Story and Subscribe for Daily Updates
TODAYINCTHISTORY.com

https://todayincthistory.com/2023/07/04/july-4-a-waterway-to-prosperity-2/

#19thcentury #avon #benjaminwright #canals #cheshire #connecticuthistory #connecticutriver #eriecanal #farmington #farmingtoncanal #Granby #hamden #irish #july #newhaven #northampton #oliverwolcott #Plainville #railroads #simsbury #Southington

“I also shouldn’t overstate the magnitude of the gain here. A week of sick leave is objectively pitiful by international standards. Still, it’s far better than nothing, and it certainly wouldn’t have happened without union pressure, support from Congress and the Biden administration, and substantial media coverage of the dispute.”

I’m reflecting on living in a country where 7 days of #SickLeave per year is a victory.

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-06-26-workers-rail-unions-public-pressure/

#USpolitics #labor #unions #railroads

Dunghill revendique des attaques informations à l'encontre de:

• 🇺🇸 Incredible Technologies, Inc (itsgames.com)

• 🇧🇷 Andrade Gutierrez S.A. (andradegutierrez.com.br)

#usa #brazil #casino #ransomware #gaming #nuclear #equipment #technologies #dunghill #amusement #arcade #manufacturers #careers #óleo #energia #railroads #employees #coins #software #market #innovative #electric #mercados #serviços #mining #industrial #refineries #subways #airports #financial #steel #shareholders #facilities #plant #construction #gás #mineração #business #hardware #drilling #soluções #sanitation #inovação #estratégicos #nucleares #aeroporto #products #blueprints #partnership #logistics #clients #usina #ferrovia #hidrelétrica #infrastructures #power #estratégicas #refinaria #petrochemical #engineers #hydro #solutions #bresil #informatique

Orient Express to axe UK section after 41 years due to #Brexit

When Orient Express began operating in the 19th century, passports were optional

But Brexit & 21st-century #biometric checks have killed it off

The company that runs today’s Orient Express , has decided to drop the UK leg because it is now too difficult to cross the border to Calais

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/apr/15/brexit-orient-express-murder-london-folkestone-leg-route-border-delays

#OrientExpress #BrexitIsNotWorking #Brexit #BrexitFail #railways #trains #railroads #passports #border #BrexitLies

Orient Express to axe UK section after 41 years due to #Brexit

When Orient Express began operating in the 19th century, passports were optional

But Brexit & 21st-century #biometric checks have killed it off

The company that runs today’s Orient Express , has decided to drop the UK leg because it is now too difficult to cross the border to Calais

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/apr/15/brexit-orient-express-murder-london-folkestone-leg-route-border-delays

#OrientExpress #BrexitIsNotWorking #Brexit #BrexitFail #railways #trains #railroads #passports #border #BrexitLies

Orient Express to axe UK section after 41 years due to #Brexit

When Orient Express began operating in the 19th century, passports were optional

But Brexit & 21st-century #biometric checks have killed it off

The company that runs today’s Orient Express , has decided to drop the UK leg because it is now too difficult to cross the border to Calais

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/apr/15/brexit-orient-express-murder-london-folkestone-leg-route-border-delays

#OrientExpress #BrexitIsNotWorking #Brexit #BrexitFail #railways #trains #railroads #passports #border #BrexitLies

Orient Express to axe UK section after 41 years due to #Brexit

When Orient Express began operating in the 19th century, passports were optional

But Brexit & 21st-century #biometric checks have killed it off

The company that runs today’s Orient Express , has decided to drop the UK leg because it is now too difficult to cross the border to Calais

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/apr/15/brexit-orient-express-murder-london-folkestone-leg-route-border-delays

#OrientExpress #BrexitIsNotWorking #Brexit #BrexitFail #railways #trains #railroads #passports #border #BrexitLies

Orient Express to axe UK section after 41 years due to #Brexit

When Orient Express began operating in the 19th century, passports were optional

But Brexit & 21st-century #biometric checks have killed it off

The company that runs today’s Orient Express , has decided to drop the UK leg because it is now too difficult to cross the border to Calais

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/apr/15/brexit-orient-express-murder-london-folkestone-leg-route-border-delays

#OrientExpress #BrexitIsNotWorking #Brexit #BrexitFail #railways #trains #railroads #passports #border #BrexitLies