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#whitepatrons — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #whitepatrons, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·

    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.

    Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)

    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.

    My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.

    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

    #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

    #ancientegypt #archives #arthurconandoyle #artifacts #beatrixpotter #belgium
  2. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·

    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.

    Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)

    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.

    My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.

    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

    #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

    #ancientegypt #archives #arthurconandoyle #artifacts #beatrixpotter #belgium
  3. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·

    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.

    Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)

    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.

    My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.

    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

    #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

    #ancientegypt #archives #arthurconandoyle #artifacts #beatrixpotter #belgium
  4. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·

    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.

    Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)

    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.

    My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.

    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

    #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

    #whitepatrons #whitemen #whitelibrarians #virginiawoolf #trains #theillustriousclient
  5. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·

    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.

    Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)

    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.

    My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.

    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

    #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

    #ancientegypt #archives #arthurconandoyle #artifacts #beatrixpotter #belgium
  6. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·

    The “sanctity” of library property in fiction and the reality of library theft

    Desiree (then under a different name) tells Sarah to think about the “sanctity of library property” in an episode of Too Loud

    Since today is Labor Day in the U.S. (elsewhere in the world it is celebrated on May 1), it seems the perfect opportunity to write about library property, theft, and more in fiction. [1] There will be spoilers for the webcomic Glass Case, as well as the animated series Totally Spies!, Too Loud, Kim Possible, Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Carl Squared, and the anime series Library War. I will connect this to the realities that libraries face.

    One of the most pertinent examples of library property and theft is in the webcomic, Glass Case. In this relatively recently-ended webcomic, a girl names Katherine Ashdown welcomes another patron, named Elaine, into the library, but this is all a ploy. Elaine uses her magic to smash a glass case surrounding a book and steals The memoirs of Ashdown. In order to camouflage her escape, she uses a spell to cause Katherine to fall asleep, and she hopes, forget what happened. Later, after waking up, Katherine worries about what her dad would day, she thinks about what Elaine (whose name she doesn’t know yet) would do, and she laments at the exhaustion from being a librarian. Somehow she finds where Elaine is staying, gets the book back, and Elaine makes fun of her, saying that librarians are “so efficient nowadays”. In response, she criticizes Elaine for taking the book and destroying the glass case, but doesn’t report her. The story is later continued with Katherine following Elaine to her destination, using the library in the Clatworthy Mansion (to find specific books), they tease one another, Katherine stops Elaine from burning books so they can stay warm, they hear the backstory of Cedric, the talking umbrella, and find a secret library. [2]

    This is not the only media which features library theft. One of the first examples I noted on here were the protagonists of Totally Spies!, who steal the datebook of the now-buff wrestler librarian. On a rewatch of the episode, I noted that it is only implied that one of them (Sam) opens the locked drawer to look at the date book, not to steal it, meaning it it is likely that “the book was returned to the drawer and locked up again”, considering how important learning is to Sam. More predominantly, in the Too Loud episode “Checked Out”, Desiree talks about the iron fist of the librarian and tells Sarah to think about the “sanctity of library property,” with Sarah agreeing to help them. However, the episode shows how libraries can be punitive with wanting to protect their property and implying the interconnection of this with the criminal legal system, embodied by the book jail.

    The library’s role as an institution which maintains its property is reinforced by Ms. Hatchet in Kim Possible episode “Overdue”, who takes away Kim’s communicator and makes her put adhesive labels on every book saying “property of MHS library,” labels she can only adhere to the books with her own spit, I believe. Clearly, this is unsanitary, but it is meant as a watch for Ms. Hatchet to maintain control in one way or another. Otherwise, the unnamed librarian in Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, who first appears in the episode “If Books Could Kill,” declares that “everything in the library belongs to me, including YOU”. Later, in the episode “Shh!,” the librarian declares that the next time he tries to get his book back, she will kill him.

    The sadistic librarians portrayed in animation are not only some of the most stereotypical characters, but they are the ones who uphold the role of the library as a place which clings onto its property, no matter the costs. Others that would fall into this category would be the unnamed librarian in the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode “Wrath of the Librarian”, and Miss Dickens in Carl Squared  in “Carl’s Techno-Jinx”. Last but not least, in  Library War, a patron is tackled while stealing a book. There will be a mention of how books are sold by bookstores and how that is different from how libraries deal with books, in my post in early November entitled “A dusty bookstore in ‘Himawari-San’ and why libraries are different from bookstores”.

    Sadistic librarian in Kick Buttowski:Suburban Daredevil tells Kick that everything in the library is hers, with an evil laugh, while holding his book

    While the aforementioned examples in Kim Possible, Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Carl Squared are librarian stereotypes, libraries are serious about property. There are stories of some patrons who have been charged with failing to return library property, while there is policing as to how said property is used,  what patron behavior should be. [3] On a basic level, this is understandable, but it can be discriminatory if such library rules are used unfairly and unevenly.  The ALA has defined assets as what a library “has or owns and considers valuable, including human life, collections, structures, properties, even the good name and operations of the library”, a broad definition. The same document noted the importance of documenting all losses and reporting stolen property. [4] This is interconnected to the idea that patrons should respect library property, as one WikiHow guide states.

    Libraries undoubtedly work to ensure library spaces are “free and unrestricted” for people to use and enjoy, but nothing can be stolen, vandalized, or damaged. These library rules are meant to ensure patrons engage in the proscribed behaviors and not those deemed “unacceptable”. Some even threaten prosecution for those who damage library furniture, equipment, property, or materials. [5] Section 99A Code of Massachusetts notes that those who conceal library materials or property and remove these library materials or property,and if this value exceeds $250 dollars, a said person “shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years, or by a fine of not less than one thousand nor more than twenty-five thousand dollars”. But, if the value is less than $250 dollars, then there is punishment “by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars”. There would be an order to “pay the replacement value of such library materials or property.”

    These policies/rules have the goal of having a library for everyone, but some have questioned this, stating they are innocent in charges against them, and ties libraries into the criminal system. There are even those who offer expunging charges for library theft. On the other hand, is the ever-common issue of people stealing books from libraries and selling them to make a profit for themselves. Some scholars argue that theft is a threat for all institutions and something “libraries open to the public experience frequently.” [6] There is even a Wikipedia page entitled “Library theft”, calling it is a “significant” problem.

    The amount of stolen material has led some libraries to go to the extreme, even saying that those who steal materials should be jailed. Such a statement is not unusual, as there are often threats to prosecute offenders. In fact, stealing books has even been described as “most selfish of all forms of theft”, with a history that goes back to the Middle Ages when books were rare. A 1982 study even stated that the most common type of vandalism in libraries is “intentional book damage” and book theft was the “most common and consistent problem”, while only “10 percent of the libraries had book detection systems” of those surveyed. While it is clear that libraries can help those who were released from prison “re-enter” society, they serve an “instrumental role” in the criminal system, which is framed as a positive, but undoubtedly interlocks with oppressive systems. [7]

    In fact, some libraries have expressed concern against using money from penal fines, which can account for “3% to 70% of annual budgets for public libraries” in Michigan, as excessive fines and the transparency of processes can unfairly burden “those that commit crimes.” Libraries are posed as something to disrupt pipelines to prison, but what if, sometimes, they support those pathways, and push people into prison? After all, libraries, especially in the U.S. South, upheld racial segregation, and denied opportunities for Black people to become librarians, leading to various protests (including sit-ins). Furthermore, on the state-level, where funding is determined by population, libraries in predominantly White, rural areas where prisons are located increase “their share of political representation and federal funding, while impoverished urban communities” where those prisoners live “lose funds and representation.” In terms of libraries themselves, as Erin Feeley stated, when books are seen as “longer fit for use at public libraries”, they are often sent to prisons or jails as “an act of charity”, something which can be deeply problematic. [8]

    Arguably, libraries are within structurally racist systems, as implied by some scholars. In response to negative interactions with police, some libraries have even removed their surveillance cameras. On the other hand, there has been a “problem of violence” in public libraries, whether those in the UK from drunken people, youth who are “unruly” and irate patrons, to the direct killing of librarians in the U.S., making security a bigger push from librarians, understandably. Additional scholars have said that offenses like “library theft” becomes to a referendum on whether “legislators care about public libraries”. [9]

    In the end, there will likely be more examples of library theft in fiction which I haven’t focused on, seen, and read before, then connect those to the reality of libraries. Until next time.

    © 2023-2024 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

    Notes

    [1] I could have posted this on World Intellectual Property Day (April 26), World Book Day (on April 23), or World Radio Day (on Feb. 13),  I already had posts scheduled near those days, so I decided to schedule it for today instead.

    [2] Glass Case, Episode 2, “Aries“; Glass Case, Episode 3,  “Circinus“; Glass Case, Episode 4, “Sagitta“; Glass Case,  Episode 5, “Fornax“; Glass Case, Episode 7, “Caelum“; Glass Case, Episode 10, “Mensa“; Glass Case, Episode 15, “Apus“; Glass Case, Episode 16, “Lynx“; Glass Case,  Episode 17, “Lepus“; Glass Case, Episode 19, “Pisces“; Glass Case, Episode 26, “Virgo“; Glass Case, Episode 28, “Capricornus“; Glass Case, Episode 29, “Cancer“; Glass Case, Episode 30, “Aquila“; Glass Case, Episode 31, “Cetus“; Glass Case, Episode 37, “Chamaeleon“; Glass Case,  Episode 38, “Aquarius“; Glass Case, Episode 39, “Corvus“; Glass Case,  Episode 40, “Equuleus“; Glass Case, Episode 41, “Triangulum“; Glass Case, Episode 42, “Microscopium“; Glass Case, Episode 43, “Canes Venatici“; Glass Case, Episode 44, “Grus“.

    [3] Stockburger, George. “Lebanon Police charge four with failing to return library property,” ABC27, Mar. 8, 2023; Zulkey, Claire. “Give Them Shelter?,” American Libraries, Jun. 3, 2019; “Policy – Patron Behavior on Library Property,” LillyLibrary, Jun. 22, 2009; “Borrower responsibilities,” Stanford Libraries, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Rules of Conduct,” The Seattle Public Library, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Services and Policies,” Sarasota County, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “San Francisco Public Library Commission Policy Manual,” San Francisco Public Library, Sept. 2014; “Guidelines governing the use of Montgomery County Public Libraries,” Montgomery County Public Libraries, May 8, 2020; “Appropriate Library Use Policy,” Boston Public Library, Oct. 3, 2019; “Library,” Sutter County, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Conduct on Library Premises,” Library of Congress, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Library Policies,” University of the District of Colombia, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Staff Use of Library Property Policy,” Arapahoe Libraries, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Title 18,” Philadelphia General Assembly, 2023; “§ 42.1-74.1. “Book or other library property” defined,” Code of Virginia, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Library Policies,” Woodward Memorial Library, accessed Apr. 9, 2023.

    [4] “Library Security Guidelines Document,” LLAMA BES Safety & Security of Library Buildings Committee, Jun. 27, 2010, p. 3, 6, 8, 13, 15; “ACRL/RBMS Guidelines Regarding Security and Theft in Special Collections,” ACRL Board of Directors, American Library Association, Jan. 2019.

    [5] “Patron Use of Library Spaces Policy,” Anoka County Library, Apr. 9, 2023; “Library Use & Behavior Guidelines,” Davidson County North Carolina, Apr. 9, 2023; “Patron Behavior on Library Property Policy,” Tinley Park Public Library, Jan. 22, 2020; “Code of Conduct,” NYU Libraries, October 2015; “User Rights and Responsibilities,” UCLA Library, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Behavioral Rules,” Franklin County Public Libraries, 2014; “Part 1 – Library Law”. When I say “Some even threaten prosecution” I am referring to UCLA Library. Some scholars have noted that destruction of libraries and archives in wartime does not “receive adequate attention” during prosecutions for war crimes.

    [6] “Policies,” Iowa Law Library, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “A Library for Everyone,” Oak Park Public Library, Oct. 26, 2021; “Behavior Policy,” The Indianapolis Public Library, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; Pelham, Dennis. “‘We’re innocent,’ says woman in library book prosecution,” Daily Telegram, Apr. 4, 2016; “Policies,” DeKalb County Public Library, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; “Library Book Theft Expungement,” Lento Law Firm, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; Seppi, Gregory and Dainan Skeem, “Picking Up the Pieces: Library Processes and the Theft of Rare Materials,” RBM, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2020); Epstein, Kayla. “Archivist and bookseller plead guilty to pilfering $8M in rare texts from Carnegie Library,” Washington Post, Jan. 14, 2020; Pace, Aaron. “Are People Stealing Library Books to Sell Online?,” Medium, Sept. 30, 2020; Zeidberg, David S. “Guidelines regarding thefts in libraries: A draft,” College & Research Libraries, 47, no. 10 (1986).

    [7] Weinreb, Arthur. “Alabama library wants borrowers with overdue books jailed,” Digital Journal, Sept. 4, 2016; “Library User Responsibilities,” University of Nebraska-Lincoln, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; Abbott, E.C. “People who steal books,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, 165, No. 12 (2001); Ringrose, Katelyn. “Libraries & Reentry: The Importance of Public Spaces, Technologies, and Community to Formerly Incarcerated Patrons,”ALA Policy Perspectives, no. 7 (Sept. 2020): 2-14; Sweendy, P.C. “Libraries and the Justice System,” EveryLibrary, Medium, Jan. 20, 2021; de la Peña McCook, Kathleen. “Public Libraries and People in Jail,” Digital Commons @ The University of South Florida, 2004.

    [8] “Penal Fines – MLA Advocacy Priority Area,” Michigan Library Association, accessed Apr. 9, 2023; Vercelletto, Christina. “Libraries Can Help Disrupt School-to-Prison Pipeline,” School Library Journal, Jan. 9, 2018; Steele, Chris. “Art Exhibit on Black Panther Challenges Library Patrons to Face Violence of Mass Incarceration Violence of Mass Incarceration,” Collaborative Librarianship, 7 no. 4 (2015): 170-171; Thorpe, Rebecca. “Urban Divestment, Rural Decline and the Politics of Mass Incarceration,” The Good Society, 23 No. 1 (2014): 25;

    [9] Gibson, Amelia N., Renate L Chancellor, Nicole A Cooke, Sarah Park Dahlen, Shari A Lee, and Yasmeen L Shorish, “Libraries on the frontlines: Neutrality and social justice,” 2017, 1-4; Robinson, Paul H. “Democratizing Criminal Law: Feasibility, Utility, and the Challenge of Social Change,” Northwestern University Law Review , 111, no. 6 (2017): 1578. Also see books such as Libraries in Prisons: A Blending of Institutions by William Coyle, Security and Crime Prevention in Libraries (first published in 1992).

    #books #CarlSquared #CourageTheCowardlyDog #femaleLibrarians #GlassCaseWebcomic #HimawariSan #KickButtowski #KimPossible #librarianStereotypes #libraryPatrons #libraryProperty #libraryRules #LibraryWar #MissDickens #MissHatchet #oppression #prison #racism #segregation #theft #TooLoud #TotallySpies #WhitePatrons

    #whitepatrons #totallyspies #tooloud #theft #segregation #racism
  7. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·
    The library of the Turtle Princess at the beginning of the Adventure Time episode, “Paper Pete.”

    Following in the footsteps of my previous analyses on this blog, I decided to look at a few episodes involving libraries in Adventure Time, an animated fantasy series that ended in September 2018. This is a show that has the library as a recurring location, which is probably why Claire Ruhlin chose it as having one of the 12 best fictional libraries for Paste magazine.

    In the episode “The Real You” (S2ep15), Finn and Jake want to impress Princess Bubblegum, and Finn accepts the offer to make a speech at her science event. Jake suggests they go to the place where “knowledge lives”: the library. This library has books almost stacked like bricks in a warehouse. After clearly being bored in the library, Jake suggests they leave, while Finn wants to continue and “cram” the information in a book about pigs. Hilariously, Jake is reading a book about figs. They both start performing a jig and a dance, and the Turtle Princess, who runs the library (and is basically serving as the sole librarian) kicks them out, before which Finn says they were “enthusiastic about learning” which is an utter lie. This whole scene is not even a minute long and we don’t really see much of the library, but it doesn’t look like a grand place like that depicted in various Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes. Even though this show portrays libraries as a boring place you “learn stuff,” there is one similarity: the libraries in both animations are almost deserted.

    Some episodes later, in “Paper Pete” (s3ep22) they visit the library once more, with the whole episode focused just on the library. The episode begins with they both carrying a huge book to a table, which is shown at the beginning of this article. The book is a history of rainicorns, with Jake much more into the book and learning about his “heritage,” since his girlfriend is a rainicorn, than Finn. Annoyed with Jake being focused on the books, he begins walking in the stacks, goes through the books by hand, then yells out “Oh no! Damaged books. Who did this?” The Turtle Princess, apparently the only librarian of this library, tells him to “shush,” another librarian stereotype, while other beings, who are patrons, sit at desks behind her. After being shushed once again, he stumbled upon beings known as the “pagelings“:

    They end up being the “secret guardians” of the library’s books. When he tries to introduce them to Jake, they hide from everyone, not wanting to reveal themselves. They fight off a bunch of leeches (I think) called “moldos,” obviously connecting to the fact that books can mold, I guess. He eventually throws them on Jake, where they begin eating his fur, but first tries to get them off by hitting them off with a book. He gives up his shirt if they don’t attack the library books, to which the leader of the “moldos,” Mildwin agrees. After leaving the library at the end of the episode, where we see the library looks like, part of which is submerged into the ground, Jake is annoyed by the actions of Finn but admits he wasn’t doing much with the book anyway. He had read the same paragraph over and over for 11 minutes, thinking he should give up in trying to learn rainicorn history, saying he will just fake it going forward. Not sure what lesson we are supposed to take away from this episode, but it’s a fun adventure inside a library.

    In later episodes, the library is mentioned, with other characters adding books to it (“Gotcha!”), it is included in a flashback Finn has in the “King Worm” episodes, and the bedroom of the Turtle Princess at the top of the library is shown in “Princess Monster Wife”. All in all, this is ultimately a very positive view of a library, although it competes with the public library in Steven Universe and the family library in She-Ra in the Princess of Power at minimum. Oh, and, after watching some episodes, I came across another library, in the episode “Betty” (s5ep48), where the Ice King becomes human again, looking in his books to figure out who he is, what he needs to do.

    That’s all for this post!

    © 2020 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

    Editor note: This post was originally published on my History Hermann blog but has been re-edited and fixed before being posted on this blog. Enjoy!

    https://popculturelibraries.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/what-time-is-it-library-time/

    #AdventureTime #books #eating #femaleLibrarians #librarianStereotypes #libraryPatrons #NonHumanLibrarians #reading #research #reviews #shushing #WhitePatrons

    #adventuretime #books #eating #femalelibrarians #librarianstereotypes #librarypatrons
  8. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·
    The library of the Turtle Princess at the beginning of the Adventure Time episode, “Paper Pete.”

    Following in the footsteps of my previous analyses on this blog, I decided to look at a few episodes involving libraries in Adventure Time, an animated fantasy series that ended in September 2018. This is a show that has the library as a recurring location, which is probably why Claire Ruhlin chose it as having one of the 12 best fictional libraries for Paste magazine.

    In the episode “The Real You” (S2ep15), Finn and Jake want to impress Princess Bubblegum, and Finn accepts the offer to make a speech at her science event. Jake suggests they go to the place where “knowledge lives”: the library. This library has books almost stacked like bricks in a warehouse. After clearly being bored in the library, Jake suggests they leave, while Finn wants to continue and “cram” the information in a book about pigs. Hilariously, Jake is reading a book about figs. They both start performing a jig and a dance, and the Turtle Princess, who runs the library (and is basically serving as the sole librarian) kicks them out, before which Finn says they were “enthusiastic about learning” which is an utter lie. This whole scene is not even a minute long and we don’t really see much of the library, but it doesn’t look like a grand place like that depicted in various Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes. Even though this show portrays libraries as a boring place you “learn stuff,” there is one similarity: the libraries in both animations are almost deserted.

    Some episodes later, in “Paper Pete” (s3ep22) they visit the library once more, with the whole episode focused just on the library. The episode begins with they both carrying a huge book to a table, which is shown at the beginning of this article. The book is a history of rainicorns, with Jake much more into the book and learning about his “heritage,” since his girlfriend is a rainicorn, than Finn. Annoyed with Jake being focused on the books, he begins walking in the stacks, goes through the books by hand, then yells out “Oh no! Damaged books. Who did this?” The Turtle Princess, apparently the only librarian of this library, tells him to “shush,” another librarian stereotype, while other beings, who are patrons, sit at desks behind her. After being shushed once again, he stumbled upon beings known as the “pagelings“:

    They end up being the “secret guardians” of the library’s books. When he tries to introduce them to Jake, they hide from everyone, not wanting to reveal themselves. They fight off a bunch of leeches (I think) called “moldos,” obviously connecting to the fact that books can mold, I guess. He eventually throws them on Jake, where they begin eating his fur, but first tries to get them off by hitting them off with a book. He gives up his shirt if they don’t attack the library books, to which the leader of the “moldos,” Mildwin agrees. After leaving the library at the end of the episode, where we see the library looks like, part of which is submerged into the ground, Jake is annoyed by the actions of Finn but admits he wasn’t doing much with the book anyway. He had read the same paragraph over and over for 11 minutes, thinking he should give up in trying to learn rainicorn history, saying he will just fake it going forward. Not sure what lesson we are supposed to take away from this episode, but it’s a fun adventure inside a library.

    In later episodes, the library is mentioned, with other characters adding books to it (“Gotcha!”), it is included in a flashback Finn has in the “King Worm” episodes, and the bedroom of the Turtle Princess at the top of the library is shown in “Princess Monster Wife”. All in all, this is ultimately a very positive view of a library, although it competes with the public library in Steven Universe and the family library in She-Ra in the Princess of Power at minimum. Oh, and, after watching some episodes, I came across another library, in the episode “Betty” (s5ep48), where the Ice King becomes human again, looking in his books to figure out who he is, what he needs to do.

    That’s all for this post!

    © 2020 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

    Editor note: This post was originally published on my History Hermann blog but has been re-edited and fixed before being posted on this blog. Enjoy!

    https://popculturelibraries.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/what-time-is-it-library-time/

    #AdventureTime #books #eating #femaleLibrarians #librarianStereotypes #libraryPatrons #NonHumanLibrarians #reading #research #reviews #shushing #WhitePatrons

    #adventuretime #books #eating #femalelibrarians #librarianstereotypes #librarypatrons
  9. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·
    The library of the Turtle Princess at the beginning of the Adventure Time episode, “Paper Pete.”

    Following in the footsteps of my previous analyses on this blog, I decided to look at a few episodes involving libraries in Adventure Time, an animated fantasy series that ended in September 2018. This is a show that has the library as a recurring location, which is probably why Claire Ruhlin chose it as having one of the 12 best fictional libraries for Paste magazine.

    In the episode “The Real You” (S2ep15), Finn and Jake want to impress Princess Bubblegum, and Finn accepts the offer to make a speech at her science event. Jake suggests they go to the place where “knowledge lives”: the library. This library has books almost stacked like bricks in a warehouse. After clearly being bored in the library, Jake suggests they leave, while Finn wants to continue and “cram” the information in a book about pigs. Hilariously, Jake is reading a book about figs. They both start performing a jig and a dance, and the Turtle Princess, who runs the library (and is basically serving as the sole librarian) kicks them out, before which Finn says they were “enthusiastic about learning” which is an utter lie. This whole scene is not even a minute long and we don’t really see much of the library, but it doesn’t look like a grand place like that depicted in various Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes. Even though this show portrays libraries as a boring place you “learn stuff,” there is one similarity: the libraries in both animations are almost deserted.

    Some episodes later, in “Paper Pete” (s3ep22) they visit the library once more, with the whole episode focused just on the library. The episode begins with they both carrying a huge book to a table, which is shown at the beginning of this article. The book is a history of rainicorns, with Jake much more into the book and learning about his “heritage,” since his girlfriend is a rainicorn, than Finn. Annoyed with Jake being focused on the books, he begins walking in the stacks, goes through the books by hand, then yells out “Oh no! Damaged books. Who did this?” The Turtle Princess, apparently the only librarian of this library, tells him to “shush,” another librarian stereotype, while other beings, who are patrons, sit at desks behind her. After being shushed once again, he stumbled upon beings known as the “pagelings“:

    They end up being the “secret guardians” of the library’s books. When he tries to introduce them to Jake, they hide from everyone, not wanting to reveal themselves. They fight off a bunch of leeches (I think) called “moldos,” obviously connecting to the fact that books can mold, I guess. He eventually throws them on Jake, where they begin eating his fur, but first tries to get them off by hitting them off with a book. He gives up his shirt if they don’t attack the library books, to which the leader of the “moldos,” Mildwin agrees. After leaving the library at the end of the episode, where we see the library looks like, part of which is submerged into the ground, Jake is annoyed by the actions of Finn but admits he wasn’t doing much with the book anyway. He had read the same paragraph over and over for 11 minutes, thinking he should give up in trying to learn rainicorn history, saying he will just fake it going forward. Not sure what lesson we are supposed to take away from this episode, but it’s a fun adventure inside a library.

    In later episodes, the library is mentioned, with other characters adding books to it (“Gotcha!”), it is included in a flashback Finn has in the “King Worm” episodes, and the bedroom of the Turtle Princess at the top of the library is shown in “Princess Monster Wife”. All in all, this is ultimately a very positive view of a library, although it competes with the public library in Steven Universe and the family library in She-Ra in the Princess of Power at minimum. Oh, and, after watching some episodes, I came across another library, in the episode “Betty” (s5ep48), where the Ice King becomes human again, looking in his books to figure out who he is, what he needs to do.

    That’s all for this post!

    © 2020 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

    Editor note: This post was originally published on my History Hermann blog but has been re-edited and fixed before being posted on this blog. Enjoy!

    https://popculturelibraries.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/what-time-is-it-library-time/

    #AdventureTime #books #eating #femaleLibrarians #librarianStereotypes #libraryPatrons #NonHumanLibrarians #reading #research #reviews #shushing #WhitePatrons

    #adventuretime #books #eating #femalelibrarians #librarianstereotypes #librarypatrons
  10. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·
    The library of the Turtle Princess at the beginning of the Adventure Time episode, “Paper Pete.”

    Following in the footsteps of my previous analyses on this blog, I decided to look at a few episodes involving libraries in Adventure Time, an animated fantasy series that ended in September 2018. This is a show that has the library as a recurring location, which is probably why Claire Ruhlin chose it as having one of the 12 best fictional libraries for Paste magazine.

    In the episode “The Real You” (S2ep15), Finn and Jake want to impress Princess Bubblegum, and Finn accepts the offer to make a speech at her science event. Jake suggests they go to the place where “knowledge lives”: the library. This library has books almost stacked like bricks in a warehouse. After clearly being bored in the library, Jake suggests they leave, while Finn wants to continue and “cram” the information in a book about pigs. Hilariously, Jake is reading a book about figs. They both start performing a jig and a dance, and the Turtle Princess, who runs the library (and is basically serving as the sole librarian) kicks them out, before which Finn says they were “enthusiastic about learning” which is an utter lie. This whole scene is not even a minute long and we don’t really see much of the library, but it doesn’t look like a grand place like that depicted in various Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes. Even though this show portrays libraries as a boring place you “learn stuff,” there is one similarity: the libraries in both animations are almost deserted.

    Some episodes later, in “Paper Pete” (s3ep22) they visit the library once more, with the whole episode focused just on the library. The episode begins with they both carrying a huge book to a table, which is shown at the beginning of this article. The book is a history of rainicorns, with Jake much more into the book and learning about his “heritage,” since his girlfriend is a rainicorn, than Finn. Annoyed with Jake being focused on the books, he begins walking in the stacks, goes through the books by hand, then yells out “Oh no! Damaged books. Who did this?” The Turtle Princess, apparently the only librarian of this library, tells him to “shush,” another librarian stereotype, while other beings, who are patrons, sit at desks behind her. After being shushed once again, he stumbled upon beings known as the “pagelings“:

    They end up being the “secret guardians” of the library’s books. When he tries to introduce them to Jake, they hide from everyone, not wanting to reveal themselves. They fight off a bunch of leeches (I think) called “moldos,” obviously connecting to the fact that books can mold, I guess. He eventually throws them on Jake, where they begin eating his fur, but first tries to get them off by hitting them off with a book. He gives up his shirt if they don’t attack the library books, to which the leader of the “moldos,” Mildwin agrees. After leaving the library at the end of the episode, where we see the library looks like, part of which is submerged into the ground, Jake is annoyed by the actions of Finn but admits he wasn’t doing much with the book anyway. He had read the same paragraph over and over for 11 minutes, thinking he should give up in trying to learn rainicorn history, saying he will just fake it going forward. Not sure what lesson we are supposed to take away from this episode, but it’s a fun adventure inside a library.

    In later episodes, the library is mentioned, with other characters adding books to it (“Gotcha!”), it is included in a flashback Finn has in the “King Worm” episodes, and the bedroom of the Turtle Princess at the top of the library is shown in “Princess Monster Wife”. All in all, this is ultimately a very positive view of a library, although it competes with the public library in Steven Universe and the family library in She-Ra in the Princess of Power at minimum. Oh, and, after watching some episodes, I came across another library, in the episode “Betty” (s5ep48), where the Ice King becomes human again, looking in his books to figure out who he is, what he needs to do.

    That’s all for this post!

    © 2020 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

    Editor note: This post was originally published on my History Hermann blog but has been re-edited and fixed before being posted on this blog. Enjoy!

    https://popculturelibraries.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/what-time-is-it-library-time/

    #AdventureTime #books #eating #femaleLibrarians #librarianStereotypes #libraryPatrons #NonHumanLibrarians #reading #research #reviews #shushing #WhitePatrons

    #whitepatrons #shushing #reviews #research #reading #nonhumanlibrarians
  11. Pop Culture Library Review @popculturelibraries.wordpress.com@popculturelibraries.wordpress.com ·
    The library of the Turtle Princess at the beginning of the Adventure Time episode, “Paper Pete.”

    Following in the footsteps of my previous analyses on this blog, I decided to look at a few episodes involving libraries in Adventure Time, an animated fantasy series that ended in September 2018. This is a show that has the library as a recurring location, which is probably why Claire Ruhlin chose it as having one of the 12 best fictional libraries for Paste magazine.

    In the episode “The Real You” (S2ep15), Finn and Jake want to impress Princess Bubblegum, and Finn accepts the offer to make a speech at her science event. Jake suggests they go to the place where “knowledge lives”: the library. This library has books almost stacked like bricks in a warehouse. After clearly being bored in the library, Jake suggests they leave, while Finn wants to continue and “cram” the information in a book about pigs. Hilariously, Jake is reading a book about figs. They both start performing a jig and a dance, and the Turtle Princess, who runs the library (and is basically serving as the sole librarian) kicks them out, before which Finn says they were “enthusiastic about learning” which is an utter lie. This whole scene is not even a minute long and we don’t really see much of the library, but it doesn’t look like a grand place like that depicted in various Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes. Even though this show portrays libraries as a boring place you “learn stuff,” there is one similarity: the libraries in both animations are almost deserted.

    Some episodes later, in “Paper Pete” (s3ep22) they visit the library once more, with the whole episode focused just on the library. The episode begins with they both carrying a huge book to a table, which is shown at the beginning of this article. The book is a history of rainicorns, with Jake much more into the book and learning about his “heritage,” since his girlfriend is a rainicorn, than Finn. Annoyed with Jake being focused on the books, he begins walking in the stacks, goes through the books by hand, then yells out “Oh no! Damaged books. Who did this?” The Turtle Princess, apparently the only librarian of this library, tells him to “shush,” another librarian stereotype, while other beings, who are patrons, sit at desks behind her. After being shushed once again, he stumbled upon beings known as the “pagelings“:

    They end up being the “secret guardians” of the library’s books. When he tries to introduce them to Jake, they hide from everyone, not wanting to reveal themselves. They fight off a bunch of leeches (I think) called “moldos,” obviously connecting to the fact that books can mold, I guess. He eventually throws them on Jake, where they begin eating his fur, but first tries to get them off by hitting them off with a book. He gives up his shirt if they don’t attack the library books, to which the leader of the “moldos,” Mildwin agrees. After leaving the library at the end of the episode, where we see the library looks like, part of which is submerged into the ground, Jake is annoyed by the actions of Finn but admits he wasn’t doing much with the book anyway. He had read the same paragraph over and over for 11 minutes, thinking he should give up in trying to learn rainicorn history, saying he will just fake it going forward. Not sure what lesson we are supposed to take away from this episode, but it’s a fun adventure inside a library.

    In later episodes, the library is mentioned, with other characters adding books to it (“Gotcha!”), it is included in a flashback Finn has in the “King Worm” episodes, and the bedroom of the Turtle Princess at the top of the library is shown in “Princess Monster Wife”. All in all, this is ultimately a very positive view of a library, although it competes with the public library in Steven Universe and the family library in She-Ra in the Princess of Power at minimum. Oh, and, after watching some episodes, I came across another library, in the episode “Betty” (s5ep48), where the Ice King becomes human again, looking in his books to figure out who he is, what he needs to do.

    That’s all for this post!

    © 2020 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

    Editor note: This post was originally published on my History Hermann blog but has been re-edited and fixed before being posted on this blog. Enjoy!

    https://popculturelibraries.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/what-time-is-it-library-time/

    #AdventureTime #books #eating #femaleLibrarians #librarianStereotypes #libraryPatrons #NonHumanLibrarians #reading #research #reviews #shushing #WhitePatrons

    #adventuretime #books #eating #femalelibrarians #librarianstereotypes #librarypatrons