The story behind the pictures: Gladstone’s Library

With the way knowledge is acquired and produced ever changing, and the role of the librarian evolving, libraries are under increasing pressure to rethink their use of space on campus. In this series of images and blog posts, we will showcase how libraries are transforming their spaces and services to respond to the changing needs of their users.

The curiously unique Gladstone Library was built in 1902 after starting life as a corrugated iron structure to house UK prime minister William Ewart Gladstone’s huge collection of books. We caught up with Amy Sumner, Marketing Manager, and Gary Butler, Library Assistant, who kindly shared some background to the library’s historical development and its continuing evolution to offer advice for other libraries redefining and honoring their existing spaces.

What would you say is truly unique and innovative about your library?

“The obvious answer to this question is the fact that we’re a residential library – we don’t know of any others at all, let alone in the UK. We’re also the country’s only prime ministerial library, and slightly pre-date the first US presidential library.

We are also unique as a library in the classification system we use to organize the collection – this takes readers some getting used to. Our system, an alphabetical system, was devised by our founder, William Ewart Gladstone. Beginning with Biblical archaeology (Class-mark A) and ending in art (Class V), it is a system that arranges the different branches of a knowledge in a way that reveals a lot about how Gladstone thought of the world.”

What was the reasoning for creating these unique/innovative spaces and services, what was the need?

“Towards the end of his life, William Gladstone started to think about what he might do with the huge collection of books he had acquired. He wanted a home for them where they would be used and benefited from, away from London and Oxford which he felt were already very well endowed. In founding his library, Gladstone was eager to share his personal collection with others and especially with those wanting to learn but facing financial constraint. His desire, his daughter Mary Drew said, was to ‘bring together books who had no readers with readers who had no books’.

Following his death in 1898, a public appeal was launched for funds to provide a permanent building to house the collection and to replace the temporary structure. The £9,000 raised provided an imposing library building, designed by John Douglas, which was officially opened by Earl Spencer on 14th October 1902 as the National Memorial to W. E. Gladstone. The Gladstone family were themselves to fulfill the founder’s vision by funding the residential wing, which welcomed its first resident on 29th June 1906.”

Have you adapted or changed any of your spaces, services or features over the last few years to meet changing needs and what were they?

Today the collection has grown to an outstanding resource of approximately 150,000 printed items on a wide range of subjects. We are used by business professionals for meetings and away days; for students studying for exams; for writers working on and researching their next book. Our message and our aim will always remain the same but our outreach continues to widen and will do so into the future.”

Have you noticed any changes in the ways in which people use the library, both in terms of use of space, use of technology, or time spent or use of any other resources?

“The biggest change in library use has undoubtedly been the almost universal use of technology by all our users. When I started in 2013, a regular residential reader who had been using the library for decades would donate a pot of blue ink to the library each year they visited so that they would be able to make notes using a quill pen. Now, it is more unusual for a reader not to bring their own laptop or tablet with them to work on. This widespread use of personal computers has meant that users can access our online catalogue from whatever device they have – this has meant a reduction in use of our catalogue terminals.

The other major change has been in the use of Reading Rooms less for the collections and more for the kind of space they provide. All our readers value that we keep a strictly silent reading room (even the staff whisper to each other). One of the most regular comments we receive is that users struggle to work in the noise of public libraries or university. The silence of the Reading Rooms has driven up our usage numbers so that on the busiest days, we haven’t a desk to spare. However, we would now like to see collections usage rise in the same way as the use of the space.

We estimate that only 5-10% of our print collection is used in a year, but usage data we have also suggests that it is not the same 5-10% of the collection that gets used. We are pleased to say that usage is increasing incrementally each year, but we will work to increase this usage further over the coming years.”

What does your library do to ensure that resources, books and journals are easily discoverable?

We have produced a short guide to our unique classification system to help people navigate it and find what they are looking for. With our journals, we are fortunate to have the space to display each new arrival of all the titles we subscribe to when they arrive. Back issues of all journals have also been moved in the last few years from an off-site store to our main site, which has meant that it is easier for all users to find the journal titles they are looking for – as well as discover titles they may not have been expecting to find!”

What’s the best piece of technology or data system that your library uses and couldn’t do without?

“I think almost every modern library would agree that an online public access catalogue (OPAC) is something that it is difficult to imagine being without. (We still have our original card catalogue, but on the few occasions I have had to cross-check a card entry in it for an enquiry has shown me the degree of difference an OPAC provides when it comes to information retrieval). It not only allows us to help more of users in getting them the information they need, but it helps us to measure that usage in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

Computerization, whether the ability to create a well-designed poster or track data using a spreadsheet seems so commonplace, but to step back from it and consider what my predecessors in the library worked with is to truly acknowledge the revolution in working they brought. In our corporate archive, we have an almost-complete collection of accessions registers, recording all acquisitions from 1897 to the early 2000s. The labor involved in keeping such records (and in such a neat, handwritten script) is something I am glad I no longer must do!

When it comes to technology, however, one of the best things about working in libraries in being the wielder of the library stamp, as well as adding our own bookplates to new additions! Sometimes the traditional methods are the most satisfying.”

What advice would you give to other libraries looking to redefine their spaces or services?

What would your perfect library look like in terms of spaces, services and staff?

“I am very grateful to work in a library that gets me as close to working in a perfect library setting as I think is possible. In terms of space, the reading rooms at Gladstone’s Library remind me every day of the importance of a beautiful space to both well-being, but also to provide encouragement and inspiration. We have seen from the growth in our user figures that people love working in an aesthetically pleasing environment. My perfect library would therefore be one that saw beauty as a functional necessity.
On the other hand, I am aware that the beauty of our reading rooms comes at the expense of accessibility for all. The galleries and some parts of the building are currently difficult, or impossible, for some of our users to manage because of the age of the building, and the grade 1 listing, which limits the changes we can make to improve its accessibility. Any perfect library must be a place that is truly open to anyone who wants to use it without impediment.

Photography by Erica Abi-Karam