The British Museum Archives

Today, I spent the morning exploring the British Museum on my own. 700 million people a year visit and this is likely because it's free and has been kept free. I saw a lot of cool things, but the clear highlight was the Rosetta Stone!

One of my friends put it best: "Linguistics is really cool in small doses"

The afternoon was a behind the scenes tour of their archives, which were not at all what I was expecting. The main lobby, or "courtyard" of the British Museum looks like this:

Which I thought was beautiful, so I took a picture. Little did I know that the Reading Room where we were going was inside the huge dome in the middle! And it was so breathtaking!

Like jaw hitting the floor, staring with wide eyes glazed over in bliss breathtaking.

What a ceiling!

This room was not open to the public and hadn't been for years. The majority of the material in the space was records of the museum itself. The archivist who talked with us was on her own--the only archivist for the entire museum (and only the second qualified archivist they've ever had)! That isn't enough staff to run the space regularly, but to make matters worse, none of their material is cataloged because she just hasn't had time to do it on her own. The only reason she can do her job at all is because she has familiarized herself with the collection over her 12 years there, so she knows a lot about what things are where. The material in there isn't organized in any way (or it wasn't before the archivist got her hands on it!), and a lot of it was not uniform (but more on that later). They aren't currently an accredited archive--the National Archive gave them all the material about 25 years ago on the condition that it would be cataloged, which is still something they aren't able to do. I found it very, very sad--there are tons of  treasures in the room that are literally degrading because there aren't enough staff and funding to do something about it. One archivist, no conservator, and nowhere to start. It's an example of exactly why we need information organization, and how we're dying despite that.

To find what people inquire about and do her job, the archivist must read through books and type like this. They aren't cataloged, so even if she knows or has a good idea what book her answer is in, she might have to read through it to find the exact information. It's insane!

These books are "Original Letters & Papers" which, honestly, is such a nonsense title--what does that even mean! It isn't specific at all! And there are hundreds of them. Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, tons of notable people wrote the library, and all of that is in these materials somewhere. But no one knows where.

This is the deed to the collection of Sir Hans Sloane. He collected a ton of eclectic objects from the stones inside a porcupine's stomach to Egyptian goods to rare manuscripts. Acquiring this collection is what started the British Museum!

This is the bomb that hit the museum during the second world war

This is the destruction it wrought!

And finally, a few quirky finds that got a chuckle out of me.

Raise the roof y'all, we're kickin' this party off 2000s style.

Stop feeding the cats, for god's sake!!!!

Another adventure awaits tomorrow!