The National Art Library is located at the V&A museum in London. They are one of the top four leading libraries in the world with over 30,000 visitors a year. The library is open to the public five days a week, and most of their visitors are academics and students. They have a massive collection containing over 1 million items. Their collections consist of children's book, artists books, exhibition catalogs, calligraphy, correspondence letters and more. All of their collections are available to view on their online catalog, making it easy to access. The retrieval time for items is around 30 minutes, or if the items are in special collections you can request something ahead of time.
The tour for the British Studies program was split up into two parts. The first group received lecture on the library which included a display on some of their impressive items in their collection. While the second group received a tour of the library and their storage rooms. I went with the first group to look at some of their items in their care. One of the most prestigious items was one of Shakespeare's first folios! This is the first published work of a collection of Shakespeare's plays, it was published in 1623 six years after his death. A copy of his first folio sold for 3.5 million and the library has three of them! Unfortunately, their collection is not insured because many of their items are irreplaceable. So to protect the folio they have it locked up in a safe.
The second part of the tour we were able to get a behind the scenes look at how the library runs, and where they store all their items. The main reading room of the library is really pretty, there are two stories but the main floor is where visitors go. The second floor balcony is holds some book storage, and overall the library was really open and had a lot of natural light. The tour of the storage rooms were interesting because I learned that they store their items by size and not subject. This concept is unfamiliar, but I suppose if you have everything in an online catalog it doesn't matter where you store it. Plus this way they get to save space by maximizing every shelf.
https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/national-art-library/
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