Blog – Page 9 – Gladstone's Library.

28 August 2019

The great book exchange

Perhaps you have encountered ‘lending libraries’ in the far corners of the Hebrides or on the bays of Cornwall. These could take the guise of a box perched on somebody’s wall, a wheelbarrow sprouting copies of childhood classics or those big red boxes with well-worn coin inlets, repurposed for reading and the exchange of ideas.

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29 July 2019

The importance of collecting

In an age of single use and throw-away products, we can often find ourselves yearning for something with a sense of permanence. No sooner have we bought the newest, shiniest iPhone than Apple releases the newer, shinier version, rendering our new phone a technologically competent, but intrinsically second-best space-filler. The same is true of cars, of clothes, of practically everything manufactured these days. The only thing that seems not to fit this mould? Books.

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26 July 2019

A summer reading list

C.S. Lewis once said ‘You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.’ This is a maxim which suits our Library team very well indeed; there never seems to be enough tea, and in spite of working in a library with over 150,000 books and printed items, we seem to race through good books all too quickly!

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19 July 2019

Fragmentary manuscripts

We are very lucky here at Gladstone’s Library to have access to around 130,000 printed items in total, including around 6,500 books printed before 1800 and some as early as the 15th Century. The majority of these older books come from a very small proportion of our collections: either our pre-18^th Century collection, the Bishop Moorman Franciscan collection, or the Glynne-Gladstone collection. Many of these older books are kept in our Closed Access rooms in order to keep them in the best condition possible – but as a result, regular visitors to the library might not be aware of what treasures lie behind closed doors!

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28 June 2019

Gladstone’s Library as a flexible space

We can be quite traditional here at Gladstone’s Library: the Reading Rooms are silent study areas; we don’t allow food near the books; and ‘No, we won’t let you take that rare and precious Gladstone Foundation Collection book home with you tonight, Sir – we are not a lending library!’ In other ways though, we like to think of ourselves as quite innovative.

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19 June 2019

300 years of Welsh history: 1719, 1819 & 1919

Wales is a small country with a big presence. Integral to the history of the British Isles and attracting tourists from all around the world, it should be hard to overlook the history of Cymru, however it is often wholly conflated with that of neighbouring England to its disservice. Gladstone’s Library is an international institution, but we are very proud of our Welsh location that was decided by our founder, the former Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who was English but spent around 50 years with the Hawarden Estate as his family home.

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6 June 2019

A day in the life of a Graduate Work Experience student

While it’s totally cliché to say this, no two days are the same when it comes to being a Graduate Work Experience student (GWE) at Gladstone’s Library. However, the motions we go through are pretty similar, and always full of valuable experience!

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15 May 2019

New for 1819! Books published 200 years ago…

At Gladstone’s Library we rotate our History Room display every month to focus on a different aspect of our collection. This month we’ve dug out some of our best examples of works published in 1819, exactly 200 years ago, to give you a taste of what people were reading during the Georgian Regency period of British history.

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3 May 2019

The British Crime Writing Archive

Gladstone’s Library has, for three years, been home to the British Crime Writing Archive, made up of materials from the Crime Writers’ Association and The Detection Club. Martin Edwards, the Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and the President of The Detection Club has worked closely with the Gladstone’s Library team to make the collections publically viewable here at the library.

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1 May 2019

Rare Books and Religious Texts: a reading list

Our Assistant Librarian Gary Butler gave a talk Monday night all about rare books and religious texts. In this post, he shares a reading list of books for anyone who wants to explore the themes in his talk further.

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