National Art Library at the V&A

Today we went to the National Art Library at the V&A!

Predating the museum itself, the National Art Library was founded in 1837 as the Government School of Design Library. It was moved to its current location in the Reading Room in 1857. This room was the first part of the museum to be wired for electricity, as books and candles are rarely a happy combination! There are approximately one million items in the library's catalogue, dispersed around sixteen locations. The library collects three types of material; reference items for members of the public, reference items for museum staff, and "artist books," books that are themselves works of art.

During our visit, we toured the library's stacks, which are closed to the public. The National Art Library, like the rest of the V&A, struggles with space concerns. As a result, the library has chosen to organize their collections by size, rather than by topic, to conserve space. I loved this solution to a universal problem! While it only works for closed stacks, shelving by size gains hundreds of linear meters, greatly increasing an insitution's storage capacity. 

For more information about the National Art Library, see the full website at https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/national-art-library