National Maritime Museum

July 16, 2008
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/nav.00500200g001

This morning my class took a boat on the Thames to Greenwich, where we visited the National Maritime Museum. Hannah Dunmow, the archive and manuscripts manager, gave us a tour of the Caird Library. The museum opened in 1937, and the library was an original part of the museum. It is called the Caird Library because it was founded and funded by Sir James Caird (d. 1954), who acquired the core of their collections. They also had aid from the Society of Nautical Research. Their library still has the original beautiful oak bookcases and tables.

This library is the largest research library of maritime history, and it contains information on such diverse subjects as immigration, navigation, piracy, astronomy, shipping business, biographies, the Merchant and Royal Navies, and family histories. Some of their most popular resources include many Lloyd's resources (such as captains' registers, register of shipping, registry of yachts, and daily newspaper) as well as Master's lists, the Mercantile Registry, and alphabetical lists of naval officers. They house over 100,000 books dating from around 1850 onward, and 20,000 pamphlets (with 200 current titles), and 8,000 rare books from 1474 to 1850. The books from before 1850 are classified as rare and require a special request to see them. There are timed retrievals to collect the manuscripts, and anyone wanting an item from their stores (not on site) needs to give them a two week notice. They keep their most used items on site.

Anyone over 16 can visit and register for a reader's ticket. They simply have to show a piece of ID and accept the terms. Their catalog is online, so most people know what it is they want before they come in to the library. The manuscripts are currently in the same catalog, but they are working on separating them from the main library catalog for easier searching.

The library receives three to four thousand visits per year. However, the reception desk, the e-library, and the electronic resources available on computers near the desk receive between fifteen and eighteen thousand visits a year. Two thousand library items a year are retrieved for people, and five thousand manuscripts are also retrieved a year.

The library is stocked by professional librarians and archivists as well as one or two specialists (such as someone who specializes in hydrography, or charts of the ocean). The staff works together to provide service to their patrons both on site and other (e-mail, telephone, and post enquiries). They have six full time employees on the archive staff (four for manuscripts, one curator, and one hydrographist), three specialist librarians, two information assistants, and one information specialist. A separate department off site is in charge of their prints and drawings section. This section is not open access, although it is accessible by appointment. They are currently restoring and developing a wing of the museum that will have environmentally controlled storage as well as another reading room. This will be done around 2012.

Renee and Mike then showed us a wide variety of rare books and manuscripts. Some of the items we were shown by Renee were a book bound with Dutch Flowered papers (actually made in Germany and Italy and printed from woodblocks and metal plates), a journal accounting the second Dutch voyage to the East Indies in 1598-1600 (a first edition copy of a book that went through several editions and translations), a likely fictionalized account of a sailor punished by being marooned (but interesting because books on this subject are rare), the transcripts of the trial of Captain William Kidd, a medical manual used aboard the HMS Bounty, a sea grammar by John Smith, and a Lascar dictionary. Mike showed us various letters, including one concerning Sir Francis Drake, a beautifully illustrated (with watercolor) and partially type-written journal (one of a set of 21) by Royal Naval surgeon Dr. Edward Hodges Cree, and an atlas used by pirates. It was a very wonderful display, and both Renee and Mike were very informative, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about their work.