>> http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/11082011-paul-hamlyn-library-to-shut-on-Friday
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The Paul Hamlyn Library
It is with great regret that the British Museum will close the Paul
Hamlyn Library as part of efforts to accommodate a 15% cut to the
Museum's grant-in-aid budget. The Centre for Anthropology library
remains open to all visitors to the Museum.
The curatorial department libraries (Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Asia,
Coins and Medals, Greece and Rome, Middle East, Prehistory and Europe,
Prints and Drawings), may be accessed, by appointment, for research
enquiries. The Museum is looking into how the books that were housed
in the Paul Hamlyn Library can best be managed so that they continue
to be used for the maximum benefit of the Museum.
Family backpacks and trails which were previously distributed through
the library will be available from the Great Court.
Background
The Paul Hamlyn Library was set up as a reference library in 2000.
From 2007, the resources of another one of the Museum's ten libraries,
the Central Library started to be made available through the Paul
Hamlyn Library. The holdings of the Central Library include books on
the history of the Museum, a small number of the Museum's rare books,
and a collection of rare books from the House of Commons. In order to
avoid confusion, from 2007 we begun to refer to the joint collection
as the Paul Hamlyn Library.
The resulting joint collection, the Paul Hamlyn Library, Central
Library, and House of Commons collection, contains 50,000 books and
journals. The subject matter is very wide ranging including
archaeology, history, art, numismatics, Egyptology, Classical
antiquities, oriental art and museum studies and covers the range of
cultures and types of collection covered by the British Museum. There
is a collection of works relating to the history of the British
Museum, including guidebooks dating back to 1762. The library also
holds a copy of every British Museum publication and there is a
collection of ephemera relating to past exhibitions, including a
poster archive.
The Museum has undertaken a 90-day consultation with the eleven
affected staff. This is the standard legal consultation on the impact
of the proposed closure on their personal circumstances. All
redundancies were agreed on voluntary terms and a number of staff have
been redeployed to other roles in the Museum.
When it was set up in 2000, the Paul Hamlyn Library collection was
accessed by the public from the Reading Room. This changed in 2007,
when the Reading Room was used for special exhibitions. The Reading
Room will continue to be used for special exhibitions until the new
World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre opens in 2014. In the
lead-up to the opening, we will be consulting widely about the future
use of the Reading Room.
