London Library
On the 24th June 1840, Thomas Carlyle stood up at a meeting in a crowded hall in Convent Garden to manifest the need of a lending library in London.
The library became real in the next 175 years as the largest independent lending library in the world. Beyond its walls, lie a million books, covering more than 17 miles of open access bookshelves arranged in seven interlocking buildings.
The London Library became a beloved home for the greatest names in literature such as Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Isaiah Berlin, Laurence Olivier, Agatha Christie and Harold Pinter. Poets and several Nobel prize-winners have roamed its bookshelves.
Timeline:
London Library – Strategic Plan
Its goals are:
A. Substantially increase awareness of, access to and engagement with the Library (increasing its reach and impact).
B. Remove the annual operating deficit by the end of 2022/23 (placing the Library on a sustainable financial footing for future generations)
In order to achieve our goals, we will:
1) Raise our public profile (with external PR support) and create targeted marketing and communications campaigns to drive increased awareness, use and membership of the Library. We will give an additional focus to attracting and welcoming younger people to the library.
2) Create new ways to access and engage with the Library including:
3) Deliver new spaces at the Library to accommodate:
4) Find a new model for our library collection that allows for continued acquisition and maintains the accessibility and usefulness of the collection, while working within the twin constraints of available storage space and cost. We shall need to explore potential solutions such as: the movement of some of the collection to off-site storage; the increased collection of digital versus hard-copy items; and the removal of duplicate content. We shall need to focus our on-site and digital collection resources on the content that will be most beneficial to existing and future users.
5) Increase our revenue fundraising (i.e. expanding our Founders’ Circle, creating an Annual Fund, delivering fundraising events), making fundraising a bigger proportion of our overall income.
6) Launch a major appeal to “re-found” the Library, consisting of an immediate capital fundraising campaign to finance the creation of new spaces, and a longer-term campaign to deliver a substantial endowment for the Library (returns on which will help support Library operations).
7) Develop new ways to increase our income from other sources, such as private venue hire (which will also support an increased awareness and use of the Library).
8) Restrict cost increases, finding more ways to work more efficiently and seeking to minimise the impact on members.
On the 24th June 1840, Thomas Carlyle stood up at a meeting in a crowded hall in Convent Garden to manifest the need of a lending library in London.
The library became real in the next 175 years as the largest independent lending library in the world. Beyond its walls, lie a million books, covering more than 17 miles of open access bookshelves arranged in seven interlocking buildings.
The London Library became a beloved home for the greatest names in literature such as Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Isaiah Berlin, Laurence Olivier, Agatha Christie and Harold Pinter. Poets and several Nobel prize-winners have roamed its bookshelves.
Timeline:
- 1841: the library opens with its first librarian called John Cochrane.
- 1842: an additional room is rented. The collection reaches thirteen thousand volumes.
- 1845: the library moves to another location, where it is located nowadays.
- 1855: the president Alfred Lord Tennyson serving until 1892.
- 1879: the library buys the freehold of the premises.
- 1893: the librarian Charles Hagberg Wright serving until his death in 1940.
- 1896-98: the library is reconstructed.
- 1921: the library is extended, seven new floors are constructed to house a further two hundred thousand books.
- 1932-4: further building works take place. The reading room is extended and additional book stacks are built. The collections now number 450.000 volumes.
- 1934: on 13th April 1934, Stanley Baldwin MP gives the opening address at a ceremony to open the newly built Central stacks. Charles Hagberg Wright is knighted.
- 1944: 16.000 volumes are destroyed and the newly built Central stacks are heavily damaged. Repairs take ten years to complete.
- 1948: Winston Churchill had the honorary position of Vice-President.
- 1952: T.S. Eliot is president, serving until his death in 1965.
- 1995: the Anstruther Wing is completed. This new building allows for the safe housing of 30.000 of the rarest and most vulnerable volumes.
- 2004: Duchess House is purchased.
- 2010: the library creates the Lightwell Reading Room, the new Times Room, staff offices, the restoration and extension of the Library's Art Room and the refurbishment of the Issue Hall.
- 2013: the Reading Room is refurbished and the Writer's Room and the Sackler Study are opened as new working and studying spaces.
- 2014: the library's collection stands at 1.000.000 titles, covering 2.000 subjects in 55 different languages. The books range in date from 1500 to 2015 complemented by bound copies of 2.000 periodicals dating from 1699 to today.
- 2016: the library holds a five day literary festival to celebrate its 175th anniversary. It is featured 40 separate events and talks by leading writers and public figures, half of whom are London Library members.
London Library – Strategic Plan
Its goals are:
A. Substantially increase awareness of, access to and engagement with the Library (increasing its reach and impact).
B. Remove the annual operating deficit by the end of 2022/23 (placing the Library on a sustainable financial footing for future generations)
In order to achieve our goals, we will:
1) Raise our public profile (with external PR support) and create targeted marketing and communications campaigns to drive increased awareness, use and membership of the Library. We will give an additional focus to attracting and welcoming younger people to the library.
2) Create new ways to access and engage with the Library including:
- A high quality programme of events and outreach activity at the Library and other venues such as at literary festivals or partner venues (which will also contribute to achieving increased awareness of the Library);
- New ways to join or use the Library aimed at less frequent visitors and those for whom the membership fees are a major obstacle.
3) Deliver new spaces at the Library to accommodate:
- Our growing programme of events, outreach activity and private venue hire
- More reader spaces (necessary as use of the Library grows).
- Comfortable, catered spaces where members can meet, share ideas and work in a less formal environment.
4) Find a new model for our library collection that allows for continued acquisition and maintains the accessibility and usefulness of the collection, while working within the twin constraints of available storage space and cost. We shall need to explore potential solutions such as: the movement of some of the collection to off-site storage; the increased collection of digital versus hard-copy items; and the removal of duplicate content. We shall need to focus our on-site and digital collection resources on the content that will be most beneficial to existing and future users.
5) Increase our revenue fundraising (i.e. expanding our Founders’ Circle, creating an Annual Fund, delivering fundraising events), making fundraising a bigger proportion of our overall income.
6) Launch a major appeal to “re-found” the Library, consisting of an immediate capital fundraising campaign to finance the creation of new spaces, and a longer-term campaign to deliver a substantial endowment for the Library (returns on which will help support Library operations).
7) Develop new ways to increase our income from other sources, such as private venue hire (which will also support an increased awareness and use of the Library).
8) Restrict cost increases, finding more ways to work more efficiently and seeking to minimise the impact on members.