Hoi Polloi Clog British Library; Literary Elite Get Vapors
by Zoe Strimpel
Tue, 22 Apr 2008
It's got all the elements of the perfect British outcry. History. The intelligentsia. Public funding and academia. (The introduction of top-up fees, which require students to pay for university, was among the most hotly debated issues of the last five years.) Above all, at the core of this tussle are those long, British queues and, with them, acute consumer frustration.
What's going on is a large-scale supply-and-demand drama at the nation's greatest library. The 1,480-seat British Library, at St. Pancras, opened up to undergraduates and anyone doing research two years ago. Since then, the lofty, authorial bubble has been unforgivably burst. Where once Charles Dickens worked in peace, now hordes of students are clogging up the tables. Although they are no doubt using its excellent research facilities, I've heard it said a number of times that the library is one great place for meeting people. Sit there long enough and you're bound to snag a hot date.
Lady Antonia Fraser was one of several high-profile writers who voiced grave dissatisfaction this week. "I had to queue for 20 minutes to get in, in freezing weather," she told the Times of London. "Then I queued to leave my coat for 20 minutes [at the compulsory check-in]. Then half an hour to get my books and another 15 minutes to get my coat. I'm told it's due to students having access now. Why can't they go to their university libraries?"
Biographer and editor Claire Tomalin said: "It's full of what seem to be schoolgirls giggling. I heard one saying, 'I've got to write about Islam. Can I have your notes?' It's what you expect to hear in a school." Said the historian Tristram Hunt: "It's a 'groovy place' to meet for a frappuccino. It's noisy and it's undermining both the British Library's function, as books take longer to get, and the scholarly atmosphere."
The library, which gets a copy of every publication produced in Britain and Ireland, has a collection of more than 150 million items, including the Magna Carta.
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