the largest funders of arts, cultural, and heritage activities in the UK and invests over £130m every year – Melanie said the library can sometimes play a role in visits by dignitaries, highlighting areas of the collections that may be of interest. They adds: “For example, we recently brought out our copy of Shakespeare’s Third Folio to show Cate Blanchett and her guests during her Freedom of the City of London ceremony.”
Digital delivery
Technology has played a big role in increasing the profile of the library. Melanie said: “During the COVID pan- demic, we moved our events programme online and really increased our social media presence. We had never done events online before and bought a Zoom licence for 600 users, thinking that seemed impossibly high, as our in-person talks were limited to 60 people. However, we quickly began to fill those online places,
as people looked for more online distrac- tions. At the end of each session, we had people turn on the cameras to thank the speaker, and many said they felt this was the start of an online community for the library.
“Since returning to the library in 2021, we’ve kept up doing hybrid events, while many institutions returned to just doing in-person events. Our biggest reason for doing this was because we had many disabled users, as well as global users who could not visit in person. While we are no longer getting 600 people per event, we average around 150.
“This past year, we’ve swapped from Zoom to YouTube for our talks. While this no longer has the community aspect, it does mean that talks are available for those who have missed them to watch later. This was meeting the biggest request about the talks we had from our users. “In my view, the online talks and increased online social media presence
helped widen our audience. Eventbrite shows us having people booking for our events from all over the world. Before COVID, we had slowly decreasing visitor fig- ures and now, despite shorter opening times, we have more users than pre-COVID.” The library also has several digital col- lections, including the daily listings from the Stock Exchange and databases such as Ancestry and Find My Past, The British Newspaper Archive and JSTOR. But the library maintains its physical presence. “We now do monthly History and Treas- ures events, during which we give people a history of the library, and show them the original collections as well as highlighting other books from the current library and recent donations. We limit these to 24 attendees, so that people can have a good look at the books on display. We have gradually been transforming these talks from history, to connecting them to the present. Letting people know they can come in and read the books, and use our collections.
“We have a large events programme of around 10 free talks a month, focusing on history and art history, and we also have more collections focused events, such as our monthly history and treas- ures talk. As the original library was built on donations, we also show some of our more interesting donations, including a very tiny dictionary, and a handwritten illuminated manuscript, that was written by a group of ramblers in the 1980s. We talk about the stories behind the objects, relating them to examples from today.” Melanie said: “The 600th exhibition has been the perfect way on which to build on that legacy and raise our profile, not only about the work of the past, but also what the library is doing today.” IP
26 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL Winter 2025
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