Tim Spring, Senior Library Assistant (Acquisitions and Metadata), writes:
Birkbeck Library has an amazing image collection and I’ve always been intrigued by the people and places in these photos. Within the ‘Birkbeck History’ collection there is a set of photos taken of the family mausoleum of George Birkbeck, located in Kensal Green Cemetery. I don’t live too far from there, so a few months ago I decided to go explore and see if I could find it myself.
Discovering
the Birkbeck mausoleum
made me wonder how many other places in London have a link to the College. I started off with some
notable Birkbeckians,
and very quickly found out that most of them have a blue plaque somewhere in
London. I also started to learn about the history of the College, and it turns out
that Birkbeck’s influence can be seen all over London.
This year Birkbeck is celebrating 100 years as a member of the University of London.
In the Library we
have a small group working on projects for this occasion and it was here that we came
up with the idea of creating walking tours of Birkbeck
history in London.
The first tour is an exploration of Birkbeck buildings, from the site the College was founded
at through to our current location. This walk takes you all over central
London, starting at the Strand, then heading towards the Barbican, and eventually ends up at the main Birkbeck
building on Torrington Square.
The other two walks will take you past the homes of notable Birkbeckians. Some of the more famous figures on these walks include Rosalind Franklin and T. S. Eliot, but there are many other interesting people that passed through Birkbeck’s door over the years, such as Professor Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, pictured below. My hope is that these tours will get you to enjoy going for a walk in London whilst also discovering more about the history of Birkbeck. We are a unique institution with a rich past and I think a lot of people would be surprised by what they learn about the College and all the interesting people who have helped make it what it is.
More than
13,000 people from across the globe came together on Saturday 20th
June to watch the online world premiere of Infinite Potential: The Life and Ideas
of David Bohm. The recording of this screening is now freely available to watch
online, any time. This new feature-length documentary sheds light on the life,
ideas and work of the groundbreaking Birkbeck scientist David Bohm, Einstein’s
“spiritual son”, whose archive is held here at the Library.
A lively
Q&A panel session with Paul Howard, the film’s director and producer,
Professor Basil Hiley, quantum physicist and longtime collaborator of Bohm, and
Dr Jan Walleczek, Director of Phenoscience Laboratories (Berlin), chaired by
Susan Bauer–Wu, followed the premiere and is also available to watch online: Q&A panel session
There’s another opportunity to watch the film online with a different Q&A panel which has been organised to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s 85th birthday as well as his lifelong love of science. Since the mid-1980s the Dalai Lama has engaged in dialogue with scientists, including David Bohm, around the broad topics of psychology, neurobiology, quantum physics and cosmology. Register for this screening and Q&A panel.
This Saturday sees the world premiere – now taking place online – of a new feature-length documentary which sheds light on the life, ideas and work of the influential Birkbeck scientist David Bohm whose archive is held here at the Library.
The film, titled Infinite Potential, draws
together contributions from a host of eminent guests from
different fields, demonstrating the depth and breadth of Bohm’s mind. Those
featured include not only long-time collaborators quantum physicist Professor
Basil Hiley and theoretical physicist Yakir Aharanov,
but also H.H. the Dalai Lama and sculptor Sir Antony Gormley.
Hiley describes Bohm as a “radical independent thinker”. Bohm had a unique way of looking at physics and his philosophical views were inseparably intertwined with the science. This holistic approach meant that he actively worked also with people from outside the subject area. Bohm’s ground-breaking work remains relevant today and informs current research which has the potential to radically change our world view in the future.
The online world premiere screening of Infinite Potential is free: you only need to sign up via the film’s website in order to attend.
The screening will be followed by a live panel discussion and Q&A session with director Paul Howard and other special guests, including Professor Basil Hiley.
Who is David Bohm?
David Bohm (1917–1992) had an
interesting and varied life, a significant part of which was spent as Professor
of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck, from 1961 until his retirement in 1983.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Bohm went on to study at Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1939. He then moved to the California Institute of Technology for post-graduate work, going on to complete his PhD in 1943 at the University of California at Berkeley under J. R. Oppenheimer. He subsequently worked on the Manhattan Project at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. You can listen to David Bohm talk about J. R. Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project in an interview from 1979 as part of the Voices of the Manhattan Project oral history.
In 1949, as Cold War tensions increased, the Committee on Un-American Activities had begun investigating staff who had worked at the Radiation Laboratory. As a member of FAECT and as a former member of the Communist Party, Bohm came under suspicion. He was called upon to testify before the Committee but pleaded the Fifth Amendment, refusing to give evidence against colleagues, including J. R. Oppenheimer. After the USSR tested its first atomic device in September 1949 it was thought that atomic bomb secrets must have been passed to the USSR. It was alleged that members of the FAECT had been in a Communist cell working at Berkeley during the war.
In 1950 Bohm was charged with Contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before the Committee and arrested. He was acquitted in May 1951, but Princeton had already suspended Bohm and after his acquittal refused to renew his contract. Bohm left for Brazil in 1951 to take up a Chair in Physics at the University of São Paulo. In 1955 he moved to Israel where he spent two years at the Technion at Haifa. Here he met his wife Saral, who was an important figure in the development of his ideas. In 1957 Bohm moved to the UK. He held a research fellowship at the University of Bristol until 1961, when he was made Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck in London. He retired in 1983 but continued to play an active role.
Bohm made several significant contributions to physics, particularly in the area of quantum mechanics. As a post-graduate at Berkeley he discovered the electron phenomenon now known as ‘Bohm-diffusion‘. His first book, Quantum Theory, published in 1951, was well received by Einstein among others. However, Bohm wasn’t satisfied with the orthodox approach to quantum theory and began to develop his own, expressed in his second book, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, published in 1957.
During his 20 plus years at Birkbeck,
Bohm and Professor Basil Hiley were colleagues, discussing a wide range of
topics and writing many papers together. In his biographical memoir
of Bohm, Hiley recounts: “our
original investigations had as their focus the need to develop a new conceptual
order in which to accommodate both quantum mechanics and relativity in a more
coherent way, hopefully without their present conceptual problems and their
mathematical infinities. This involved excursions into other disciplines like
philosophy, biology, language and even art.” At the time Bohm died, he and Hiley were putting together
the final details of the book that they had been working on, The
Undivided Universe.
Bohm’s scientific and philosophical views were inseparable. After reading a book by the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti in 1959, he was struck with how his own ideas on quantum mechanics meshed with the philosophy of Krishnamurti. The two first met in 1961 and over the following years had many conversations or dialogues. Bohm’s approach to philosophy and physics is expressed in his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and in the book Science, Order and Creativity, written with F. D. Peat and published in 1987. F. D. Peat also appears in the new documentary.
In his later years, partly through his
connection with Krishnamurti, Bohm developed the technique of Dialogue, in
which a group of individuals engaged in constructive verbal interaction with
each other. He believed that if carried out on a sufficiently wide scale these
Dialogues could help overcome fragmentation in society. Bohm led a
number of Dialogues in the 1980s and early 1990s, the most
well-known being those held at the Ojai Grove School in California.
Bohm was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990. He died in 1992.
Following Bohm’s death, Birkbeck took the first deposit of his papers and correspondence in 1997: this was the start of the David Bohm Archive at Birkbeck. You can find out more about what is held in the David Bohm Archive at Birkbeck on the Archives Hub, along with links out to other organisations holding related material.
If you have any questions about the Bohm Archive at Birkbeck please contact Emma Illingworth, Subject Librarian (School of Science), Birkbeck Library.
In 2018, the Library received, as a bequest, the research and teaching slides of Alison Kelly, an expert on the work of Eleanor Coade. These slides complement another of our collections, London Architecture Online.
Eleanor Coade was a brilliant businesswoman who, in the late eighteenth century, developed a formula for the manufacture of artificial stone. She wasn’t the first to try this, but her product was superior to anything that had been made before. It is stronger than natural stone and stands up better to the elements. In her book, Mrs Coade’s Stone, Kelly suggests that this might be the reason the product isn’t better known: people simply don’t realise that it’s not stone. Coade called her product Lithodipyra, but it is more commonly known as Coade Stone.
Eleanor Coade insisted on high standards of production and employed renowned sculptors to make the originals for her moulds. Very quickly, her pieces started being used by the most important architects of the time. This means that you can see Coade Stone on many prominent buildings: Buckingham Palace (John Nash), The Bank of England (Sir John Soane), Kenwood House (Robert Adam) and the Radcliffe Observatory (James Wyatt). Closer to home, it was also used in this Bedford Square doorway.
Since the pieces were made in moulds, they could be reproduced quickly and more cheaply than was possible using natural stone. Coade exploited this and marketed her work to the increasingly prosperous middle classes. The same mould could be used and adapted very easily to produce different pieces. A classical statue of a Vestal could be transformed into Faith simply by adding a chalice, or into Flora with a sheath of flowers. The collection includes many examples of the use of Coade Stone.
A good place to start an appreciation of the work of Eleanor Coade is with the Westminster Bridge lion, made in 1837. This thirteen-tonne sculpture is on the eastern bank of the Thames at the end of Westminster Bridge. Originally, it stood high on the parapet of the Lion Brewery which was demolished to make way for the Royal Festival Hall in 1949.
If you pass the lion, take a moment to look at how pristine it is, despite decades in the elements, and at the quality of the workmanship. The sculptor was William Frederick Woodington, curator of the Royal Academy’s School of Sculpture.
This summer, Level 1 of the Library was extensively refurbished, creating expanded group and silent study areas, two additional rooms for disabled and dyslexic students, and more than 80 extra study spaces overall.
Overall, the refurbishment has proved very popular with our users. Over 70% think it’s a big improvement.
However, not all of our users are happy. In particular, some students have asked: where have all the silent study spaces gone?
The refurbishment has radically changed the layout of the Library. Whereas before, Levels 3 and 4 were silent and the group study area was located at the far end of Level 1, the new layout reverses this.
The group study area is the first thing you see when you emerge from the lift or stairs on Level 1.
It continues through the arches to the Malet Street side of the building.
But where has the silent study area gone?
The new location of the group study area means that the upper floors cannot always be totally silent, since at busy times some noise will travel upstairs. Levels 2, 3 and 4 are now designated for ‘individual study,’ although in practice they are usually extremely quiet.
The new silent study area is actually on Level 1 and begins through the double doors which lead off the group study area on the Malet Street side.
If you walk down this corridor, passing the Accessibility Centre and doors leading to the toilets and the Phone Zone, you will find Room 107, which has computers for silent working.
Then, on the left through the glass link, is another silent room with computers.
Finally, at the far end of Level 1, you will find the main new silent area.
There are more seats upstairs on the Mezzanine.
We thought deeply about zoning when we planned the refurbishment and worked with the Students’ Union and our Student-Library Partnership to ensure it reflected their preference for a range different study environments. Overall, we think that the new layout is more logical, with a busy and bustling area at the start of Level 1 and a secluded and silent one at the back. However, we realise that, for returning students in particular, it may take a little time to get used to.
There are actually more silent study spaces in the refurbished Library than there were before: you just have to know where to look!
Between April and June, Birkbeck Library stayed open 24 hours, 7 days a week. In the run-up to this period, considerable concern was expressed within the university about the impact of all-night opening on student wellbeing. Opening 24/7, the line of argument went, would send a signal to students that they were expected to work at all hours.
We were worried about this too. We
took the decision to hire library assistants, in addition to security staff, to
work overnight. We ran a joint campaign with our university’s counselling service
to promote good study habits during the exam period, emphasising the importance
of taking breaks, eating well and resting. And we designed a survey in collaboration
with the Students’ Union to try and find out exactly why students chose to stay
beyond our usual closing time of 11.45pm, and to discover their own perceptions
of its impact on their mental health and wellbeing.
We surveyed 115 students who used
the Library at night during the period. The survey asked them to rate their
agreement with various propositions, make choices from a drop-down menu and
included a free text element. The results were interesting – and, perhaps, counterintuitive.
If the Library had not been open, the
majority of students told us that they would have studied through the night
anyway, either at home (47%) or in a different location (24%). This is
reflected in the free comments collected as a follow-up to this question.
Several students said that they could not work at home and that the Library allowed
them to have long uninterrupted study periods with fewer distractions. Even
some of those students who said they would have worked fewer hours were it not
for 24-hour opening, indicated that they had made a deliberate choice to come
in at night because it was quieter than during the day.
When asked what impact the 24-hour opening had on their mental health and wellbeing, 82% said that that it had a positive impact and 17% said that it had no impact, with only one student mentioning some negative impact. Half of the 82% said that it had a ‘a lot of’ positive impact rather than ‘a little’ or ‘some.’
There was a similarly positive perception among these students of how 24-hour opening impacted on their ability to continue studying at Birkbeck (85%) and to succeed academically (98%). The effect on the students’ overall university experience was considered solely positive.
The evidence from our survey therefore
challenges the assumption that longer opening hours must have a negative impact
on student wellbeing. In fact, in some cases, the opposite may be true.
By offering a greater range of times to study, in a safe and well-managed space
like a library, universities can mitigate stress amongst some of their students
and even improve this group’s chances of continuing successfully on their
degree.
Full details of the survey can be provided on request.
Library refurbishments can sometimes seem like a simple trade-off between stacks of books and rows of seats, with the latter increasingly trumping the former. As we have prepared for our own summer works, some staff (although hardly any students) have expressed the concern that we are betraying our core mission by reducing our on-site book stock in order to create more study spaces.
Space has certainly been a big driver for this refurbishment. During the last few years, and in line with the rest of the sector, the use of our printed books and journals has declined steadily as more information is supplied digitally: our users borrow 46% fewer books than they did ten years ago. However, during the same period, library visits have gone up and a greater number of students than ever are choosing to spend time here, either to read, write or work collaboratively. This has meant that the we are often full to capacity – and at busy times of the year there are literally no free seats available. Moving some of our lesser-used volumes to a nearby location seems a reasonable solution to this problem. The first phase of the refurbishment will increase the number of study spaces in the Library by about 15%.
Birkbeck University Library
But there is a broader vision behind the refurbishment: the creation of a space which reflects the Library’s evolving role within Birkbeck. That role includes, but is not confined to, the provision of information resources, and encompasses many other services which add value to the institution and the student experience.
The project will create a physical environment which better supports current teaching and learning practice at our university. IT facilities for the delivery of digital education will be central to the newly designed space. There will be an expanded group study area with bookable pods for collaborative working as well as enhanced zones for individual and silent study with booths and softer seating. We are also exploring the possibility of incorporating a separate room for research postgraduates in the future. We want a space in which different levels and styles of learning – blended learning, project work, traditional text-based research – can all take place under the same roof.
We are building two additional study support rooms for disabled and dyslexic students, and further improvements are planned for our popular Accessibility Centre. The refurbished Library will better reflect the diversity of our students.
There will be a new training room: a modern, flexible space in which Library staff will deliver workshops on subjects such as research skills, information literacy and data management. Increasingly, we provide training as part of College-wide programmes and we will invite other student support services such as Study Skills, Birkbeck Futures and the Birkbeck Graduate Research School to share this teaching facility. The refurbished Library will become a hub for skills support.
Finally, this theme of collaborative working will also be reflected in a new single helpdesk where Library and ITS staff will work alongside each other. Students will receive a more joined-up service and the Library will become a place that students and staff can visit for an even wider range of support and advice.
Birkbeck University Library
So, the project is about more than just books and study spaces. It will establish the Library as a key location for learning, teaching and research at Birkbeck. It will enhance the student experience and support efforts to improve retention and achievement. The refurbishment will ensure that our physical space reflects the reality of our role as a modern academic library.
It might seem counterintuitive to launch a collection of leisure reading in an academic library, particularly at an institution like Birkbeck, where students are often time-poor, and juggle multiple commitments alongside their studies. For them, reading for ‘fun’ might seem an unaffordable luxury. But, in fact, libraries are increasingly recognising the importance of promoting reading for its own sake, both to improve personal wellbeing and to support lifelong learning, a concept particularly close to Birkbeck’s heart.
In recent times, we had started receiving feedback from our students that they would appreciate a collection of books geared more towards leisure, with some mentioning that they enjoyed the serendipity of browsing our print collections. This gave us pause for thought, as the trend across academic libraries is very much to reduce print collections and replace them with digital resources. Indeed, our own Library is about to undergo renovations which have required us to shift our lesser-used print material into an offsite store in order to create room for additional study spaces. The students’ comments encouraged us to revisit our assumptions about what our students might actually want from the Library.
Last year, inspired by similar initiatives at London Metropolitan and Loughborough, we applied to the Birkbeck Alumni Fund for money to create a Reading for Pleasure collection. We were successful with our bid and, during the summer of 2018, recruited students from our Student-Library Partnership and Team Birkbeck to select the books. The students were paid for their work and given minimal selection criteria. These were that the Library couldn’t already have the book in its collection, and that they could only choose one book per author.
We encouraged the students to take advantage of Bloomsbury’s wealth of independent bookshops, such as Gay’s the Word, Housman’s Bookshop, Persephone and Gosh! Comics, and saw the project as an opportunity to support these outlets rather than going via the larger suppliers we normally use. This also allowed us to select books with nice covers. While we’re always told ‘don’t judge a book by its cover!’ we wanted our new collection to look attractive, using displays to evoke the joy of reading in the way that public libraries are so good at, rather than the often utilitarian method of shelving academic libraries employ.
In the meantime, we had identified the lovely wooden shelves in our Group Study Area as a suitable location for the new collection. These were sitting empty after the area had been converted from a reading room a few years ago, so we had an attractive home for our new books and didn’t have to worry about adding a large number of extra items to our main collection, just as we were trying to reduce its size.
We are extremely happy with the resulting student-chosen collection, which was officially launched on 31 January 2019 and has proved very popular already. As we had hoped, it is attractive and diverse, ranging from graphic novels to poetry, cookbooks, popular non-fiction, crime novels and literary prize-winners. After all, everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a relaxing read.
For staff involved with setting up the collection, it was a great opportunity to talk with students about the things they’re interested in beyond their studies, and to contribute to their educational experience by providing a resource that demands nothing of them but relaxation and enjoyment.
You can browse the titles and reviews on our website.
The main reason we haven’t done this until now has been cost. Keeping the Library open for an extra nine hours requires additional staffing which, over a period of several weeks, adds up to a lot of money. Fortunately, thanks to strong campaigning by Birkbeck Students’ Union, we have obtained funding for this pilot.
Birkbeck University Library
But there is, potentially, another cost: that of student wellbeing. There is a danger that by opening all night we risk sending a signal to students that they are expected to study around the clock.
Charlotte Williams, Head of Counselling Services, explains:
“Although many students manage and survive the stresses of the exam period, perfectionistic traits are increasingly common both within contemporary society and amongst students nationally. Whilst the flexibility of extended opening hours might enhance some students’ wellbeing, it may tempt others to work incessantly and neglect important matters that are key to their health and the capacity to learn. The Counselling Service encourages students to remember that to study and learn effectively we need balance in our lives. Alongside work and study, we need to take time to socialise and relax. Eating and sleeping well, and connecting with others, are crucial for good mental health.”
Increased stress levels are certainly a problem at exam time and often manifest themselves within the Library. We will therefore be liaising closely with Charlotte and her team to promote a balanced approach to study during this period. We also intend to survey those students who do take advantage of our extended opening hours and will ask them directly about its impact on their mental health and wellbeing.
The picture is, of course, complex. Research by the University of Warwick Students’ Union has shown that many students already work late into the night at home. Providing a public space for them to study could be a healthier option. Our Library staff well know that throwing users out onto the street at a quarter to twelve can itself cause stress.
There are other advantages to overnight opening. Alex Holmes, Student Leader-elect at Birkbeck Students’ Union says:
“Moving to a 24-hour opening of the Library is widely
supported by the student body here at Birkbeck, which is why we’ve been
campaigning for it as a Students’ Union. The flexibility of being able to use
our Library at night clearly suits a lot of our students, many of whom already
study at night at home.
A high proportion of Birkbeck students have work and family commitments, and so have even more need for late opening than students at other institutions. Many of our postgraduate students previously studied at a university that had all-night opening and want that same service to be available here. A 24-hour Library is an important part of Birkbeck having a competitive offer for prospective students.”
Birkbeck University Library
Birkbeck’s mission remains the same as when it was founded in 1823: to provide high-quality university education in the evening for working Londoners and those who would not otherwise be able to study. As the city changes, we need to change too. While there are certainly risks associated with this pilot, on balance, we believe that it will be an initiative with positive benefits for many of our students.
Birkbeck Library has a number of image collections available for research use.
Birkbeck History is full of images of notable people and events in the college’s past.
Birkbeck was the only central London university to stay open during the Blitz. Even after the library was bombed, teaching and study carried on.
The college was one of the
first to allow women to study.
The Album of Mrs Birkbeck is made up of poems, prose and images collected by Anna Birkbeck, George Birkbeck’s wife.
There are contributions from well-known society figures over a period of about 20 years from 1825. Entries from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Robert Owen show that George and Anna Birkbeck were mixing with important people in the fields of the arts and social reform. Compiling these albums was a popular activity at the time, but it is rare that one survives intact and with well documented provenance.
There are two collections, Garden History Online and London Architecture Online that are made up of digitised slides from what was the university’s slide library. The slide library is now closed. These collections are extensive and varied. They contain beautiful, historical photographs, paintings, maps, plans and architectural drawings.
The collections grow and develop all the time. We are currently working on a new one that compliments London Architecture Online. It contains images of architectural, monumental, sculptural and ornamental uses of Coade Stone in the UK, bequeathed to Birkbeck College by Averill Alison Kelly.
Coade Stone is an artificial stone (in reality it is a ceramic material) developed by businesswoman, Eleanor Coade in the late 1700s. Coade worked with skilled craftsmen and artists and marketed her product to highly regarded architects of her day. It can be found across the UK and internationally. In London, noted examples can be seen at Buckingham Palace, Sir John Soane’s Museum (Lincoln’s Inn Fields), Old Royal Naval Palace (Greenwich) and Schomberg House (Pall Mall)
You can explore all our collections and find images, by subject, from other collections worldwide here.
