St. Paul's Cathedral

https://www.stpauls.co.uk/history-collections/the-collections/the-library

What I found most interesting about St. Paul's Cathedral was that this was one of the only libraries where it seemed they cared more about the appearance of the books rather than the actual contents. When we came to visit, everything was disorganized because they were making an effort to preserve the fabrics and furniture in the room as opposed to the books.

The librarian, Joe Wisdom, said that they don'r conserve the books because it's too expensive. But in my opinion, the purpose of a library is to house knowledge. The content of the books should be the most important part-- but it's clear that here, the main goal is to impress people with how nice the room is. When we asked him about the preservation efforts for the books, he mentioned that the only clean the covers. To me it seems like the books might as well be blank.

I did think it was really cool that they had a rock collection near the library, though. All of the rocks were pieces of previous cathedrals that stood on the same spot. And instead of just tossing them into the Thames, they kept them and actually cataloged them.

He did bring up an interesting issue on the difference of restoration and preservation. When curators and archivists restore materials, they are taking liberties and making assumptions about what they thought the item might have been like when it is new. They would probably rebind a book, or repaint an item to try and get it looking as if it just popped out of a time machine. Preservation on the other hand, is about keeping the material in good condition--fortifying pages so that they don't rip, cleaning the leather on the cover, etc.

It seems like in the 1960s archivists were more likely to restore items, but now the practice is generally frowned upon because it actually covers up the historical value that they seek to highlight.