King's College

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/index.aspx 
I really enjoyed my visit to King's College! Honestly, of all the places we've visited, this one was the most hospitable. They served us tea and biscuits! How lovely and very British!

King's College is in the top 25 universities worldwide and is the 4th oldest college in England. It was established in 1829. Even though the building has been around for centuries, it is clear that the students feel right at home there, and that the staff play an active role in helping the students.

During the first part of the tour, they had rare books from their special collections on display, and had them separated into 3 categories: books linked to the history of America in some way, books related to teaching, and a third category that I don't remember right now.

One of the books we got a chance to see was John Oglebee's America.

I found it interesting to see how conservation values change over time. America  was a perfect example to illustrate that fact. The book is centuries old, so to conserve it, someone made the choice to rebind the book, which isn't so out of the ordinary, but at that time, the decision was made to completely disregard the original binding. Nowadays, no one would dream of rebinding such a prestigious work without finding some way to stay true to the original binding.

I also thought the medical book Vesalius was pretty interesting. It was written in 1543 and it seems to be pretty accurate for the most part. The medical illustrations were just a little bit off though.For example, in this illustration of muscles, there are random bits just hanging off in flaps.

For the second part of the tour,  thought the reading room was so gorgeous! I thought it was really funny that we barged in there to take all of those pictures while people were studying. Everyone was silent, but all of the students couldn't help but scratch their heads at all of us coming in to take pictures of the ceiling and leave. Here's my glorious reading room shot. Please note all of the befuddled students, and also Zoey taking her own reading room shots.

I  also really enjoyed the large room with with all of the stained glass windows. I thought it was just an old church, and it was at one point, but I thought it was really cool that the designs on the windows were actually family crests belonging to the "Master of the Rolls," or basically the archivists.

I got such a kick out of it, that later that day when I went to the Tate Modern, I designed my own family librarian crest at an interactive drawing bar exhibit, so now my very own Master of the Rolls crest is on display. As you can see, my design incorporates unicorns and roses. :)