A tour at the British Library with Kevin Mehmet

We were greeted by Kevin Mehmet who gave us a brief on the history of the British Library
which boasts about 200 million items in their collection and it circulates about eight thousand books a day and seven thousand visitors a day.  Very busy bee! These books were originally in the building where the British Museum is located.

The library has a Philatelic exhibition: Appraisal and cataloguing started on 1891 and by now there are about nine million stamps. Notice the efficient  way the stamps are catalogued and shelved.

We looked at one of the models of the BL building. It was designed to look like a ship on the outside:

The Circulation Room:

We then went to the circulation room where book requests are processed through a conveyor belt system. The books are scanned to print the slip requests with information about the final destination of the book to be delivered to the user. The BL circulation department has its KPI standards and their target is to process approximately 3000 times a day, one per minute. They have reached 93% efficiency. Bravo!

The Acquisitions Department 

We went there to the Floor 3 the  room for the Slavonic and East European/Asian and African/  studies acquisitions where curators manage a budget to add to the collections. About 38% of researchers are international. It is luxury to maintain international collections.

The White Oak Room:

We then went to the White Oak room which is the reading room where users come and study. The theme is oak furnitures. The  White Oak was imported from the US. The theme is green and gold.