On this day we were taken into a room filled with books, it was so beautiful that I felt as though I had entered the world of Beauty and the Beast. The ceiling reached up high and decorated in beautiful colors. Many of the books and archived material had been brought into this room due to a mold breakout. With over 300,000 books in this reading room and the original tables still inside, this room looked like paradise.
Many of the materials in this building are hand written legal documents. In the early days they had to set up a rule that children were not allowed in the reading room, this was because parents would leave their kids to go to the local pub. The first female wasn't employed here until 1925 and before 1921 women would be disqualified for jobs solely based on their gender. They have records of people who used the reading room and one avid reader was Carl Marx himself!
After we reluctantly moved out of the reading room we were left to explore the vast museum that circled the reading room. I even got to see the Rosetta Stone! This was one of my favorite trips because of the beauty of the reading room. The whole place and atmosphere left me in complete awe. Though the room is closed to the public, I hope I get to go back and see it again some day!
To learn more about the British Museum archives, click here: https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/libraries_and_archives.aspx
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