British Museum Archives

Today, we visited the British Museum Archives.  The British Museum Archives has one archivist on staff and for the last 15 years there has been none.  There are 9 collecting departments in the museum and each department has their own collections.  In 1753 Hans Sloane bequeathed his collection to the National Government thus establishing the foundation of the British Museum.  There are 8 million objects in the British Museum including a photograph archive which has hundreds of glass and regular negatives.

One of the most fascinating things in the British Museum is the round reading room.  It was disappointing that it had been closed and there is discussion on what to do with it.  The archivist showed us drawings and pictures of the reading room but it really does not compare to the real room.

The archivist spends some of her time dealing with inquiries from patrons doing research however she has been working on organizing collections and the archives.  It is very impressive that she does so much with everything at the British Museum.

One of the most interesting item in the British Museum was boxes of reading cards from people who had visited the museum when it was joined with the British library.  Once the British Library separated from the British Museum, several boxes of reading cards were left behind.  One reading card that was shown was from Bram Stoker.

After the tour of the archives, I got to see the Rosetta Stone which was the key in deciphering the hieroglyphs from Egypt.  That was really neat to see it in real life.  The archivist had told the class that the museum might put the Rosetta Stone in the reading room since it is one of the most popular displays in the museum.  It would be very interesting on how it would be displayed.