National Library Tour

Wales has an interesting history. In 878 AD, the Welsh tribes were brought under one ruler, Rhodri Mawr. Before him, during his reign and after, the Welsh fought off waves of invading Saxons, British, Vikings and Irish. Sometime after the Norman Invasion of 1066, the Welsh were taken into what is now recognized as the United Kingdom. It wasn't until the Magna Carta was established that Wales started to regain some sort of national recognition. In 1282, the Llwelyn II was killed and Wales was finally, officially and completely, under British rule. From this point forward, the oldest born son of the King or Queen was called the Prince of Wales.

Over the next several hundred years, Welsh uprising were quelled time and time again. It's a small country, and mounting an army probably was very difficult. Today, Wales is said to have over 3,000,000 people. For a country that takes up 8,000 square miles, that is not a lot of people.

In the nineteenth century, there was a cultural resurgance, and Wales started to elbow some room for a National Identity. The largest city, Cardiff, was overrun by British, so the cultural center of Wales was Aberystwyth. Here, in 1872, the first Welsh national University was built by funds raised by the locals, completely free from the English government. After that, the country began raising money for a National Library and Museum. A well-read doctor, Sir John Williams, with a library of some 25,000 books, pushed the hardest for the library, and eventually the location was secured (for free: donated by a farmer who had extra land). As a consequence, though, the Museum was located in Cardiff.

The library held a design contest, and several ornately designed building in the style of the US Capital building were passed over for a squat, square building that was capable of dealing with the sometime severe weather that can hit the hill it is perched on. In 1911, work began but was put on hold for World War I followed by the Great Depression. Funds and materials were hard to come by, but the library officially opened it's doors in 1916. Due to the financial concerns, some corners were cut and some of the embellishments were scrapped.

The majority of the Library, as you see it, is what was built at the beginning of the 20th Century. It is a copyright library, meaning that it owns the rights to anything published in the UK (one of six copyright libraries). It collects books, newspapers, magazines, journals, videos (in all formats), wills, paintings, slides, manuscripts, and so on. Most of the media that is not books are related to Welsh history or people, including some 800,000 photos of Welsh people doing Welsh things.

The International Students were invited to an after-hours tour, and I could not say no. Because it is not a lending library, none of the materials are available to visitors outside of the two designated reading rooms. If someone wants materials, they can order it from the desk, and in a half hour or so, somebody will bring it to the appropriate reading room. You can peruse it there, making copies if needed, and then return it. There is a restaurant (with a bar), a shop several galleries and a movie theater. We were taken to both reading rooms (which are gorgeous), the art gallery, the history gallery, the rare manuscript room, and the stacks (which visitors are not allowed to view, but they made an exception for us). Here is what I learned on my two-hour tour:

1. Roald Dahl was Welsh. Along with a lot of people you don't know and Dylan Thomas.

2. Fearing that they would lose their language or fleeing religious persecution, the Welsh established colonies in Canada, Ohio and, oddly enough, Argentina. There is a series of painting of the Welsh in South America, which I imagined resulted in a lot of sun burns.

3. The Ohio Welsh are connected to the Library through the Wales-Ohio project. Three counties in Ohio are recognized as being primarily Welsh, and can trace their lineage back through Aberystwyth.

4. 90,000 wills are on record. If you feel you are owed something by a long lost Welsh relative, Aberystwyth should be your starting point.

5. The first book written in Welsh, dating back to the 1200's, is rather unadorned. The Welsh poetry, history and folklore was compiled and transcribed by a poor farmer in the area and written on vellum, which at the time was actually calf skin. The handwriting is huge, in an effort to suggest that the words on the page were worth the expensive paper (but not the gilded edges or fancy cover). The librarian assured us, though, the handwriting got much smaller towards the back.

6. The Welsh stake a claim on Barack Obama, and have a whole exhibit set up to show that his mother has some Welsh in her (several generations back).

7. Did I mention that the Welsh had a colony in Patagonia, Argentina (outside Buenos Aires). Yeah, does anyone else find that really strange?

8. There is a free tour Monday Morning at 11:00 am and Wednesday afternoon and 2:15. We were quizzed on this.

9. The cells that hold the films, rare manuscripts and valuable paintings don't have sprinkler systems, but instead pump carbon dioxide into the area to suffocate and fires or trapped workers.

10. During WWII, Luftwaffe using the huge, squat white building on a hill as a signpost. They could have bombed it, but found more value in it as a marker for which way to bomb England.

11. The books, maps, newspapers and so on are stored on movable shelves (not as nice as the movable shelves at SIU, but you know...it's America). The library has over 100 miles of stacks, and those that measure stacks argue it is the longest set of stacks in Europe. The shelves that contain newspapers weight 11 tons, but take no more than a child to move due to the magic of lever and mechanical advantage.

12. The addition, built in 1996, houses the stacks and the administrative offices of the 300 employees (as much as a factory building sofas might employ). It is the primary economic provider for the town, meaning there is an exceedingly high ratio of librarians to people.

13. The basement of the stacks are designed to withstand the weight of the upper six floors in case of earthquakes. Number of earthquakes to strike Wales in recent memory: 0. Nonetheless, prepared.

14. Before WWII, fear from the Spanish Civil War lead a forward thinking Welshman to tunnel into the hill and create storage for all the valuable material. The vault was finished in August of 1934; the next day WWII started, as if on cue. The Magna Carta spent the war in the vault.

It's a fascinating place, and if you come to visit me, expect to tour the library. As our tour guide said today: "When your family comes out, the library is the perfect place to get a beer and take a tour."