The London library: an interview with Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros and Gill Turner.

Abstract

On February 17 th , 2017 I had the opportunity to visit The London Library with my friend Judith Hodgson, an English specialist on rare books and a habitual user of this library. I would like to thank her and also thank the librarians Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Bibliographic Services and Gill Turner, Head of Acquisitions. The London Library1 was established on 1841 by Thomas Carlyle, and it had as members, authors like Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. This last one was its president from 1952 to 1965. The Library's collection stands at over 1,000,000 volumes, covering over 2.000 subjects in 55 different languages which include works from the 16th century to latest publications. The Library is maintained by its members through their subscription. Editor: Thank you for having me. When I told Judith I intended to come here I was longing to learn about you and how you conduct a library so different from the ones in our country! We don't have this kind of library in Brazil, it's always public or private, not a subscription one like yours, so I think the way you work it's a bit different from ours. I wonder if sometimes it's more complicated or maybe not ... I don't know the difference. But one thing I think it's important to understand is how you conduct your library and how you attend to your readers' necessities, and the different ways they learn about the organization of the collection, and about the selection of the books. I think it's very interesting to learn about how you select and preserve the books, therefore I would like to hear a little about how you do this. 1 14 St James's Square London SW1Y 4LG https://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/ The London library: an interview with Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros and Gill Turner.