Friday, June 14th - National Maritime Museum
Today we visited the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum. The “old” Caird library was used from 1937-2011 but there was not enough storage space (which has been a theme throughout our visits), so the library was moved to a new space in 2011. The new space is divided into a reception/group work area, a quiet reading room, and storage space on the second floor. Although it doesn’t have the same grandeur as the old building its much more accessible and functional. 60% of the collection is stored onsite. They have about 5,000 visitors a year, with about 50% of those being academics, 40% family researchers and 10% other. Their catalogue is separated into Library and Archive and they have a staff of 2 librarians and 2 archivists.
The collection consists of manuscripts and original documents, service history (though most of these records are kept at the National Archive), a business collection, and board of trade deposits. Printed material is divided into four categories, rare (up to 1850) and modern (1851 onwards), periodicals and ephemera.
Some highlights of the materials they showed us included:
- Ptolemy's Cosmographia from 1482
- Ciphered letters to Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich from 1656-1667.
- Plans for the “Boat Cloak” (complete with umbrella sail)
- Letters from Napoleon’s captor
- Certificates of competency for Edward Smith (captain of the ill-fated Titanic)
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