The Herbarrium Library, Art and Archives (HLAA)

I got the train to Kew bridge station on a beautiful sunny afternoon. The Herbarium Library, Art and Archives (HLAA) is in the right corner of Royal botanic gardens Kew. Inorder for a member of the public to visit HLAA, they would need to get an appointment. The CIG group met in HLAA reception. Fiona Ainsworth, the head of the library, guided us towards a new building which was finished just last year and explained passionately every detail like decoration, colour of chairs, beautiful paintings in the middle of reading room and so on.

The library is devoted to subject and it is unique. This is the most important botanical reference sources in the world, Kew’s HLAA contains more than 7.5 million items including books, botanical illustrations, photographs, letters and manuscripts periodicals, biographies and maps. Over 90 languages are represented, making the library a global resource for plant science, research and conservation.

Then the head of cataloguing group (Anna Griffith) described the cataloguing system in such an amazing collection.

I remember my first job was in the National Heritage Archive. I know cataloguing would be very challenging when you have different precious materials like books, maps, photos, reports and paintings, each with their own way of preservation. Also to note, there is no withdrawing in materials in those archives. One of the staff usually accompanies the researcher through the research. The same for Kew libary archive.

After an interesting cataloguing session, we had some time to explore the garden freely.