RHS Journals

The Garden
September 2001

More than room to read

In June the RHS Lindley Library reopened at newly refurbished premises. Brent Elliott explains how the facilities have been improved and made more accessible to Members

The upper reading room is a peaceful, spacious retreat in which to view current periodicals as well as nursery and sundries catalogues. Also available are books on medicinal plants, herbs and fruit and vegetables	Librarian and Archivist Brent Elliott assists with research in the picture room, home to the collection of 19,000 drawings, which encompasses many plant portraits of historic importance

The largest and most important collection of horticultural books, periodicals and botanical art in the world has now been rehoused at the new, purpose-built London branch of the Society's Lindley Library. Opened in June, the library's new home in the refurbished building at 80 Vincent Square was constructed at a cost of more than £13 million and is now able to provide the conservation needs and perpetuity appropriate to the significance of the collection.

The new facilities provide increased space and a more comfortable working environment for readers; whether the use be for general interest, academic and specialist research into plant- and garden-related subjects such as garden history, plant identification, horticultural techniques or garden design. Before any work could begin, the RHS had to raise the money for the project. A grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund was secured for two-thirds of the cost of the library rehousing, and additional funds were donated by a variety of individuals and organisations, including Members. The project was not limited to rehousing the library; the Society had long since outgrown Vincent Square and departments had been housed in rented accommodation elsewhere in the Pimlico area. It was decided that, while the library had to be reconstructed, office premises should also be improved to return all the Society's London departments under one roof. The refurbishment is the work of Rick Mather, the American-born architect celebrated for his work at the National Maritime Museum, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and for his current project of supervising the redesign of the South Bank.

Dramatic improvements
It was necessary to excavate the entire basement of the Vincent Square headquarters to its lowest previous level, resulting in 1m (39in) of height being gained throughout. Two sumps, with a combined capacity of 35cu m (46cu yd), were dug beneath the basement slab as part of a flood protection programme that includes two layers of waterproofing, emergency runoff grilles and staggered levels at junctions to guard against water incursion. Elsewhere, the Elverton Street wing was expanded and its floor levels adjusted to make them continuous with the main floors of the building. Some 50km (31 miles) of cable were fitted to make

the building as computer-friendly as possible.

User-friendly layout
The public area of the new library is divided into two separate reading rooms, each equal in size to the former reading room on the third floor. The upper reading room contains the Society's books on medicinal plants, herbs, fruits and vegetables, as well as current periodicals and nursery and sundries catalogues.

The lower reading room contains the monographs on individual genera and families of plants, garden history and design, plant hunting, and most aspects of practical gardening, as well as the most-frequently consulted runs of periodicals, among them the RHS Journal dating from 1866 and The Gardeners' Chronicle. The room is laid out for longer-term study, each desk fitted for personal computers. Between them, the two reading rooms have more than double the seating capacity of the old library on the third floor.

The lower reading room is technically in the basement. However, because the 'ground floor' level of the Vincent Square building is in fact raised above the street, it is a shallow basement, and does not feel like one at all, aided by natural light from a skylight on either side of the entrance stairs.

The library now has a separate entrance from the rest of the RHS offices, with long-term implications. Before, the library was confined in its opening times to the business hours of the Society, as previously the offices lay between it and the building entrance. Now the opening times can be extended, and it would be possible to open the library on evenings or weekends. Another huge improvement is that the library has specific provision for visitors with disabilities: a ramp across the front of the building from the pavement allows access to the entrance, and a dedicated lift is available to bypass the stairs between the two levels.

Picture room
A separate room now houses the library's collection of drawings, of which there are some 19,000, almost all plant portraits, ranging in date from the earliest drawings, an album of plant portraits by 1630s Dutch artist Pieter van Kouwenhoorn, to the present day. These are now held in drawers for ease of access.

Drawings purchased during the previous year will be on display around the walls; for the first such display that time-frame has been extended to include artists from whom drawings were acquired while the library was in temporary accommodation.

Outside the picture library, opposite the base of the stairwell, will be a set of display cabinets that will hold changing exhibits from the library's collections. The first of these will be of picture postcards of municipal parks; the library holds a collection of 4-5,000 such cards. A database of the cards and their images will be made available in the near future on the RHS website.

Preserving history
From the lower reading room can be seen, through a large glass window, the rare books room, in which all the library's printed books from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries are held, as well as various rare or fragile works published since that date. The oldest book in the room is Pliny's Natural History dating from 1514. To maintain the books in optimum condition the room is temperature- and humidity-controlled.

More is behind the scenes: a stack room fitted with mobile shelving for the library's periodicals (some 1,500 runs, from the late 18th century to the present day); workdesks for volunteers working on database compilation; room for the library's cataloguing team, who are racing ahead with the completion of the computerised catalogue; a separate studio for photography; and a conservation room, in which book repairs can be carried out in-house for the first time, for which a conservator is being trained.

Improvements to the library will be ongoing. While the offices in London house the principal collection, there is an excellent scientific collection in the library at Wisley, and this is bursting at the seams in the same way the London collection was two years ago. Next on the agenda is rehousing the Wisley Library, and this promises to be both as challenging and as worthy as rehousing the London collection has been.

The lower reading room has ample seating and tables on which to work, and at the east end is a picture window giving a view of the rare books room, adding to the sense of space	Computer terminals at the west end of the room allow access to the library catalogue for fast searches through the vast collection of material

Electronic improvements

Library catalogue
The library catalogue is scheduled to be accessible through the RHS website by the end of 2002. Loan requests can already be made by e-mail at: (library-enquiries@rhs.org.uk).
Computer terminals at the Vincent Square library enable searches to be made within the catalogue for books and periodicals by entering either author name, title, date, subject area and keyword or phrase.

The system currently holds information about 33 percent of the collection throughout the five libraries. The whole collection is scheduled to be catalogued by 2004, and in the meantime books not yet entered can be located by way of a card system located in the lower reading room in Vincent Square.

The database holds extensive information relating to each book, including the library branch at which the copy is held, publishing details and isbn number, and a résumé of topics covered in the book.

Image catalogues
Another part of the computerised catalogue on which work will be beginning shortly is the catalogue of the drawings collection. This should be available on the RHS website from 2004. It will hold a complete list of all artists represented in the Society's collections and the locations of their works. The catalogue records will be accompanied by digital images of most of the drawings.
For the older books in the library, high-resolution scans of selected images are already being made, which will be linked to their catalogue records. The facility, which will only be available at Vincent Square, will include a split-screen display, enabling comparisons to be made between illustrations, and especially between original drawings and the printed illustrations made from them. Some books (especially the rarer and more fragile) will be digitized in their entirety; this will help preserve books by reducing the need for excessive handling.

Brent Elliott is Librarian and Archivist to the RHS

A visit to the Lindley Library
Andrea Loom of The Garden paid a visit to the newly refurbished library and found it welcoming, relaxing and easy to use

The Lindley Library comprises the main library at Vincent Square, London and the Reading Rooms at RHS Gardens Wisley, Hyde Hall and Harlow Carr. In addition, Members can access the Wisley Laboratory Library by appointment. (See Members' Handbook 2001, pp18-9 for details of the facilities available at each of the gardens and opening times.) There are plans to open a Garden Library at RHS Garden Rosemoor in the near future.
The Vincent Square library is open to the general public, although only Members of the RHS may borrow books. Up to three books may be withdrawn for a four-week period and are renewable for a total of four months. For Members unable to visit the library in person, a postal service is available that enables three books to be borrowed for a six-week period, at the cost of the postage both from and for return to the library.
The library collection contains more than 50,000 books; these are easily located either by a computer catalogue (see box, p710), which I found worked extremely quickly, or a manual card system. I tried searching the computer catalogue under the subject heading of bulbs, which yielded 172 results, but this figure will increase once the entire collection has been entered. Rare books can be viewed on request but may not be borrowed.
The picture room houses botanical illustrations together with a few portraits and garden scenes. This collection also includes some photographs and garden plans.
The upper reading room is light and airy, and contains easy chairs and low tables. In this inviting area I settled down to read a selection of the latest periodicals from the 400 different titles currently available, together with many up-to-date nursery and product catalogues and other reference works.
Back issues of periodicals (from about 1800) are kept in mobile storage on the lower floor, and can also be brought out into the main library for readers to view. The archives also contain nursery catalogues, representing more than 7,000 nurseries, many of significant historic value.
An archive of horticultural press clippings on a broad spectrum of topics is accessible on request, and the library holds a small gardening-related video collection and a limited selection of cd-roms (more of these are held at Wisley).
Using the library is now not only straightforward, but it is also an enjoyable and relaxing experience thanks to the calm, atmospherically controlled environment and a feeling of airy spaciousness created by the architecture. It is hard to believe that this haven of peace and serenity is situated in the heart of London but it is a wonderful facility that I would encourage Members to use to the full.

Milestones of the Lindley Library

1804 Horticultural Society of London founded

1806 First books acquired

1817 Library Committee founded

1859 Library sold in a three-day sale at Sotheby's, raising £354. 2s. 0d

1866 John Lindley's collection of books bought as partial replacement for the lost library, with the profits of the 1st International Horticultural Exhibition. The collection forms the nucleus of the current library

1927 Trust Deed revised: all books owned by the RHS are deemed to be part of the Lindley Library

1930 A third floor added to the RHS offices at Vincent Square to accommodate the expanding library

1996 First garden library for Members and the public opened at RHS Garden Wisley

1999 Library moves to temporary accommodation in the basement of the Lawrence Hall

2000 Reading Room opens at RHS Garden Hyde Hall

2001 The RHS merges with the Northern Horticultural Society; library at new RHS Garden Harlow Carr available to Members

2001 Newly refurbished library opens at Vincent Square

Images: David Banks

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