The British Museum in My Time

Abstract

In writing in the May number of LIBRARY REVIEW of some of my memories of my early days in the British Museum's Department of Printed Books there was much which I had perforce to pass over. I mentioned some of my contemporaries in the Catalogue Room in 1903, but I said nothing of my colleagues and good friends who arrived a few years later. One of these was that learned cartographer (as he became) and delightful Irishman, whose death we have only recently had to lament, Edward Lynam; in his charge the Map Room acquired a new importance, as rather earlier the Music Room had under Barclay Squire. Another, happily still with us, was Arthur Ellis, long Superintendent of the Reading Room, and now, though retired, still about his old haunts and still helpful to all. And, to mention no others, in the year or two before the War of 1914–18, the present Librarian of the National Library of Scotland would brighten the Catalogue Room on Saturday mornings by appearing in London Scottish kilt and sporran and a', in readiness for the afternoon's parade.

Citation

ESDAILE, A. (1951), "The British Museum in My Time", Library Review, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 228-232. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012173