Times Higher Education has the story of the court-case to decide if the collection of the Warburg Institute can be broken up. This has been a threat for several years, and that it will be resolved in court is a very sad situation – the library is a wonderful resource. I used it extensively while doing the research for The Birth of Territory. Not being a lending library, but having everything on open stacks is a fantastic combination. Here’s what I said about it on this blog back in 2010:

The library is unique both in terms of its collection, which is filled with things that no other library in London has (even the British Library), and its peculiar cataloguing system.

Its main sections are on Action – Orientation – Word – Image… then there are subsections such as the wonderfully named ‘Magic and Science’. Within these, books are ordered chronologically. Primary texts in the history of political thought, which I’ve been using extensively, have some great obscure figures mixed in with Bodin and Hobbes, for instance. Secondary works are shelved separately. They have loads of things in the original languages, loads of secondary literature in other languages, really old books on open shelves, etc.

It can be hard to find things though. First you find out which floor the classmark corresponds to – there was a logic to this, but it’s not quite right now. Then on each floor you look up the three letter part of the classmark to find the shelf-number, and then find that. But the books don’t have the classmark on the spine of the book, but on the front, so the books appear on the shelf as if they were still in a private collection. A lot of pulling books out to find your way and then find the right book can be required. But you find some great chance discoveries along the way. Given this, and that you have to have a good reason to be in there, instead of Senate House library, it’s a unique place to work.