Paddington Library receives visitors from all over the world. They come to use the library’s wide range of services, often revisiting on subsequent trips to London. The library also receives visits from overseas librarians and educationalists who have heard about our community outreach, our Summer Reading Challenge, our homework club and how we engage with young people.
Last Friday we had a very special guest in the form of Paddington Bear, all the way from Darkest Peru. We promised to look after him well, and he brought two friends with him…
His Excellency the Peruvian Ambassador to the UK, Mr. Julio Muñoz-Deacon(accompanied by his wife and Embassy officials) and his Excellency the British Ambassador to Peru, Mr Anwar Choudhury visited together to read a Paddington Bear story to the Under 5’s song and rhyme group.
As you can see from the photos Paddington Bear thoroughly enjoyed his visit and the children were delighted with our special guest.
[Laurence] Pictures courtesy of Gavin Conlon Photography Ltd.
Although I regularly direct library users to newspapers from other countries, it was not until I began researching material for this blog that I really appreciated the full extent of the library service’s coverage! It’s quite something.
A quick search of the Periodicals catalogue (known as WULOP – see below for more information) reveals Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese language newspapers. Other Asian language papers include Bengali, Punjabi and Urdu titles. European languages are represented by French, German, Italian and Spanish titles. America is represented by the European editions of the International New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Some of the foreign titles are also written wholly or partly in English, so provide a useful alternative current affairs perspective for non-multilinguists to use.
Other titles aimed at specific ethnic groups such as The Voice or the Jewish Chronicle, while published in the UK, should not be forgotten as they contain detailed news coverage relating to the West Indies and Middle East respectively, as well as their British coverage.
In addition to these physical copies located within libraries, an enormous number of foreign newspapers can also be read online using the 24/7 online resource Library PressDisplay. We’ve posted about this amazing resource before – see previous posts.
Come in and have a look, or use your library membership card to search Library Press Display – there’s a whole world out there!
As you can see from this image there are several ways of searching for a specific title or titles.
Search by Title – either type a title in the box or use the drop down menu to display an alphabetical list and select from it a specific title. Click on the chosen title to display locations and holdings.
Search by Subject – this drop down menu includes countries, eg: Iran and Iranian. Choosing this will display foreign newspaper titles relevant to that country or region.
Search by Location – this will display all newspaper and periodical titles subscribed to by a specific library.
Search by Keyword – this will find keywords either within a title and/or a subject term assigned to each specific title.
This is the entry for the Sing Tao Daily Chinese newspaper. The catalogue entry displays library locations for this title and also the back issue file length. Note different branches often have different file lengths so use WULOP to discover which library should have the required issue. It is advisable to contact the library before visiting to check whether the specific issue is in stock, as occasionally issues are stolen :-(. A more common reason for a library not to have a specific issue is simply that the newsagent did not receive any copies at all on that particular day. A number of foreign newspapers are imported and then, via wholesalers, sent to newsagents. Poor weather, strikes and other issues can delay or prevent issues from reaching the newsagent.
The thing about our public computer training sessions is that they are attended by the public. Real people, people from outside libraries, who have real lives and urgent things they need to do on computers. This is very good.
For example, I do a session on shopping online – “get the bargains and stay safe”. I prepare a plan of attack, based on my own experience, feedback from previous sessions, together with some essential stuff about safety on the Internet.
I’m not at all bad at this preparation, but after a few minutes of interaction with the people who turn up to the course, things start to fizz. Your average punter doesn’t want to know about online commerce in any theoretical fashion – he/she wants actual fashion, specific goods and the best possible service. It’s all very well me using Amazon as an example, although it’s a very useful example. If someone has heard that Etsy is the go-to place for retro dresses, that’s what we talk about.
I’m not going to give you a lot of coy stuff about not being an expert on retro dresses, because that’s not the point. I can probably help the frock-hunter to search out what they’re looking for, and I can use any selling website to demonstrate how you can protect yourself against unnecessary risk.
I always have a Powerpoint slideshow of screen grabs in reserve, in case we run out of genuine requests and questions. I don’t often have to use it.
Last week saw the release of The Imitation Game starring man of the moment Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, father of modern computer science. Turing was born in Warrington Avenue, Maida Vale (a Blue Plaque at Number 2 now commemorates this) while Joan Clarke, the cryptographer played by Keira Knightley in the film, was another Londoner.
While the mathematical boffins were doing their work in Buckinghamshire, another secret coding operation was going on in Baker Street. This was part of the Special Operations Executive, usually called SOE, a secret organisation formed in July 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements. The SOE headquarters were at 64 Baker Street though they ended up occupying much of the West side of the street.
One of the key activities of the SOE’s London operations was devising safe codes so that their operatives in occupied countries could send messages safely. The head of the coding operations was the remarkable Leo Marks, who wrote about his wartime career in Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker’s War, 1941-45.
Marks was the son of Benjamin Marks, owner of Marks and Co, the antiquarian bookshop later immortalised by Helene Hanff as 84 Charing Cross Road. In his book, Marks gives an interesting insight into what really went on there (for example, Frank Doel, Hanff’s chief correspondent, ran a price-fixing ring with other booksellers).
Marks believed the existing coding system used by the SOE agents was hopelessly insecure being mostly double transposition cyphers based on well-known poems which could be tortured out of captured agents or even recognised by a well-read codebreaker. So his first solution was to use poems he wrote himself.
The most famous of these is The Life that I Have, immortalised in the film Carve her Name with Pride starring Virginia McKenna (based on the book of the same name by r J Minney) about the SOE agent Violette Szabo. There are two splendid monuments to this brave lady in the neighbouring borough of Lambeth, one on the Albert Embankment and another by Stockwell tube station near her childhood home.
Leo Marks’ connection with Westminster continued after the war. In 1960 he wrote the notorious horror film Peeping Tom, directed by Michael Powell, about a young photographer who kills women with a spike attached to his camera and films their deaths. The film caused an outrage at the time – you can read some contemporary reviews in our newspaper archives. Famously, CA Lejeune wrote in The Observer
“It is a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom…I don’t propose to name the players in this beastly picture.”
However, by Mark’s death in 2001, critical opinion had changed and the film is now acclaimed as a cult masterpiece. It was set and partly filmed in Soho and plenty of the locations are still recognisable.
It’s not just Guardian Witness (see ‘Love Letters to Libraries‘) who are celebrating the wonders of the library service at the moment – since 8 November, BBC 6 Music has been doing loads of programmes from, about, and inspired by libraries.
We love this brilliant poem about the local library, read on 6 Music by the author, Scroobius Pip:
Tomorrow, 21 November, is the final day of the celebration:
“On Friday 21 November, Steve Lamacq (16:00 – 19:00) takes his programme to the British Library in London. The first time a radio show has ever broadcast live from the national library of the United Kingdom.
The programme will be broadcast from the Entrance Hall of the library, which houses one of the most fascinating and comprehensive Sound Archives in the world. While there, Steve will be exploring its extensive Sound Archive – home to 19th-century cylinders to CDs, Beatles’ manuscripts, 2000 complete John Peel programmes, original demos by The Who – as well as a one off Capital Radio show hosted by Jonny Rotten himself, John Lydon.
Steve will be speaking to the brains behind this great British institution and taking a trip around the current exhibitions, which include modern musical artefacts such as original Beatles lyrics on the back of envelopes.
Sample supremoes, DJ Yoda and Public Service Broadcasting will create brand new tracks from the library’s Sound Archive. Public Service Broadcasting will take listeners on a tour and explain how information films and archive footage inspire their music making; while DJ Yoda has the three hours of the show to produce and perform a brand new track, sampled from their extensive Sound Archive.”
The immortal words of Joni Mitchell say a lot about the current appreciation for a much loved institution all over the world, generated by the closure, threatened closure or scaling down of hundreds of libraries. And so it should be. Libraries are relevant and fabulous – as you, our readers, know! We should all be celebrating them, show our support for them and protest against their passing using whatever media.
A short film to look out for – upcoming release 2015 – is Jason LaMotte’s ‘The Library’. It is a story about first love and the sadness that surrounds dementia but the library – backdrop to the story – is just as important an element of the film as the main characters and plot. Sadly, due to technical reasons, and although Jason loved the space, this film could not be shot at Westminster Reference Library (they went for Tonbridge School in Kent). There is also ‘Spine’, playwright’s Clara Brennan take on, among other things, library closures. A powerful one-woman piece that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival this year.
And then there are brilliant initiatives such as the GuardianWitness’ Love Letters to Libraries which took off big time this week. Here, people share tributes to their favourite place of study, research, entertainment, leisure and rest.
Westminster Reference Library regularly pops up in blogs and tweets, such as this excellent recent entry from deskoverlondon, delighted at having found a quiet study place in the madness of the West End, but thanks to ‘Love Letters…’ the library has also got a couple of VIP mentions highlighting its art initiatives as well as praising the services provided.
Mayfair Library is another much-loved Westminster library which has received a Love Letter in the form of ‘I am a Mayfair Elephant’, but is your own favourite library missing? Perhaps your career turned on some information imparted at Marylebone Library? Your children cultivated a a love of reading at Paddington Children’s Library? Or the events at Westminster Music Library gave you a reason to learn an instrument?
There’s still a few days to contribute your own love letter to the site – we’d love to see it.
In this anniversary year of the outbreak of the Great War, communities across the UK have been commemorating the lives of those who lived through and died in the conflict.
For our part at Westminster Music Library, we in the past year have been exploring the music from the wartime period in our project Behind the Lines; and our participation in Superact’s Last Post Project was an apt culmination.
Fittingly stationed between Remembrance Sunday and Remembrance Day was our poignant “The Last Post” evening. It was our great pleasure to be involved in this project, the initiative of arts organisation Superact (with support from the Department for Communities and Local Government, and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund). Ours was just one of over 230 such events taking place up and down the country between 4 and 18 November, all featuring an all-important rendition of that well-established remembrance tradition: the Last Post. More information can be found at www.thelastpostproject.org.uk.
The Last Post began life humbly, as a bugle call to mark the end of the day in military camps in an era before soldiers had watches. Over the course of the nineteenth century it started to take on a memorial role, being played at the funerals of those killed in battle. During the First World War, as the numbers of those dying grew rapidly, this haunting tune was played with increasing regularity, and now has a central role in the remembrance of the war dead.
Interest in our Last Post event was huge and we were soon so fully booked it was standing room only! The audience of local residents was augmented with the forces of South Westminster and Church Street Community Choirs whom we were delighted to welcome to add extra depth and harmony to the singing. The singing was brilliantly led by Ruth with fine accompaniment from Anthony on the piano.
The evening began with a sing-along featuring all the old favourite First World War songs. Audience, staff and the choirs were in good voice as we launched into It’s a long way to Tipperary and Pack up your troubles – classic uplifting songs from early in the war, reflecting the nation’s optimism and hope in a swift resolution. It soon transpired, though, that the war would last longer than any had dared to conceive. The country’s musical output became more reflective, giving voice to a greater determination and perseverance. Our programme represented this trend with inclusion of the beautiful and wonderfully nostalgic If you were the only girl in the world,Keep the home fires burning and Roses of Picardy.
We then belted out Oh! It’s a lovely war from the satirical music hall show which, when written, tapped into the increasing cynicism as the war dragged on. When the Americans entered the war they brought their popular songs over with them and we joined in rousing versions of Over there and There’s a long, long trail.
To give our singing voices some rest, our songs were interspersed with readings from Ruth. We heard poems and letters home – some humorous, some sad, but all poignant, reflecting the varying experiences of those who lived both through the trenches and on the home front.
Our final song was, perhaps inevitably, the ever popular Good-bye-ee, but the evening’s climax was still to come. As the applause died down, hidden from sight behind the bookshelves, came the words of Laurence Binyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’, movingly recited by Andrew. You could hear a pin drop. After a moment’s pause we heard the opening notes of the Last Post. The audience spontaneously stood in respect as this ever-moving bugle call, brilliantly played by Jon, broke through the still silence. As the music came to an end, we paused for two minutes’ reflection.
And so our tribute to the First World War generation came to a close. The contrast between the lively sing along and the intensity of the Last Post at the end was stark and heartrending.
Here are some comments from members of the audience:
“A lovely evening with readings and songs and a very moving Last Post”
“Wonderful to have a singing event! Very nostalgic and very moving”
“Wonderful – released all sorts of emotions- excellent readings by Ruth. Whole concert was well thought out and performed”
Finally, we would like to extend our gratitude to South Westminster and Church Street Community Choirs for their support.
As the brilliant Paddington Book Festival runs into its seventh week, Barrie Taylor – Chair of the Paddington Festival group – tells us how he first came up with the idea:
“The book festival felt like a natural extension of the popular Paddington Festival. This film festival in Paddington, which has been running for two years, had been a great success and I saw an opportunity for a festival celebrating the written word, in our libraries and in the communities of Paddington. This was how the idea of a book festival was first conceived.”
If that wide range of subjects wasn’t enough, coming next are events for both children and adults: former Home Secretary and successful author Alan Johnson is at the Beethoven Centre next week [event now FULLY BOOKED], followed by ‘How to Write Everything’ author David Quantick at Paddington Library.
Paddington Library receives visitors from all over the world. They come to use the library’s wide range of services, often revisiting on subsequent trips to London. The library also receives visits from overseas librarians and educationalists who have heard about our community outreach, our Summer Reading Challenge, our homework club and how we engage with young people.
The thing about our public computer training sessions is that they are attended by the public. Real people, people from outside libraries, who have real lives and urgent things they need to do on computers. This is very good.
Marks believed the existing coding system used by the SOE agents was hopelessly insecure being mostly 
As the brilliant Paddington Book Festival runs into its seventh week, Barrie Taylor – Chair of the Paddington Festival group – tells us how he first came up with the idea:
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