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The British Library

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Anonymous

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Ok, i'm not sure if i'm immagining this particular snippet of information or not, but i seem to remember hearing that the basement of the British library contained a collection of banned/forbidden books.
Can anyone confirm or deny this for me?
 
dont know about "banned" but i think they have "restricted cabinets" chock full of red hot porn and such...access only for ligitimate "reserchers" who wont be corupted by the stuff!
 
I don't know about the British Library, but I've heard stories about various university libraries, having collections of porn, locked away in restricted shelves (usually in some obscure tower or corner of the building) - the fact I've heard the same story about different places suggests it's a UL.
 
I thought the 'Forbidden Cabinet' at the British Library was a thing of the past?
Obviously, the myth lives on...
;)
 
certainly the writer of "The Erotic Arts" (Peter Webb)had access to the restricted cabinets of the British Museaum as well as haveing his house raided by the Vice squad in 1975... (interesting what one can buy at teh Tate gallery shop on a school trip ah!)
 
Isn't a copy of everything that's published in this country sent to the British Library, in which case they'd have quite a collection of 'specialist' publications'?
 
I also believe that they've been the recipients of some 'personal collections' as well.
;)
 
Legal Deposit in the British Library

Introduction

Publishers and distributors in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland have a legal obligation to send one copy of each of their publications to the Legal Deposit Office of the British Library within one month of publication.

The right of the British Library to receive one copy of every publication distributed in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland is based on the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 and the Irish Copyright Act 1963 (currently being replaced by similar provisions in the Copyright and Related Rights Bill of 1999).

The principle that a national printed archive should be maintained by a legal requirement to deposit has been well established for almost four centuries and has great advantages for authors and publishers:

Publications deposited with the British Library are made available to users in its various reading rooms, are preserved for the benefit of future generations, and become part of the national heritage.

Publications are recorded in the British Library Public Catalogue (BLPC), which is accessible on the World Wide Web, and which will remain an essential research tool for generations to come.
Most of the books and new serial titles are listed in the British National Bibliography (BNB), which is used by librarians and the book trade for stock selection, is available in printed, CD-ROM and online formats, and has a world-wide distribution [...]

Categories Exempt from Legal Deposit Regulations
Publishers are not required to deposit the following categories of material unless a written demand for them is made by the British Library:

Internal reports
Examination papers
Local transport timetables
Appointment diaries; wall and desk calendars; posters

[...]

Other Legal Deposit Libraries
The deposit regulations of the Copyright Acts 1911 and 1963, with slightly different conditions, apply also to the other five legal deposit libraries:

the Bodleian Library, Oxford
the University Library, Cambridge
the National Library of Scotland
the Library of Trinity College, Dublin
the National Library of Wales

http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/legaldeposit.html
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i.e. Yes - They will have all the porn.

grabs his BL readers card (with awful photo) and hails nearest cab...

edit: Anyone really bored can read this: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s1/gnl/chap1.htm
 
"Publications deposited with the British Library are made available to users in its various reading rooms, are preserved for the benefit of future generations, and become part of the national heritage. "


im an outlaw then.
 
Im bored but, hahaha not that bored :rolleyes:

But that says that the books are available to the public, so it still leaves the question about a vault full of forbiden por.. i mean forbiden knowledge, does it or does it not exist (def sounds like a UL to me) :D
 
what do u mean by "forbiden" books?... Anarchist Handbook or some such?... one can still get them im sure... the Government in Uk dont cencor books.
 
No censorship at all?
I wasn't aware of that. I would have thought that there would be some point where they would step in and ban a book or something?
As for forbidden books, it was just another way of saying banned basically, sorry if this caused any confusion.
 
Book banning was abandoned late sixties?... Lady Chattery trials etc made the law look as stupid is it is and they sort of shuffled off to a corner on censorship... maybe some may fall foul of some other law tho, like raciel hatered but basicly one can say what every you like in print.
 
Its mentioned in the film "The Devil Rides Out". Christopher Lee's character spends a day researching occult knowledge in a section of BL that is kept locked up.
 
A friend of a friend (uh oh) claims that his father was actually a security guard in the British Library and sometimes was asked to guard scholars as they read these censored books. He says that they were not allowed anything at the desk with them except a page marker. I think I remember him saying that there had to be two guards in the room at the same time.

My friend is usually an honest person, but you never know.
 
more likely they were very old books...and they didnt want ink or greasy fingers on them... or them to be knicked.
 
I've heard something similar regarding the catacombs under the Vatican-anyone know anything about that?
 
Eris said:
I've heard something similar regarding the catacombs under the Vatican-anyone know anything about that?
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yep but im only repeating what ive been told.

a mate of mine, was doing research in the vatican library (about what i dont know). when he came across some books that werent on his "research list", he started to peruse them (as you do), when some jesuits* came into the room, bundled him out of the library for the day, and removed the books.

he was also given a bollocking for "reading books that wernt on his list"

how much of this is true i dont know







*his word :)hmm: the popes mib?)
 
All university libraries and many public ones have a "forbidden books" section - they're called Reference Only and Rare Books! It's also possible for books that are high theft risks to be put on restricted access; this has happened to the De Camp Necronomicon (see that thread), which as you can imagine does nothing to halt the "Necronomicon is real" rumor.

My own experience dealing with restricted access rooms is that the librarians are eager to have them used and access is only restricted in order to protect the collection, which is likely to consist not only of weighty and valuable medieval tomes but of fragile ephemera, personal papers, and specialist publications with low print runs. When I was researching *Switching Well,* a time travel story for which I needed lots of century-old local data, the rare book librarians got interested in my project and kept bringing me things I hadn't known to ask for - fire insurance maps, street directories, century-old tourist brochures, that sort of thing. A rare book librarian's life is a lonely one, cataloging and storing things that may or may not ever get looked at, and they love having their collections used as much as any other librarian.

The Vatican forbidden books archive is, I understand, a collection of books on The Index - books that at one time or another some pope has declared unsuitable for Catholic reading. Galileo's Starry Messenger remained on the Index long after the church gave up protesting the heliocentric system. The collection would be available to researchers under certain conditions - if you don't have rules to permit acccess, you wouldn't bother making the collection to begin with, would you? You'd just burn the books and be done with them.

Although it's certainly possible, even likely given the peculiar history of sexual attitudes, that some libraries have a restricted access porn section available only to card-carrying adults or members of a certain faculty or whatever criterion the library staff see fit, it's only recently that occultism per se has come to be perceived as a public problem. During the Age of Reason, after all, it was scarcely conceivable a) that anyone would try to summon a demon or b) that anything would happen if someone did. Even in Lovecraft's stories, the vile books were originally sequestered in rare book rooms, and only experience taught Miskatonic librarians to be more careful than that.

Ironically, something like forbidden occult libraries are beginning to be created in the fiction sections of American school and public libraries, since the conflict between parents who can't tell fantasy from reality and librarians who wish to serve their entire constituencies, not just the anti-literary whackos, is sometimes resolved (not by the librarians!) by placing books like Harry Potter and Narnia in restricted access sections! A *very* bad idea, but I'll spare you the rant.

Land of the free home of the brave my grumble grumble spit...
 
Some official reports are kept locked away from all but "serious" historians because they are deemed to disturbing for the casual reader. A friend of mine had to apply for special permission to see the nineteenth century reports into conditions at the Fishpool Workhouse (now Townley's Hospital, Bolton) - things were obvously very grim there. Some one else old me about research they had done in Hull into the effects of the WW2 bombing - most of those reports were again repressed in order not to undermine morale. I did some research in the local study archives myself and was surprised by the devestation in some old photos. I sometimes get the impression that the city is still being kept secret in order to avoid undermining morale!
 
When I worked many years ago for the public libraries of a London borough, I discovered there were as Peni mentions some books that were part of a "Special Collection" . One borrower had obviously found a Helmut Newton Photography book - I think it was "Sleepless Nights" in the catalogue and asked for it at the counter. He seemed quite amused/bemused to find it had to be retrieved by a member of staff, from the Special Collection downstairs away from the public.

Some books were considered to be more prone to either be stolen. have pages/illustrations torn out or be vandalised. Before the use of electronic stock control gates as most have now, IIRC I was told about a third of stock was lost by theft!
 
And there's a very serious problem with books like old atlases being vandalized - a quiet carrel, a razor blade, an innocuous-looking folder, and you've got an antique map suitable for framing and sale on the open market. I read a book not long ago about the map-theft problem, which libraries are pretty much on their own in solving because the police are disinclined to take it seriously. Rare book mutilation doesn't rate compared to violent crimes and both libraries and police departments tend to be underfunded.
 
Oh, don't!:rolleyes:

I recently got a copy of 'The Male Nude in Art' from our central library and half the photos and reproductions had been cut out with a stanley knife.
:mad:
 
With regard to the Vatican, aren't they rumoured to have a large collection of pornography, as well as unseen paintings that are considered 'too racy' to go on public display? Has anyone else heard this?
 
Whistling Jack said:
With regard to the Vatican, aren't they rumoured to have a large collection of pornography, as well as unseen paintings that are considered 'too racy' to go on public display? Has anyone else heard this?
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I've heard the story. There's also the story about the room that contains the penises that were removed from classical statues and other nude statues (the offending bits being substituted with glued on fig leaves or bits of drapery).

Actually, there was TV doc last year about artefacts, from classical sites mainly - including places like Pompeii, that really were kept in locked collections in museums because they were considered too rude to display. (Yes, I realise that most museums possess far more stuff than they can ever hope to display).
 
Timble said:
Actually, there was TV doc last year about artefacts, from classical sites mainly - including places like Pompeii, that really were kept in locked collections in museums because they were considered too rude to display.
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I was at Naples Museum about four years ago, when they had just reopened their so called: "Special Cabinet". We needed a timed ticket to see it & it was joked at the time that we needed to be of mature age & good character to get in, but they were selling catalogs in various languages for the place, at the front desk. I've still got a copy somewhere!!!!

Quiet simply it said more about the minds of those who had restricted access in the past than the ancient Romans.

At Pompaii, the "House of the Brothers", I think it was called, had a few paintings of Phallus, which had been covered up in the past & only shown to "adult" males, at least acording to a couple of the ladies who had been there thirty years ago & some of the pictures had stratigicly placed non faded areas, where concealing boards had once been placed!!!!

General feeling was that it was a way of extracting a few more lira out of the visitor!!!!!!
 
When I worked at the BL Printed Books certainly had a Restricted Cabinet - separate from the incunabula and other valuable, vulnerable books. Access to both was restricted to researchers who could produce good academic reasons for their study.

Manuscripts did not have such a system the valuable and pornographic Mss were kept in the "Specials" and again for which a reference (usually from the on duty Academic in charge of the Students Room). Truly valuable stuff (eg Malories Morte D'Arthur, Beowulf and the Lindisfarne Gospels) were kept in Z Safe when not on display.

Oriental PB and Mss used a similar system. Incidentely if the Lovecraftian "Necronomicon" ever existed it would be on OMPB and Mss

Prints and Drawings and Maps were part of the British Museum and had their own system of control.
 
Whistling Jack said:
With regard to the Vatican, aren't they rumoured to have a large collection of pornography, as well as unseen paintings that are considered 'too racy' to go on public display? Has anyone else heard this?
Click to expand...

there is the quite famouse "Caravagio bathroom".. a room decorated by Caravagion within the vatican. Caravagion was gay and so was the pope who commisioned it, it aparently consists of a lot of very prity boys cavorting. It is thought to be of such artistic significance that the Vatican cant bring its self to destroy it but neither can it let it be shown..
 
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