March ramblings

[kalypso_v]

I've been very bad at keeping up with my ramblings in various parts of the country since we went to press four weeks ago. This post is intended to catch up with assorted picture spam from March.

Comments

[quarryquest]

That has all changed quite a bit. When I was at Manchester Poly I did my first library placement at MPL (before I went to the BBC to have my bum pinched by Stuart Hall for the second one). I stood in that central bit when I was on the desk and ran up and down the stairs getting books from four floors of stacks. They seem to have removed them all from the floor below the reading room because there was no cafe there then - just miles and miles of book shelves.

[kalypso_v]

The cafe is very definitely new! The theatre's moved too - it's going to a new building shared with the Cornerhouse cinema and arts centre. I'm not quite sure what's in the theatre space - that seemed to be one of the few bits not open to the public, though we could walk through the bit that used to be the box office and bar, so maybe there are still more stacks in there? And there are lots of computers everywhere, which seemed to cover a lot of functions - eg searching for books throughout the collection, or applying to borrow, and it looked as if registered users could just log in anyway.

[shimere277]

What stunning pictures of the cathedral! And I love the bookshelf with John Dee.

[kalypso_v]

From 1595 to 1608, Dee was Warden of the foundation which eventually became Manchester Cathedral!

[vjezkova]

Thank you very much for all these interesting things/news.
I think the cathedral in Ely is awesome!!! Is it Norman architecture, at least partly?
The lantern and the fan-like vault must be Gothic? Oh, so lovely!!!
You must be proud of the Library!!! It is an awesome place and I had to smile over ST books (I am an old fan of ST TOS).
And - as usual - I am excited over your Peterloo anniversary - you are awesome!!!!!

[kalypso_v]

Yes, I think they began the cathedral in the 11th century, though it continued for a few hundred years - so it's partly Romanesque and partly Gothic.

[sallymn]

That light on the reading room was just magical... (I have a total thing for coloured glass of all sorts, so stained glass windows light my life :)

[kalypso_v]

You mean the light on the stairs? That's actually outside the Reading Room - the stairs are in the building that rings it. I suppose you wouldn't want footsteps on the stairs while you were reading. It was very pretty, though I couldn't get most of the people on the stairs excited about it.