Bishopsgate Library is open to everyone. There is no need to make an appointment to visit the Library, or to bring proof of address or ID with you. Their special collections are kept in closed access and need to be consulted in their Researchers’ Area.
The Bishopsgate Library also holds a small open access general reference collection including daily newspapers. Visitors are welcome to use the Library for private study, along with their computers and photocopying facilities. Personal laptops can also be used and there is free wifi access.
The Freud Museum, at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, was the home of Sigmund Freud and his family when they escaped Austria following the Nazi annexation in 1938. It remained the family home until Anna Freud, the youngest daughter, died in 1982. The centrepiece of the museum is Freud’s study, preserved just as it was during his lifetime.
The Museum engages actively with Sigmund and Anna’s psychoanalytic legacy in contemporary ideas, art, and culture, while caring for the house and collections.
The National Art Library at the V&A is a major public reference library on the fine and decorative arts, as well as being the curatorial department for the art, craft and design of the book at the V&A. The Library holds over a million items and the catalogue provides information about all forms of material held by the Library, both the documentary collections of literature about the arts and design, and the material, both historic and contemporary, which now forms part of the V&A Word and Image department’s curatorial collections. The catalogue has details of materials such as:
Books and periodicals
Exhibition catalogues
Auction sale catalogues
Archives
Manuscripts
The Stuart Hall Library is a valuable reference resource for students, researchers and all interested readers and is one of the leading UK libraries in the field of international visual art. It holds a substantial collection of monographs, catalogues, periodicals, DVDs, CDs, slides and other media on visual arts and culture.
The collection focuses on contemporary art from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the work of British artists from diverse cultural backgrounds. The collection includes over 4,000 exhibition catalogues, 1,000 monographs – covering cultural, political, gender and media studies – and over 140 periodicals.
Library visitors can access the collection through the online catalogue. Titles can be searched by author, keyword, title, curator, artist or individual contributor.
For nearly two hundred years The London Library has played a central role in the intellectual and cultural life of the nation and has enjoyed an association with an impressive range of members and supporters.
The London Library holds a remarkable collection of over one million books and periodicals and around 8000 new volumes are added annually. It includes some astonishing rarities and a uniquely eclectic mix of titles.
Membership is open to everyone and provides the opportunity to browse and borrow from a collection of extraordinary range and depth. Members have open access to 17 miles of books, and outstanding reading and working spaces.
The Poetry Library is the most comprehensive and accessible collection of poetry from 1912 in Britain and also the major library for modern and contemporary poetry funded by the Arts Council England.
Poetry is available in many formats: books, pamphlets, audio cassette, CD, video and DVD for reference and loan; magazines, press cuttings, photographs, posters and postcards for reference.
The library contains 200,000 items and is growing all the time and an exhibition space featuring works by artists engaging with the Library’s collection, text and poetry in general, and projects and events at Southbank Centre.
The School of Life is devoted to developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture. We offer a variety of programmes and services concerned with how to live wisely and well.
The Women’s Library documents all aspects of women’s lives, with a particular emphasis on the lives of women in the UK and the great political, economic and social changes of the past 150 years.
The print collections include over 60,000 books and pamphlets and 3,000 journal titles. The archive and museum collections include over 500 archives and 5,000 museum objects, including photographs, posters, badges, banners, textiles and ceramics.