COLLECTIONS IN USE AT THE PALACE LIBRARY
Collections: The public enjoy the newspapers and books available in the Palace Library c1900
The People’s Palace Journal reporting the opening of the Palace Library in 1887 boasted, that it would ‘provide weekly papers, magazines, trade journals, daily papers and 9000 volumes, with additional donations being made weekly’. Strict rules governed the use of the collections, including withdrawing any person marking or damaging books and books were only available for reference purposes. ‘Every reader should remember that he who damages a book, or steals it, is injuring his own property, because the Library belongs to every one who uses it. The books are the property of the nation as much as the trees or the flowers or the seats in a park’. (Palace Journal Vol 1 No 1 Nov 1887).
One of the earliest librarians, Minnie James tried to accommodate the libraries working-class clientele by the acquisition of novels and light reading. The Palace Journal in 1888 acknowledged the poor literacy skills of the general public using the library noting that ‘a certain number of both women and men seem scarcely sufficiently trained to read at all, and are constantly changing their books’. The most popular authors in 1888 were Marryat, Harrison, Ainsworth and Dickens, and one of the most popular publications issued was Punch Magazine.
In 1907 the College was admitted as a College in the University of London, teaching arts, science and engineering. The teaching of arts began in 1905 and this would have been reflected in the collections in the Library, which were at this time housed in the Mile End Old Town Vestry Building.