Site: Kew Botanical Gardens Library and Archive
Maintains both a collection for the Kew staff and an archival collection.
The Kew Library and Archive has a staff of approximately twenty people. Although the library has been there for 170 years, no formal decision was ever made to create the library. The gardens were started under George III. Victoria gave the gardens to the nation. The first director brought a significant collection to Kew. Several people left their collections to Kew.
The collection ranges from the fourteenth century to the present. Although most of the material is on plants and fungi, they also have some arts and humanities material on topics such as the history of Kew and other botanical gardens and biographies of relavant figures.
The users are mostly the students and staff of Kew. They tend to have approximately 120 PhD students, 60 MSE students, and 45 horticulural students or apprentices at any given time. Kew also gets researchers from all over the world. The archives are also available to the public, who often use them for researching family history.
Kew's book collection is very well cataloged. The archives, not so much. Illustrations are cataloged by plant family. As a result, it can be difficult to search by other elements such as geographic location. Until the collection is fully cataloged and can be cross-referenced, it is difficult to do anything else with the collection.
In addition to the main library, Kew also has satellite sites. For example, there is an Orchid Library near where the orchids are grown and studied. Only students and staff members are able to borrow items, and they are not supposed to take them off the Kew premises. Unfortunately, some people tend to accumulate items in their offices.
We were also able to view some lovely items from the Kew archive.
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