Pop Culture Library ReviewJan 19

Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

Pop Culture Library ReviewApr 2, 2025

Recently added titles (March 2025)

Marshall in the library, in a prison, in the Common Side Effects episode “Blowfish”, which came out this month.

Building upon the titles listed for July/August, September, October,  November, and December 2021, and January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December of 2022, and January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December of 2023, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September,  October, November, and December of 2024, and January and February of this year, this post notes recent titles with libraries or librarians in popular culture which I’ve come across in the past month. Each of these has been watched or read during the past month. No other entries with libraries (or librarians) to add for this past month, but I did come across some in anime, animation, films, and others in webcomics and manga. There may be spoilers for these episodes, so be aware.

Animated series recently added to this page

  • Common Side Effects, “Blowfish” (s1 ep 7)

I’ve been watching this series since it came out, but I never expected there to be a library scene. In this scene, Marshall Cuso is in the library, in prison, drawing a diagram of the foot of fellow prisoner Hector, and writing down how he will try to heal it. He meets a fellow mycologist there, who volunteers at the library, and is praises the power of his magic mushrooms. She asks where the fiber is coming from and she becomes his drug dealer in a sense. Later, she gives him a book, in the library, and tells him he will be getting the drug that night, in a move that seems very cloak-and-dagger. Some time later, he thinks of how the blue-angel magic mushrooms are formed by the poop of his tortoise, Socrates, and he takes a drug given to him by the fellow mycologist so he can fake his own death.

I have written about prison libraries before, noting in March 2023, the unnamed prison librarian (voiced by Tress MacNeille) in The Simpsons episode “Dial “N” for Nerder”, when Lisa imagines herself as an older prisoner, with this librarian passing her jail cell with a trolley of books, asking whether she had Joyce Carol Oates. The librarian said she only had Danielle Steel, causing Lisa to scream in terror. At the time I said that that librarian was “perhaps the only prison librarian that I’ve ever seen in animation. Hopefully I see more in the future.” In another post in May 2023, I gave examples of prison libraries and/or prison librarians in various films, noting that such prison librarians, whether in film or TV, are “a mix of exaggeration and accuracy,” that real-life prisons are unlikely to “provide more than what is legally required” in their services, giving access to inmates, while librarians are torn between duties to the latter and their role as “information gatekeepers.” Since then, I’ve noted that libraries are said to be “key tools” for getting people out of prison, especially when it comes to prison libraries (which are little known of in countries such as Portugal), and the partnership between libraries and police departments.

I further stated, in a post in September 2024, that libraries are:

while…libraries can help those who were released from prison “re-enter” society, they serve an “instrumental role” in the criminal system, which…undoubtedly interlocks with oppressive systems…libraries are posed as something to disrupt pipelines to prison, but what if, sometimes, they support those pathways, and push people into prison? After all, libraries, especially in the U.S. South, upheld racial segregation, and denied opportunities for Black people to become librarians, leading to various protests (including sit-ins)….when books are seen as “longer fit for use at public libraries”, they are often sent to prisons or jails as “an act of charity”…arguably, libraries are within structurally racist systems,

Anime series recently added to this page

  • From Bureaucrat to Villainess, “Dad Cross-dresses” (s1 ep 10)
  • From Bureaucrat to Villainess, “Dad Gets into an Elegant Pickle” (s1 ep 11)
  • K-On!, “Planning Discussion” (s2 ep 26 [extra])
  • Love Live! Sunshine!!, “The Time Left” (s2 ep 7) [Updated]
  • Love Live! Sunshine!!, “Sea of Light” (s2 ep 12) [New!]
  • The 100 Girlfriends, “Peekaboy-Meets-Girl” (s2 ep 10)

I updated the entry for “The Time Left” when writing my review for this series and added the other at the same time. In the latter episode, Hanamaru reads a book in the library briefly, a small book, and later tells Chika she wants to win, no matter what.

In the above noted episode of From Bureaucrat to Villainess, Grace tells Anna about the rule for the student council: it requires cross-gender casting in plays, meaning that men have to play women, and women have to play men, meaning that both genders have to crossdress, hence the title of the episode. Grace says they can’t ignore the mother because her mother made the rule, as they both talk in the Royal Academy Library, and the children of Grace/Kenzaburo, see the scene play out on their TV, and theorize that they are seeing an actual world which happens to resemble the game, not a game world. Grace worries about some of the boys crossdressing as women, while noting that there is appeal. They later talk to one of the princes, Lucas Vierge, who is on the student council, and Virgile’s younger brother, and also found out about the rule. It is decided that Grace/Kenzaburo will crossdress too, as will Anna, who wants to see Grace/Kenzaburo crossdress as a man.

Library scene from the tenth episode of From Bureaucrat to Villainess, with Anna and Grace pictured.

In another episode of the above series, episode 11, Grace finds Anna in the school library where she was compiling information on plays from library books, so they she can put together the script for the play they are putting on, and she has been there all day. She ends up being hungry and falls over, making Anna worry like no one’s business. She is later brought to the nurse’s room to rest.

Then in The 100 Girlfriends episode “Peekaboy-Meets-Girl,” Rentaro, Hakare, Karane, Kusuri, and Iku go looking in the a well-maintained, by dark, library storage room for Shizuka, as they continue their hide-and-seek game in the school. They find Nano and Shizuka inside a cardboard box and are overcome by the cuteness.

Then there’s an episode of K-On!, which I’m adding as I recently finished watching this series. In one scene of the episode, “Planning Discussion,” specifically in part of a promo video put together for the light music club, a female student blushes, saying she thinks the members of the light music club are “funny people” while she stands in the school library. The library is briefly shown, in this very short scene. However, the library comes up again in the film. Here’s a screenshot of that scene that I took:

Unnamed schoolgirl with glasses shown in the school library in the above mentioned episode of K-On!

Previously, I mentioned K-On! in my posting about the fictional libraries and value of studying, which examines many other animated series, noting the only other episode in the series which features a library scene, specifically in the episode “Finals.” In that episode, Yui studies with her friends in the school library for finals. Later, her friend, Azu-nyan, brings her there so she can further focus on studying. A librarian, presumably a student librarian, is shown sitting at the information desk, during the episode.

Comics recently added to this page

  • Demon ‘n’ Luv, “We Eat Fish” (ep. 43)
  • Vixen: NYC Vol. 2, p. 34-38

The first comic listed here is from a boy’s love webcomic I recently started reading. In this issue, a demon sits in the great library warehouse, is asked about Norway (where he claimed he is from) from Sam, a skeptical friend of Luv, and he clearly shows he has no idea what he is talking about… not one bit. Luc tries to give him some hints to help him talk to Sam. She later asks Luv if he is okay, and he is about to say that demon is a demon, but he is cut off.

As I noted in my post noting the recently added titles last month, only a select number of issues from Vixen: NYC are available on Webtoon. So, I purchased some of the volumes as a result. Volume 2 of this comic contains issues 10-19, and I previously noted how Episode 11 (can no longer be read on Webtoon), has a library scene. I also updated what I originally wrote about the library scene, from:

Vixen talks to a guy she thinks is stalking her, the same one from episode 4, in the library but its actually Beast Boy, who is a member of the Teen Titans.

This entry has now been updated to:

Vixen, stressed from hearing about the release of Kwesi, and insisting she is fine to her parents, studies in the library. She comes across the same person who was seemingly stalking her in the library. He clarifies that he was asking “weird questions” about animals because he is Beast Boy, a member of the Teen Titans. She doesn’t believe him so he transforms into a cat. Their talk, involving Beast Boy suggesting she talk to Batman, is interrupted when he is called off to deal with “hero business.”

Films recently added to this page

  • K-On! the Movie

I was actually expecting to have zero entries for this month, but this film proved me wrong. This film branches from the Japanese animated series, K-On!, which focuses on four young high school girls, Yui Hirasawa, Mio Akiyama, Ritsu Tainaka, and Tsumugi Kotobuki who are members of a light music club at their all-girls school, and are later joined by a younger member Azusa Nakano, with all of them hanging out in the club room, either having sweets and tea, or playing music, which they later perform. In the film, the four girls, Yui, Mio, Ritsu, and Tsumugi, who are soon to graduate from their school, go on a graduation trip to London, England, hoping to do sightseeing, including visiting musical sights along the way, like Abbey Road, or the homes of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, and play two live gigs, while they think of a special song they want to perform for Azusa as a going away present. Early in the film, the school library of their all-girls school, is briefly shown in passing, but later in the film they visit the King’s Library (now called the Enlightenment Gallery) where they see a replica of the Rosetta Stone (the real stone is at the another part of the British Museum under glass), remembering back to when a replica was used when their school put on a performance of Romeo & Juliet, after the gravestone of Juliet went missing.

One of the library scenes in which the girl wants to see then movie (promoting their band) shows, and this is shown early in the film. The other library scene is in Britain.

Correction to the above: The Rosetta Stone is at the British Museum, not the British library. However, in the movie it is shown in a library setting, i.e. a library room. As I read more, it was clear that a replica is at the King’s Library of the British Museum, which is exactly what is depicted in the film! The latter is confirmed by the British Museum entry which says a replica is in that library, and without a cast, so people can touch it. The King’s Library is now called Enlightenment Gallery, according to the British Museum.

Other entries recently added to this page

  • The Art of Amphibia

I received this in the mail this month. On one page (page 65), about the episode “Trip to the Archives,” which was part 2 of a season one episode (#13), it quotes Amphibia background designer Philip Vose, background designer, saying:

“Growing up, I knew I was never going to be a big-brained intellectual or scholar. But, as it turns out, you can just draw and paint things that make it seem like you are, like this decorative library and classy portrait. Fooled myself even. It’s one of the most satisfying episodes I had the privilege to work on, detailing all the bits that make it feel academically smart and historically interesting.”

While they say all this, the episode still confuses archives for libraries, and this quote doesn’t help matters! I have mentioned Amphibia a bunch of times on this blog, like here and here in 2020, and noted the library scene in “All In,” along with another in the episode “Lost in Newtopia,” with Marcy and King Andreas visiting a library in that episode, and they are in biggest and most comprehensive library in the kingdom, as they go through books, trying to find out more about the music box which brought Marcy, Sasha, and Anne to Amphibia, with this library likely having some form of organization and classification of individuals. As for the scene in “All In,” Marcy, while controlled by the Core and as a part of Darcy (Dark Marcy), she is in a memoryscape of sorts, and is guided to this library. There are at least 11 assistants there. She meets Aldrich, who welcomes her to the Core’s inner sanctum. Marcy wonders where she is, and it all disappears, leading her into a fantasy world which supposedly has everything she ever wanted.

However, I’ve never written about the episode “Trip to the Archives” on here. Rather, I have written about it on my sister blog, where I criticized the depiction of archives in the episode in a post I wrote in 2020, which I stand by. Since then, I mentioned it briefly in posts, like those here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, especially noting the confusion of libraries and archives, and that it could be called a repository, with no archivists shown, even though “someone has to go in there and organize the books, the scrolls, and other artifacts inside,” with it implied that this town archives is abandoned. In fact, an archivist character would have helped the protagonists find what they were looking for and would have saved them a lot of time instead of them searching for it themselves. Furthermore, the archives itself is mired in stereotypes, as it is underground and is described by one character as “dustier than Dusty’s dustbin.”

As Arlene Schmuland notes, many fictional archives are located in basements, accounting for the perception that archives are “dirty and ill-lit,” with the basement locations used “to represent a lack of status on the part of the office or activity located there” and dust is the “most pervasive motif associated with archives, even outside of fiction,” as I noted in a post back in November of last year. In fact, in the episode itself, there’s a sunlight timer which almost traps the protagonists inside, even as it filled with books and some artifacts. At the same time, the archives is unmanaged. As I noted in my interview with Susan Tucker, “writers for pop culture media I’ve come across seem to have little knowledge about how archives function in reality, leading some to falsely think they are the same as libraries.” That is surely the case for this town archives.

The book also shows background art for the episode “True Colors” on page 138, with black-and-white coloring by Joseph McCormick, and color by Amy Huang. However, the art shown for the episode “Lost in Newtopia” does not include anything about the library scene on the pages the art is displayed (pages 111-112). Even so, the library shown in the next-to-last episode of the entire series, “All In” is shown on page 197, with black-and-white coloring by Joe Sparrow, and color by Andy Gardner-Flexner.

© 2024-2025 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

#Amphibia #BlackPatrons #BlackWomen #BritishLibrary #CommonSideEffects #DemonNLuv #drugDealers #drugs #FromBureaucratToVillainess #illicitDrugs #informationProvider #KOn #KOnTheMovie #lists #mushrooms #oppression #prison #protests #RecentlyAddedTitles #RosettaStone #segregation #shortBlogs #TheSimpsons #VixenNYC