When I arrived at Bath Central Library in 1993 it was part of Avon County Council’s Library Service. The Reference Library had moved from Queen Square and the Lending Library from Bridge St to form this new library in The Podium only 3 years before. So many things were still new for the staff, including the layout of the library, all the behind the scenes rooms and books stacks, and where everything was stored. As well as the staff from Queen Square and Bridge St, there was also the Bath Branches Team, who mainly worked at Moorland Rd, Weston and the Mobile Libraries.
Three staff worked at the Enquiry Desk at any one time, and it was positioned right in the middle of the library. Half of the floor space was the reference area with only a few tables and chairs. There were several 100 directories and Fast Fact books which were very well used as the internet was still in its infancy for most people. The most popular directories were “Who’s Who”, “Dictionary of National Biography” and “A Guide to Company Giving”. Many of these directories are now available online which means a lot less books and shelving in the library.
Newspapers, maps and journals were stored at the Desk. If a customer wanted something from the Stack or Local Store, they would have looked it up in the Card Catalogue and filled in a yellow request slip. The Catalogue was a beautiful piece of wooden furniture with 10s of drawers holding 1000s of cards, all representing an item held somewhere in the library’s collection. Where the public computers are now there were 3 “study carols”, which were small, private, quiet areas for customers using our reference material. There were also 3 or 4 huge metal cabinets which housed the excellent map collection: these have moved to the Guildhall. In what we now call the Map Room all the back runs of newspapers and journals were stored: again before the internet these were a valuable resource for customers.
Although the library was using computers, staff had to handle every book as it was either returned or borrowed, with the 2 sets of 2 computers either side of the large Counter. This was positioned in what is now Quick Select and was the entrance into the library, and the large area in the middle was full of trollies for all the returned books. Despite the number of staff working there was still often queues as all procedures and processes took longer. All lending books had been electronically catalogued, but the system was slow and clumsy, which meant a search for a book could take a while.
Bath Library still has the same, separate Children’s Area. It used to have a lovely Train-and-Carriages kinderbox for the picture books, which the toddlers could sit inside and “drive”. There was a large desk there for 1 member of staff, with seating for 3 customers. As well as the usual Children’s activity of Storytime, there were regular craft events as well as class visits and children’s author talks. As today, lots of noise was generated in this area, which sometimes caused upset for our serious minded researchers!
Hilary Cox, August 2020.
bathneslibraries.wordpress.com 