Maughan Library
The Maughan Library and Information Services Centre (more commonly known as The Maughan Library) is a 19th-century Gothic building located on Chancery Lane in the City of London. It was formerly home to the Public Record Office, the so-called "strong-box of the empire" and is now the main library of King's College London, forming part of its Strand Campus. Designed by Sir James Pennethorne and built between 1851 and 1858, it is a Grade II* listed building. Inside the Library is the octagonal Round Reading Room, inspired by the reading room of the British Museum, and the former Rolls Chapel (renamed the Weston Room following a donation from the Garfield Weston Foundation) with its stained glass windows, huge mosaic floor and three monuments, including an important Renaissance terracotta figure by Pietro Torrigiano of John Yonge, Master of the Rolls, who died in 1516. The library was named after Sir Deryck Maughan, himself a King's alumnus, who made a £4m donation towards the new College library.
It holds more than 750,000 items including books, journals, CDs, records, DVDs, theses and exam papers. These items cover four of the college's Schools of Study — Humanities, Law, Physical Sciences & Engineering and Social Science & Public Policy. This includes the collection of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and the post-1850 collection of London's theological Sion College. In addition to this, the library holds more than 150,000 78rpm records donated by the BBC in 2001 which span a wide range of genres.[1] Further to this, in 2007 the library acquired the historical collections of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which includes Britain's 1812 declaration of war on the USA.
The building is also home to the Foyle Special Collections Library, "a collection of over 110,000 printed works as well as thousands of maps, slides, sound recordings and some manuscript material".[2] Amongst this manuscript material is The Carnegie Collection of British Music, a collection of original, signed manuscripts, many of them by notable composers, whose publication was funded by the famed philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.[3]
References
- ^ "Details of King's Sound Archive at Cecilia". Retrieved 2007-10-09.
- ^ "Foyle Special Collections Library homepage". Retrieved 2007-10-08.
- ^ "Carnegie Collection of British Music". Retrieved 2007-10-09.
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