Our visit to the British Library

What a great trip we had to the British Library. there was a mixed band of enthusiasts, from us at the QWorld Congress and from my synagogue. If you had imagined that we were going to dusty dark basements to be shown round by an old bent librarian, you would have been wrong! the building itself was fascinating, bright and airy, and the librarian so enthusiastic it took our breath away...but then she had such treasures to share with us. We had both an expnation of how the system works, how books are acquired and displayed and detailed backgrounds to the books we saw. These included the oldest manusciprt of a Hebrew Bible complete with the Massoretic notes from the ninth century. (These notes explain the grammar of the text and give variant readings.) Then we were treated to a visit to one of the reading rooms which is huge and its shelves are crammed not with the actual books you and i might want to read, but just the catalogues of the books held by the libraray on various subjects to do with the Orient. Joy Barrow, our Sikh expert, was in seventh heaven when she found the catalogues dealing with the papers of the East India Company.

in April 2007, there will be an exhibition of manuscripts from the three Abrahamic Faiths and we hope to arrage another trip then.

see you soon!
Jackie