William Grill, the illustrator of Shackleton’s Journey was in the British Library when he got a phone call to say that he had won the 2015 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal. On Monday, he was back at the Library for the Award ceremony in the Conference Centre alongside Tanya Landman who received the 2015 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Buffalo.

The oldest UK prizes for children’s books and the only ones judged by children’s librarians, the list of winners of these Medals conjure up every child’s best memories. From Arthur Ransome who took the first Carnegie Medal for Pigeon Post in 1936 and Edward Ardizzone for Tim All Alone in 1956 (yes, it took 20 years for the work of illustrators to be rewarded alongside authors) they include authors C.S. Lewis, Philippa Pearce, Rosemary Sutcliff and more recently Frank Cottrell Boyce, Mal Peet, Meg Rosoff, Patrick Ness and last year’s winner Kevin Brooks and illustrators Raymond Briggs, Helen Oxenbury, John Burningham, Shirley Hughes, Quentin Blake  and, more recently, Emily Gravett, Mini Grey and  Jon Klassen. 

Fittingly for a CILIP prize, each of the winners received £500 of books to donate to their local library. They also each got a medal to keep. In addition, on account of a bequest, William Grill received the Colin Mears Award of £5,000.

 William Grill, winner of the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, and Tanya Landman, winner of the CILIP Carnegie Medal, collecting their awards at a ceremony at the British Library on Monday. Photo: Rolf Marriott Photography.

In her acceptance speech, Tanya Landman called for schools to be given more scope to set aside tests and targets so that they could help children to use their imagination and be encouraged to read for pleasure. “Someone who reads for pleasure is far less likely to be a bully or a bigot. They are far less likely to cause harm to others because they can imagine how it would feel. They are far less likely to collude with any kind of persecution. Instead, they are far more likely to do something about it.”

She also stressed the benefits of public libraries in supporting this. “In a healthy, affluent society access to books should be freely available to everyone.”

Children’s libraries play an active role in getting children reading and in keeping them at it and their success in doing so is reflected in the annual Public Lending Right (PLR) figures. Over half of the top twenty most borrowed authors in 2013-14 write or illustrate for children and children’s books regularly appear in the annual top 10 most borrowed titles lists. Across the country and encouragingly for the future of reading, parents still believe that the library can help their children to do well at school and to thrive emotionally. This is exemplified most powerfully in the  success of The Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge, recently renamed Reading Ahead, which brings thousands of children into libraries every summer.

As the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals show annually, children’s librarians know how to put books and children together. When they do so they make the magic of reading begin. Congratulations to the Medal winners, to all the librarians who voted for them and for the 100,000 children and young adults who signed up to be one of the shadowing judges.

Julia Eccleshare

Head of PLR Policy and Advocacy

 

The British Library has long been proactive in promoting internationally the challenging issue of collection security. At the LIBER conference in London in 2008 we were instrumental in setting up a confidential network for exchanging information of importance for collection security between European libraries. With the Royal Library in The Hague, we also played a leading role in creating a wide-ranging collection security survey, helping member organisations to identify areas where they might usefully concentrate their efforts on improving collection security.

European collection security coordination is now continued under the aegis of the Consortium of European Research Libraries, whose Collection Security working Group  I chair. In addition to running the confidential network where information is exchanged, we have organised a workshop in Warsaw in 2013 and most recently in Rome, in association with the Vatican Library, in May 2015.

It was against this background that we were delighted when Norman Palmer QC proposed a conference to be held here at the British Library, The Written Heritage of Mankind in Peril (Friday 26 June, 2015), with a specific focus on the complex issues surrounding the return of stolen items across jurisdictions. We cooperate closely with the police and with the book trade, so working with an organising group consisting of lawyers from a number of countries was a good opportunity for extending and enhancing our own network and that of other libraries.

The British Library has a vast collection which is in heavy use, more than a million items being requested annually by readers, and digitisation projects have over the last three years alone dealt with over 150,000 items from our printed collection alone. Use of the collections of course presents a point of risk, but it also constitutes a point of audit: if an item is required by a user or for a project and is found not to be in place, it is investigated by the Library’s Collection Security Group.

The Group also constantly monitors the use of the collection by staff and by readers, keeps our processes and procedures under review and up to date, and it reports annually to the British Library Board. We have not detected incidents of staff thefts from the British Library for more than a generation, and thefts by our users is fortunately very rare too.

Our policy is to prosecute whenever we find evidence of theft or damage to our collections. We see this public transparency as integral to our security policy.

There is no room for complacency, however, which is why we have strong internal governance around collection security, and why we devote resources to leading and participating in international cooperation. We want to help spread best practice, while also learning from good and bad experiences in libraries elsewhere.

The conference on 26 June is a great opportunity for us to continue to stay abreast of developments - this time with the particular angle of a legal perspective on the return of stolen items and its associated complexities.

Kristian Jensen

Head of Collections and Curation

 

This summer will see the British Library’s first UK touring exhibition on display at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. ‘Picture This: Children’s Illustrated Classics’ is a playful exhibition featuring ten classic children’s books from the twentieth century, exploring how illustrators over the years have interpreted and reinterpreted our favourite stories. The ten classics chosen are Paddington Bear, Peter Pan, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Hobbit, The Railway Children, The Secret Garden, Just So Stories, The Iron Man, The Borrowers and The Wind in the Willows.

Picture This - items originally on display at St Pancras, now on tour in Newcastle.

The exhibition will open to the public tomorrow (Saturday 20 June) and will run until Sunday 27 September. This will be the first time that the Library has toured an entire exhibition, including the full range of objects, audio-visuals, graphics and text,  and it’s an amazing opportunity for us to share our collections with audiences in the North-East.

For the past six months I have been working with Amy Barker (Keeper of Art) at the Laing Art Gallery, along with various departments across the British Library, to bring the exhibition together and recreate the splendid design that we had at the British Library at St Pancras when the exhibition was on display in the Front Entrance Hall in Autumn 2013. Lenders have generously loaned key items once again to the exhibition and I have been busily sorting out frames, cradles and mounts to showcase the objects in all their glory.

Illustration from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Puffin Books. Image (c) Quentin Blake.

We have brought the 58 original items back together – 38 British Library collection items and 20 loans from well-known illustrators such as Michael Foreman, Quentin Blake, Lauren Child, Ian Beck, David Roberts and Andrew Davidson. The exhibition is a wonderful mix of original manuscripts, original illustrations, first editions and pop up books. ‘Picture This’ is a vibrant exhibition that appeals to a family audience and captures the heart and imagination of adults and children alike.

The Laing has two beautiful and spacious galleries, and we have been able to display the exhibition in a fun and creative way which includes comfortable reading areas, an inspiring space for school groups and a cinema room for watching the interviews that were conducted with authors and illustrators represented in the exhibition. The galleries really do the exhibition justice and our colleagues at the Laing have been very creative in the ways that they’ve embraced each story and worked with the illustrations to create interactive elements, such a size chart for adults and children by using characters such as The Iron Man and Paddington Bear as a guide!

Earlier this week, and following months of preparation, I finally arrived in Newcastle! The truck journey with the objects took around eight hours from central London and it was great to finally arrive at the gallery and see how the build and painting had progressed. It is always great to work with different institutions and a fantastic opportunity to share skills, resources and experience and to gain an insight into the collections of other museums and galleries. Our colleagues at the Laing have been so welcoming and the venue will provide a wide reach for our exhibition as it is situated in the heart of Newcastle city centre.

The touring exhibition is at the Laing Art Gallery from 20 June to 27 September.

We started the object installation by condition-checking all 58 objects and ensuring nothing had changed during packing and transportation. British Library conservators had created condition reports for every object and had mounted and framed all of the artwork to beautifully showcase the intricate illustrations. The Laing conservators have enjoyed looking at all of the objects and reminiscing about their favourite childhood books – exactly the type of conversation we hope will happen between visitors! All of the objects are in good condition and we are happy to get on and install them – the exciting bit!

With condition checking complete we could start to place the framed artwork and begin the process of strapping the books and placing them in their cradles. All of the books have been presented inside a variety of showcases and we have many discussions with the designer and Amy to place each object as effectively as possible and think about good display heights and accessibility. The object labels then sit beside each of the objects to talk about the work of each illustrator and the techniques used to create much-loved and recognised characters.

All that’s left now is to finalise the positioning of the wall graphics, text panels and acknowledgment panels and concentrate the lighting onto the objects and labels. We carefully check the light levels, temperature and humidity inside the gallery spaces to ensure that the objects are in the ideal conditions and that we have met all conservation and lender requirements. The finishing touches really do bring the exhibition together and celebrate all of the hard work that has gone into the project. An exhibition is a joining together of different areas of expertise and I always love how the objects, design and text come together in once space to create a unique experience.

It has been an exciting opportunity to bring a successful British Library exhibition to Newcastle, to attract new audiences, share our collections raise awareness of the British Library and engage adults and children in literature and art. I hope the exhibition is as successful for the Laing Art Gallery as it was for us at St Pancras.

Alex Kavanagh

Exhibitions Officer