Ilaria Scaglia is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Aston University in Birmingham, UK. She is the author of The Emotions of Internationalism: Feeling International Cooperation in the Alps in the Interwar Period (Oxford University Press, 2020); Archives and Emotions: International Dialogues Across Past, Present, and Future, co-edited with Valeria Vanesio (Bloomsbury, 2024), and numerous articles and chapters on internationalism, exhibitions, aesthetics, and emotions. She is currently writing a monograph on the transnational history of photographing and microfilming manuscripts and archival documents, 1860s–1960s.

The Reading Room’s Shifting Boundaries, 1860s–1920s

Abstract: This paper examines the evolution of both the material and the immaterial boundaries of the famed round Reading Room at the British (Museum) Library in London. It explores the mechanics of international relations in the field of culture by applying theoretical tools from the histories of technology and emotions to investigate the forces that shaped this change. Based on the analysis of institutional papers from the archives of the British Library and the British Museum in London, the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, MI, this study reveals that a growing set of anxieties, coupled with imperial aspirations and modernist visions, determined the course of this evolution. Always overcrowded and chronically understaffed, since the 1860s the British Library made and exchanged photographic copies to broaden the its reach, shifting its reading room’s boundaries to include new people and regions while at the same time excluding others. New solutions created new problems, as modern equipment and qualified staff were needed to meet the growing demand for photographed material. Meanwhile, concerns about the deterioration of documents increased reliance on photographic copies, seen as more durable and resilient than the originals. The First World War made it evident to both library administrators and the broader public that a large amount of manuscript material could be lost quickly, and the notion that originals could be “saved” by taking a picture of them and storing it elsewhere gained traction. As early as 1920, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust asked for permission to install apparatus to photograph Tudor Sacred Music. By 1927, a fully-equipped photographic laboratory had become a key feature of the British Library, and a proposal from the Library of Congress to photograph manuscripts and printed books related to America was accepted. This would later become known as “Project A” of the LOC’s Foreign Copying Program, and would eventually include collections from all over the world.