The British Library Rocks!

Hello again!

Sorry it's been awhile since I've posted. It has been a busy summer.

We have just returned from our trip to London and it was brilliant. We did so many things! We are still recovering.

People have asked me what were some of my favorite things we did on our trip. There are many, but the one that works best for this blog was our visit to the British Library. I know, I'm such a dork. The actual library was cool, but there were two collections we looked at that were outstanding. The first collection was in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery. It houses so many treasures, it is truly amazing. I has a special room for the Magna Carta. But in true British fashion, it is simply under glass in a small room along with some other associated documents. I saw a Gutenberg Bible, hand written lyrics of the Beatles, the Codex Sinaiticus, Jane Austen's writing desk, Da Vinci drawings, hand written scores by Mozart, Handel and Mendelson and so many other treasures. My poor husband and daughter left the gallery long before I did. All of this was free of charge! Check out the treasures online here.

The other exhibition we saw was Henry VIII: Man and Monarch. It has many, many original documents connected with the life of Henry VIII. It has not only books, but letters, decrees, diaries, paintings, illuminated manuscripts and all kinds of materials which walk you through his extraordinary life and the people who intersected his life (Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Cramner, Cromwell, his six wives to name a few). Many of these materials in the exhibit are only on loan to the British Library for this special exhibit, so it was a great honor to see these things all in one place. There was so much to see in this exhibit that we had to go back the next day so we could finish looking at it all. This exhibit is wonderful and if you get a chance to get to London before September 6 (the last day of the exhibit) you should make an effort to see it. It really is phenomenal. Click here to look at the online exhibit.

hakia

I keep hearing about new internet search engines. Here is another I just heard about yesterday. It is hakia.com. It searches for websites like Google, but it displays the results differently. It groups the results into different subjects. When I searched hakia for Henry VIII (my favorite evaluative search), the returns were sorted by Biography and Timeline, Image Search, Headline News, etc. In the middle of the page there is a helpful index of the different subjects under which the results are grouped. Click on the subject and it will jump to those results.

Across the top of the page are tabs, one of which is called "Credible Sites." Credible Sites are "recommended by librarians their quality and free of commercial bias." Popular websites are not necessarily credible and credible websites are not always popular. There is a list of the criteria used to decide whether or not a site is included as a Credible Site. You can read that page here. Right now hakia only has Credible Sites for Health and Environment. In the end, however, it is up to the searcher to review the site and decide if it they think the site is credible. But it is nice to have someone sift through a lot of the junk out there on the web.

Another tab is called "Galleries." This is a list of different subjects you can click on to get to an alphabetical list of topics, people, products, movies and so on depending on the subject. One word of caution: names of people are alphabetized by first name. So, under the "Famous People" list, Abraham Lincoln is under "A" not "L" as it would be indexed in most other places. Of course who you think should be on the "Famous Person" list and who the developers of hakia think should be on the list might be two very different things!

I think hakia and Grokker (see my previous post on Grokker) are great supplements to Google. I don't think Google will be replaced by these sites, but it is nice to have alternatives. Depending on what I am searching for, I might use Grokker and hakia first. If I don't find what I am looking for, or just want to make sure I don't miss anything, I would use Google as well.

Happy searching!

Happy Birthday to the Queen

I admit it. I'm an Anglophile. I read books on British history just for fun. The Royal family and the pagentry of it all fascinates me. We are going to London this summer to see all of the cool, touristy stuff. So, today is a big day. Today, April 21st is Queen Elizabeth II's 83rd birthday. The official celebration of the Queen's birthday takes place on a Saturday in June in a ceremony called Trooping the Colour. They have the ceremony in June so as to have a better chance of good weather. The Queen used to ride her horse in the ceremony, but she now rides in a carriage. We will be able to see the carriages and all of the tack they use when we will visit the Royal Mews.

Also today, April, 21, 1509, Henry VIII ascended to the throne. As I mentioned in a previous post, there will be all kinds of cool exhibits of Henry VIII stuff when we go to London this summer.

The official website of the British Monarchy is here. There is also an official Royal YouTube channel here. Enjoy!

Henry VIII and the British Library

In preparation and anticipation of my and my family's upcoming trip to London this summer, I have just started reading the book Henry VIII: The King and his Court by Alison Weir. She is the author of numerous books about British history. I recently finished her book Eleanor of Aquitaine and thoroughly enjoyed it. I read it because I didn't know anything about her other than what I had seen in the movie The Lion in Winter starring Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor. Eleanor was a particularly fascinating woman. She was extremely powerful in a time when women usually had no power at all. She was the wife of first the King of France and then the King of England. Great stuff.

Back to Henry. Our trip to London coincides with the 500th anniversary of Henry's ascension to the throne. Throughout the spring and summer, many of the places we will be visiting are having special Henry VIII exhibits. So, I decided it was time for me to get up to speed on Henry. We all know about the six wives and their ultimate dispositions (just remember, "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived"). But I want to know more Henry than the "eating the giant turkey leg and throwing it over his shoulder onto the floor" Henry (which probably never happened).

As I was reading the other day, I read about how Henry was very interested in maps. The book referenced several specific maps that hung on the walls of Hampton Court. They might still be there. I'll find out this summer! Anyway, I wanted to try to find them online. I was never able to find those specific maps, but I did find some really cool images and maps on the British Library website. They also have a virtual books section that lets you look at original manuscripts. Just make sure you have the right plugins to view them.