British Museum

image: http://carpelondinium.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/775561.jpg

Feeling a bit run down after a whole previous day's ambulating the Barbican and Tower of London I quite needed my cuppa before hitting the british museum. To be honest I didn't see much of it, mainly just the ROSETTA STONE, and no not that computer program in the yell0w box that lets you learn italian on your commute I mean the real deal people. Of course many people were gathered around literally squashing up against the glass protecting it, and some were reading from it together? what?

then we toured the museum archives which included the many many years of hand written documentation on all of the minutiae of museum activity stretching back through the years. Then it was onto the reading room ticket holders collection. since the opening of the british library (no longer in the same building) to this day anyone wishing to use the facilities must become a reader. The archive still has all of the cards and documents on all the readers.

the above photo shows the millenium celebration structure that made the outside courtyard section of the museum into one continguous unit.

It was interesting to see the "behind the scenes" element of the British Museum, and to walk around where various professionals at the museum work. It is interesting to see that not only all the things you didn't think you would see, but also how sometimes the behind the scenes looks like how you had imagined it.