It is with great sadness that we announce the end of the Nautical Magazine. The publication was incorporated into the monthly journal Sea Breezes at the end of last year. The Caird Library was formally informed by a letter from the Editor advising that the magazine had been sold to Sea Breezes Publication Ltd; and although the name will live on, the magazine may look different.

The Nautical Magazine had been published by Brown Son & Ferguson, Ltd. of Glasgow. Except for one edition in September 1980 - when a devastating fire damaged the company's building - it has been published every month since March 1832. The image on the right shows the front cover of the first issue.

Describing itself as a "magazine for those interested in ships and the sea", it covered, over the years, every level of news and developments in both naval and mercantile topics. The monthly journal contained news and commentaries from around the world, curious articles on the trends of current shipping affairs, information about new types of ships, discussions on the professional position of officers and an excellent book review section.

This was truly a journal for professional seafarers; its legacy will be afloat with us forever.

If you are interested in back issues, Aeon, the Caird Library's new online ordering system, is live and items from the archive and library collections are ready to be requested to view in our reading room. As with any journal, when you place your order, please let us know what year, volume or issue you would like to view. To join the Library and to request items from the onsite stores, please register at Aeon.

Gregory (Assistant Librarian)

http://www.lararuffle.co.uk/london/caird-library-at-royal-museums-greenwich

Other links to blogs about the Caird Library event can be found at the bottom of the previous post. Please feel free to leave a comment and let people know what you think!

The books and manuscripts shown in the blogs can be ordered and viewed in our new library which has just gone to full service. We are now open Monday to Saturday, 10.00-16.45 and open late on Thursdays. Information about our service and opening hours can be found in the library section of the museum website.

Mike (Assistant Archivist)

The Caird Library held its first bloggers preview event last Saturday. We've been scouring the blogosphere in the last few weeks for bloggers who we thought would like to see what we have in our Library and our archives. We hoped that this would help us spread the word about our Library and our collections, which are free for anyone to come and enjoy. Our guests were enthusiasts and experts on a huge range of subjects, from local history to genealogy; from naval history to contemporary culture, and more besides.

We'd asked our guests in advance to vote for the objects they'd like to see from a shortlist of some of the treasures in our collections. We had the most popular on display to see, including the Aurora Australis, the 'first book ever written, printed, illustrated and bound in the Antarctic' by Ernest Shackleton and his team, 1908; Captain Bligh's copy of Buchan's Domestic Medicine of 1779, kept at Pitcairn Island; a manuscript diary kept by Alfred Withers of a voyage from Liverpool to Melbourne in 1857, and plans of Deptford Dockyard from the 1770's. Images of these manuscripts and books can be seen in our previous items of the month.

We were also able to give some exclusive tours of our new stores allowing our guests to see how our collections are arranged and cared for, and to see how much work we have put into managing our archive and library material in preparation for the new service that we've just launched. Our guests were also lucky enough to get a sneak preview of a short film of the archive and library move, which is due to go on our website in the coming weeks.

For any of our guests that have blogged about the event that we may have missed please do let us know by posting a comment below, or you can tweet us @NMMGreenwich and mention #CairdLibrary. Please don't be offended if you weren't invited, why not drop us a line and tell us about your blog if you think you should be on the guest list for future events?

Thanks to all who attended for a great afternoon!

Mike
Assistant Archivist

Guest blogs:

Sign of Penguins, http://0tralala.blogspot.com

National Maritime Museum and Library, http://catsmeatshop.blogspot.com

The Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, http://deptforddame.blogspot.com

The Old Order Changeth, http://gentlemenandtarpaulins.com

The National Maritime Museum holds in its chart, map and atlas collections a substantial amount of material related to various conflicts through the ages. Amongst these are the charts and plans associated with the late 18th century War of American Independence. January's Item of the Month shows three items from our collections related to the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Brian (Curator of Hydrography)

As many of you will know, Tuesday saw the return of manuscripts to the Caird Library. Rather, the first appearance of manuscripts in our new reading room.

The first item to be retrieved from the store was a lieutenant's log, that of HMS Valiant from the 1790s (ADM/L/V/14). The image on the right shows Mark, one of our retrieval technicians plucking the volume from the shelf.

We're still learning about the new Caird Library and the systems that support access to our collections but it's been cause for celebration that the reading room is finally being used in the way it was intended. Hopefully the readers who visited on Tuesday found things to be running relatively smoothly!

Richard (Assistant Archivist)

Taking my new desk in the Library Office on Monday, finally I found a quiet moment to introduce myself to readers of the Caird Library Blog: I'm Gregory Toth the new Assistant Librarian.

My key responsibilities will be providing specialist information services for the Archive and Library collections, answering public enquiries and contributing to the cataloguing of modern library collections. I will also look after the Museum's pre-1850 printed rare book collections and the Library's ephemera collections.

I have to admit that I am not that new to the National Maritime Museum having worked here for more than four years. I love working with people here in Greenwich; the Museum has a fantastic world-class collection and I have met researchers from all over the world, as well as family historians and university students.

Working in the Caird Library is so exciting because you never know what you will be asked - apart from of course about the correct time.

I look forward to meeting you!

Gregory (Assistant Librarian)

To all our readers, we wish you a very happy Christmas and hope to see you in the Caird Library in 2012.

The picture on the right shows Sonia and Richard at the reading room desk modelling some rather fine cracker-supplied headwear. Attempts to have these superb examples of ephemeral paper items accessioned into the Museum's permanent collection have, thus far, been unsuccessful.

The Archive and Library Team

December's Item of the Month features a series of letters written by Susannah Middleton to her sister, Mary Leake. As it's 'that time of year' we've selected three letters, each one written during the Christmas period.

Richard (Assistant Archivist)

We are delighted that the move of the collections into the new archive stores is on schedule to be completed by Christmas, so the full Library service and access to the collections will start in January 2012. Please see the latest update on the website. 

The full Library service will begin from Tuesday 17 January 2012 on a trial period, when the Library will be open from Tuesday-Thursday. During this time, we ask that you bear with us as we'll also be continuing to update locations in the stores, training staff and getting used to the new ordering system and retrieval process.
 
From Monday 30 January 2012 the Library will be open six days a week, Monday to Friday 10.00-16.45, late night Thursday until 19.45 and Saturdays 10.00-13.00 and 14.00-16.45. Please note that to use the Library and access the collections, you must register online for a new style three year reader's ticket. Guidance on how to request items using Aeon will be posted on the Museum website shortly.
 
We look forward to welcoming you to the Caird Library in 2012.  
 
Eleanor (Head of Archive & Library)

In a previous post about the move, I mentioned that we'd come across a book with a rather appropriate title, given the work we were undertaking. Continuing on a similar theme, we couldn't let the safe relocating of another volume pass without comment. Books on the Move, the volume with a purple spine in the image on the right, has now found its home in the new store. Elsewhere, our manuscript collections continue to be picked, packed, carried and placed. Many of them are, of course very well-travelled, such as the logbooks that have been on board ships and carried around the globe.

There's still some way to go with the move but we're making steady progress. We're all looking forward to a time when our books are no longer on the move and available to view in the reading room.

Richard (Assistant Archivist)