Welcome Back to the Gallery Area in the Library!

We’re delighted to announce that we’ll be reopening the gallery area on the third floor to Library users on Monday 18 August.

You’ll once again have full access to the open shelf History of Medicine collection as books from shelfmarks  P-Z are now back on the open shelves. We’ve reinstalled the desks and chairs and added some  informal seating.

In a new departure for the Library, we’ve designated the gallery as the space where we encourage chatting. One of the constant requests we received via our regular user surveys was to have areas in the Library which are protected as quiet spaces, and an area where users can talk without actually leaving the Library space.

We’re very much keeping the rest of the Library as quiet space, and we’ve signposted the gallery as a non-quiet space. Please make sure that you head to the gallery if you want to make a phone call, or speak to friends or colleagues.

You’ll notice that we have some study rooms taking shape in the corridor just off the gallery. We’ll let you have more details about booking the Study Rooms soon. These are also in response to requests from users via our surveys, so please continue to feed back to us.

The stairs connecting the gallery to the Reading Room below are no longer in use, so we’ve placed notices at the top of the stairs asking you not to use the stairs. Works will be going on in the Reading Room below for a while, so there may be some noise as installations take place.

As usual, if you have any questions at all about the Wellcome Collection Development Project please don’t hesitate to get in touch.