Kew Library

Kew Library
Name	Kew Library
Established	19th century
Location	Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, London
Type	Specialist botanical and horticultural library
Collection size	over 300,000 items
Director	Director of Libraries (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)

Kew Library Kew Library is the specialist botanical and horticultural library located within the Royal Botanic Gardens, Richmond. It supports scientific research in botany, systematic biology, plant taxonomy, conservation, and botanical history, and serves staff from the Herbarium, Jodrell Laboratory, Millennium Seed Bank, and the Library, Art and Archives department. The library holds rare books, archives, botanical illustrations, and contemporary journals that underpin work across institutions such as the Natural History Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens, and international bodies like the Royal Society and the Linnean Society.

History

The library traces its origins to the 19th century when patrons including Joseph Banks, William Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, and collectors associated with the British Museum and Kew Gardens assembled botanical literature, florilegia, and expedition reports. During the Victorian era the library grew through donations from figures linked to the Voyage of the Beagle, the HMS Challenger expedition, and collectors returning from the Cape Colony, India, and Australia. In the 20th century holdings expanded via transfers from the Royal Society and bequests connected to botanists such as Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, George Bentham, and Robert Brown. Wartime measures during the Second World War influenced conservation and relocation policies, while post-war periods saw collaborations with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the International Association for Plant Taxonomy.

Collections

The collections encompass historic florilegia, monographs, serials, herbarium indices, and manuscript archives tied to expeditions by Alexander von Humboldt, Alfred Russel Wallace, Joseph Hooker, and Richard Spruce. Holdings include works by Carl Linnaeus, Georg Dionysius Ehret, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, John Lindley, and William Curtis. The library houses correspondence related to the Voyage of HMS Beagle, field notebooks of collectors linked to Kew Herbarium (K), seed lists associated with the Millennium Seed Bank Project, and botanical art connected to the Royal Collection. Serial titles include journals from publishers such as the Royal Society, Nature Publishing Group, and the New Phytologist Trust. Special collections feature archives from horticultural societies like the Royal Horticultural Society and papers of plant explorers who worked in regions including the Amazon Rainforest, Madagascar, New Guinea, and South Africa.

Services and Facilities

Services include specialist reference assistance for staff from the Kew Herbarium, academic researchers from institutions such as University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London, and visiting scholars connected to the Smithsonian Institution and Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Facilities provide reading rooms, rare book handling protocols aligned with standards from the British Library, interlibrary loan links to the Natural History Museum Library, and digitisation suites compatible with projects by the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Outreach encompasses exhibitions collaborating with museums like the Victoria and Albert Museum and partnerships with conservation programmes run by Plantlife International and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Architecture and Location

Situated within the grounds anchored by landmarks such as the Palm House (Kew Gardens), Temperate House, and the Princess of Wales Conservatory, the library occupies purpose-designed spaces adjacent to archival stores and climate-controlled repositories. The setting places it near transport links including Richmond station and within the London borough associated with Richmond upon Thames (borough). Architectural conservation efforts align with heritage guidance from bodies such as Historic England and reflect 19th- and 20th-century adaptations informed by contemporary standards used by institutions like the British Museum and National Archives (United Kingdom).

Research and Digital Resources

Research support covers taxonomic revision, phylogenetic studies, conservation assessments for the IUCN Red List, and seed banking research linked to the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership. Digital initiatives include participation in the Biodiversity Heritage Library, metadata exchange with the Global Plants on JSTOR project, and catalogue integration with the Shared Cataloguing System used by major libraries such as the Bodleian Library and the Cambridge University Library. Digitisation programs have made accessible plates by Redouté, herbarium accession records used by researchers at the Natural History Museum, and digitised correspondence consulted in studies of explorers like Joseph Hooker and Alfred Russel Wallace.

Governance and Access Policies

Administration falls under the Royal Botanic Gardens' governance alongside departments such as the Herbarium, Library and Archives and reporting lines connected to bodies like the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) for certain regulatory matters. Access policies balance public services with researcher access, requiring reader registration consistent with protocols at the British Library and security practices aligned with the National Archives (United Kingdom). Copyright and reproduction policies reflect agreements with publishers including Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press and cooperative frameworks with international cataloguing partners like the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.

Category:Libraries in London