King's Libraries

📕 We really enjoyed contributing our stories to the Digital Futures Institute's last week!

The Festival took place 2–4 June and was a celebration of how we communicate what we do — and why it matters — through the stories we tell. Across three inspiring days of workshops, masterclasses, panels and performances, the festival explored the craft of powerful communication while showcasing some of the exceptional work happening at King’s.

Archivist Geoff and Librarian Arved reached into the past for this for 'Strand Stories: A Walking Tour' - which were two back-to-back walking tours of the Strand Campus and the Maughan Library in Chancery Lane. Highlights included the beautiful College Chapel and the East Wing of Somerset House, and the famous round reading room of the Victorian-era College Library building (our beloved Maughan).

Of course we also let people know how they can access the stories to be told in our Archives and Special Collections!

We are always keen to add our support and deep knowledge of the grounds King's is built on to university-wide initiatives.

📸 Thank you to everyone who attended our latest Film Club last Friday!

We invited you to take a well-earned break from the books and join us for a screening of WALL-E (2008), Pixar's beloved and visually stunning adventure about a little robot with a very big heart.

The film was chosen from our collection for its surprising ability to predict the future [it came out in 2008!].

At the event, you cleaned us out of food and drinks so it could not have been more successful from our point of view, as we always aim to produce the least amount of waste possible.

Totaling up all the scores we received, you gave the event an average score of 8.3/10 (10 = best thing I ever went to, 1 = you wasted my time).

But do not just take our word for it, here is some feedback that was left by your fellow King's community members:
🎟 "So fire",
🎟 "Great event especially during exam season snacks were awesome thanks!"
🎟 "It was great to watch Thanks!"

Film Club will return for King's annual Wellbeing Week in November to help you destress, make friends, and ease your return to King's after the summer holiday period.

Keep your eyes peeled on our socials for that 👀

📖 World Book Day Wrap-Up!

For International World Book Day [23 April] we asked you to share what you are currently reading and recommend books to each other. Students and staff put them up as post-it notes on a whiteboard at the Maughan.

👇 Here is your next read 👇

🦁 Available in King's Libraries are:
🔸The Lottery & Other stories - Shirley Jackson
🔸Strait is the Gate - Andre Gide
🔸 What you are Looking For is in the Library - Michiko Aoyama
🔸 The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
🔸 White Teeth - Zadie Smith
🔸 The King Must Die - Mary Renault
🔸 Maurice - E.M. Forster
🔸 Orientalism - Edward Said
🔸 The Prince - Machiavelli
🔸 All About Love - bell hooks
🔸 The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
🔸 Everything I know About Love - Dolly Alderton
🔸 A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers
🔸Butter - Asako Yuzuki

Find them via Library Search!

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📕 Available in all good bookshops are:
🔹The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
🔹 The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow
🔹 Raybearer - Jordan Ifueko
🔹 More Everything Forever - Adam Becker
🔹 Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson
🔹Mi Planta de Naranja Lima - Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos
🔹 Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer
🔹 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny - Kiran Desai
🔹 Game Changers - Rachel Reid
🔹 Salvation of a Saint - Keigo Higashino
🔹 Unbound: A Woman’s Guide to Power - Kasia Urbaniak
🔹 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
🔹 The Teller of Small Fortunes - Julie Leong
🔹 Bound Feet & Western Dress - Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
🔹 50 Shades of Grey - E.L. James
🔹 The Gruffalo - Julia Donaldson

--- --- --- --- ---

Thank you very much to everyone who left a note 😊 you made the King's community a little brighter that day.

Happy reading everyon!

👀 Our stuff is in the Curiosity Cabinet on 171 Strand!

It was a real pleasure to contribute photos, scans, expertise, and items from both the Foyle Special Collections Library and to the latest exhibition in this space.

"Lost Landscapes of Print" explores the history of printing on the Strand and will be on display until Summer 2026.

❓Did you know that the Strand Campus was once the beating heart of London's Print and Book Trade?

Big 'improvement'(?) schemes around 1900 have long since displaced these business and communities, but what's in print has a very long afterlife... 👀

Learn more about their history as well as King's very own by checking out the cabinet!

🏥 This is one for the Denmark Hill crew!

We ordered and installed new sturdier examination couches in Group Study Rooms 3 and 5 of the WEC (Weston Education Centre) Library. They are both comfier and easier to adjust then the ones we had there before.

It is part of our ongoing commitment to make the libraries a little bit better every day 💜

You can book those rooms (and all our other Group Study Rooms) via the LINK IN OUR BIO.

🚨 Library Innovator Medal Winners! 🚨

Huge huge congratulations to Librarians Victoria and Arved who are the recipients of this year's Astley Library Innovator Medal, one of the highest honours the library sector has to offer.

A world-first, the £67,000 project behind the medal, has seen them bring the smell of old books to the King's library catalogue.

You can check out the results of their work using the LINK IN OUR BIO. It is really something to behold.

The project used a combination of sophisticated algorithms as well as knowledge of our collection and drew on headspace technology first pioneered in the 1980s by Roman Kaiser to capture smells in the air around certain objects creating digital surrogates of the unique scent-profiles of some of our best smelling books. From there, Librarian Victoria says, it was actually quite easy to develop a database of these profiles and then link that database to the catalogue allowing everyone to enjoy them.

Interest has been pouring in from libraries all across the country and the two will be using the prize money to scale their project nation-wide.

Librarian Arved said:
🗣 "It is really very special to have our humble project honoured with this medal and to me it shows the enduring power books as objects have for people. We are always looking for new ways to innovate here at King's, but to win one of the biggest awards in the field AND to be able to share it with such a brilliant colleague is something I could have never imagined. We are really looking forward to sharing the technology with our partner libraries."

It’s always a joy to come across a Murray’s Handbook for Travellers, travel guide books published in London by John Murray beginning in 1836. This pocket size gem accompanied a Mr W Miller on his travels to Constantinople in June 1897. He usefully made a note of departures for the Port of Europe and marked the points of entry by the Greeks to Constantinople in 1261 and of its retaking by F. Gattiluscio and Emperor John V Palaiologos in 1355. The Maughan library is home to one of the largest and most prestigious Hellenic collections in the world: it’s here and waiting for Hellenists to explore.

🐇 The Great Maughan Bunny Hunt!

50 tiny bunnies are hiding around the entrance area of the Maughan Library.

Take a break from studying and hunt them down 🔎

The Rules:
🐰 If you find a bunny… you can keep it.
🐰 One bunny per person. Be kind—let everyone join the fun :)
🐰 Please respect the library space while hunting.

Good luck hunters!