Chartered librarian blogging personal thoughts about professional experiences.Whenever I travel I almost invariably spot a library or two along the way, either by accident or design. On a recent trip to Alaska I spotted three public libraries, and was fascinated by all of them in turn. Continue reading
Filed under: Libraries | Tags: architecture, Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver, visits
I have been in my new volunteer job for a little over a month now, and this seems like a good time for some reflection on how things are going so far. Regular readers may recall that I visited the Morgan Library back in June, and was completely blown away by the small part of the collection that was on display. T wondered if they had a volunteer programme that I could apply to, and I was delighted to discover that not only do they welcome qualified volunteers but that they were actually looking for someone to work in the reading room.
A chance glimpse of an online advertisement last week alerted me to the rather wonderful one-day Festival of Medical History being held a the New York Academy of Medicine last weekend. (Sadly I have only just discovered that this event was part of the city-wide Archives Week and am unable to attend any of the other events which appeal in the listings, but never mind.) Continue reading
Filed under: Events, Libraries | Tags: Material Connexion, Metropolitan Museum, Nolen Art Library, NY Librarians meet-up, visits
Once again it has taken me far too long to get around to writing up a couple of library visits I’ve enjoyed in recent months. They were both organised by the lovely NY Librarians meet-up group, and were to places which I hadn’t come across before, so as always I was keen to participate (which raises the perennial question: are librarians as a profession inherently more inquisitive than others?!). On Friday 21st June we took in the Nolen Art Library, and Wednesday 10th July found us at Material Connexions.
Lately I’ve been spending quite a lot of time shelving books in a couple of public library branches. This has given me plenty of opportunity for musing on all sorts of things, but my interest has been particularly caught by how the fiction books are catalogued and shelved.
Shortly after arriving at the Morgan Library I was vexed by two not-particularly-helpful questions – why had it taken me so long to get around to visiting, and why was there no queue to get in? Free entry beginning at 7pm on a Friday is perhaps their strategy for keeping the crowds down, but everyone elses’ loss was very much our gain, and we enjoyed looking around with comparatively few other visitors getting in the way.
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