Day 5: Get a Glasgow Life
The Mitchell
The Mitchell Library was really fascinating. I heard some people say they were mainly interested in the archival aspects, but I was really interested in Glasgow Life. It just seems like a neat way for different aspects of the community to interact and work with each other towards the common goal of educating the citizens of Glasgow and beyond. According to our first speaker, Glasgow is not a big city, but it’s above its fighting weight-culturally. Everything in the Mitchell library is owned by the citizens. They also say their customer satisfaction is 98-99% and they are the first in Glasgow Life to get the Charter Mark Accreditation. They are committed to being out in the public eye to promote growth and bring people in who might not otherwise use their services. I must have really had a good time at the Mitchell because I wrote the following:
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Here are our tour guides for the day . . .
and both fit their librarian stereotypes.
You can also see from my notes when we start talking to the archives people, because I switch to pencil:
I got to sit near a children’s clothing catalog from the 40s, but further down the table is a papal document dating from 1188, which is the oldest document in the library. Many people come here to do family research which all housed on these ancient computers running on MSDOS. They are working on getting a different program, but their IT department has yet to create anything to suit the archive department’s needs. Right now in my web design class, we are working with a small organization to build a website or rather update the existing site. We only have 8 weeks to complete our project and it seems daunting, I can’t imagine trying to work in such a large organization with such specialized needs and such important information. It would make me very nervous at the end of the day leaving the computers alone at night, I would be tempted to set up some sort of vigil, lest something happen to the computer and its contents.
Our guide showed us how the search system worked and the funniest thing was when the Dean got so offended that ladies had to take their husband’s name and were referred to only as Mrs. (insert husband’s name here) and was then even more offended that no one else was upset! Our next tour guide was the best. I felt like she was born to be a librarian, and even had the right outfit-little grey dress with dark grey cardi and sensible shoes. She showed us the Robert Burns room and didn’t make us sing Auld Lang Sine, like school tours do. While it was interesting to see the largest collection of Burns in one room, the back stores were even better. They had rows and rows of books and she showed us the ledgers of how they found each book in the stacks.
Our guide showed us how the search system worked and the funniest thing was when the Dean got so offended that ladies had to take their husband’s name and were referred to only as Mrs. (insert husband’s name here) and was then even more offended that no one else was upset! Our next tour guide was the best. I felt like she was born to be a librarian, and even had the right outfit-little grey dress with dark grey cardi and sensible shoes. She showed us the Robert Burns room and didn’t make us sing Auld Lang Sine, like school tours do. While it was interesting to see the largest collection of Burns in one room, the back stores were even better. They had rows and rows of books and she showed us the ledgers of how they found each book in the stacks.
I think we all could have stayed hours and hours looking at all the interesting books, but I wouldn’t want to work back in these stacks. We did see a working desk with pictures of hunky Scotsmen and other bits of clutter, but it would be so dark and lonely. That is not the librarian life I want, but I respect those who do want it. Also they have really ugly carpets:
Glasgow University
Well, we got to ride the Clockwork Orange and Andrew was right it was super small and very orange. Then we had to walk up the steepest, longest hill in Scotland on the hottest day of the year, at least it felt like that anyways. We were given more tea, coffee, and biscuits and like all good librarians we drank our hot coffee even while ringing with sweat. Glasgow wins for best library swag since they gave us a book about the university and several library pamphlets.
They had several speakers and they seemed to be fairly forward-thinking about technology. They are in the process of digitizing some of their collections, use Flickr for mass digitization, and Pinterest for new books in the library. My sister-in-law, the library director at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri, just wrote an article (Pin It!) for ACRL, so it was interesting to see another library on the other side of the globe using social media in similar ways. They also use Meebo, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and they have some YouTube videos. They said they are still working on finding their Twitter voice as of right now they are reactive, but they would like to be proactive. Right now there is only one library blog, but they are thinking of having different subsets like archives and special collections.
They had several speakers and they seemed to be fairly forward-thinking about technology. They are in the process of digitizing some of their collections, use Flickr for mass digitization, and Pinterest for new books in the library. My sister-in-law, the library director at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri, just wrote an article (Pin It!) for ACRL, so it was interesting to see another library on the other side of the globe using social media in similar ways. They also use Meebo, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and they have some YouTube videos. They said they are still working on finding their Twitter voice as of right now they are reactive, but they would like to be proactive. Right now there is only one library blog, but they are thinking of having different subsets like archives and special collections.
The only bad thing about all their online presence, would be that it would be hard to find time to keep up with it all. Sometimes, to save time, people will have one post across the board, but then what is the point of having all the networking sites if you are just going to say the same thing. People who follow you on different platforms might find it dull or even annoying to see the same exact thing every page. I think the key is finding a balance because you don’t want to be spread too thin. It was so interesting to compare their talk to St. Andrews, because Glasgow’s budget has been increased for the next year. They seem so hopeful, but it’s easy to be hopeful when you have money and the security it brings.
One thing I heard today and at St. Andrews is that students don’t pay for tuition or books. This idea seems so foreign to me (no pun intended)! Both universities have their professors create reading lists and they are expected to have the materials in the library for students to use. I have gotten to the point where I rent most of my books and I know people who do interlibrary loan, but that always made me nervous. However, their reading lists are different, as they aren’t just books like we have. They are often hundreds of articles long and students need to have access to them.
We got a tour of the building and went to several different floors and each floor has its own noise level starting with the quietest up top and ending on the ground floor being the nosiest.
We got a tour of the building and went to several different floors and each floor has its own noise level starting with the quietest up top and ending on the ground floor being the nosiest.
I have seen libraries with a similar layout and it seems to work very well. I will say I liked the floor plan at St. Andrew’s and the openness of the glass compared to the darkness at Glasgow University. Another issue they talked about was water cladding and the building. Basically, it means that when it rains they have leaky walls, which is a big problem in any library, but a huge problem in a place like Scotland where it rains a lot. Overall this was a good visit, but very hot!