Special plant ghost day

Today, we had an excellent trio of presentations, dealing with Special Collections, Conservation, and Preventative Conservation/Emergency Planning. The first speaker, Richard Ovenden, was very engaging both because of his presentation and because I suspect that he might just have something like my dream job.

This trip is actually helping me to solidify some of my ideas about just what kind of a librarian I might want to become. To begin with, I am very glad that I am embarked upon the Library Science, in contrast to Information Science, path at UNC. It suits my interests and, just as importantly, is definitely the path to a properly portable pedigree.

Anyway, I'm definitely leaning towards Special Collections (well defined by the University of Idaho as, "...includ(ing) those materials that, because of subject coverage, rarity, source, condition, or form, are best handled separately from the General Collection"). In other words, the fun, random, fragile, dangerous, ephemeral, and, well, special stuff in a library or museum. I may or may not dip a toe into archives, as well -- And, from there, into digital archives, by extension, and thereby edge somewhere near the Information Science universe, anyway.

I also was struck by the thought that I would really like to learn everything that there is to know about library, museum, archive, and general facility security. After all, I do spend a significant amount of time in such places considering how I would go about breaking into them after hours.

After the morning sessions, we visited the Oxford Botanical Gardens, which rocked. They are a "physics garden" and considered a library of sorts, which means that it is a working laboratory garden, complete with a vast range of medicinal and edible plant life. Not to bang the Tolkein drum too much, but it was also a favorite place for him to hang out (and I have a picture of the tree which inspired the Ents, too). It's also a notable location towards the end of the His Dark Materials books, which I just finished again and were much better the second time through. I have a million and four pictures of the gardens, but most of them wouldn't be well served by webification.

I then wandered some of the book shops around town, pondered buying an Oxford mug for Andi (SPOILER ALERT: I didn't), grabbed a street kabob, and met up with some other librarians for Bill Specter's Ghost Trail, which rocked. Some late night tea at the Rewley House common room and I am, again, tired. I hope that the "I'm knackered" theme isn't too annoying to read in post after post. I should clarify that my "tired" is a good tired.

S'alright, I'm about done for the evening. I bought a 3-pound book called the "Xenophobe's Guide to Americans," which is pretty amusing in a sociological sort of way. Oh yeah, I also got to play around with a strange polymer produced by some company called Tyvek that makes inert gel out of water in a ludicrously absorbent fashion. Pretty cool stuff for flood-fighting in one's book stacks.

*Yawn*

Oh, by the way, I am skipping a Cotswolds trip in order to save them for a future visit with Andrea (HINT). And, of course, the ol' filthy lucre factor.