Libraries as a reflection of our lives

This is about life as Libraries

So, National Libraries Day dawns again tomorrow. In celebration, as it has indeed been a while since I put keyboard to blog... a daft post, but with a purpose of sorts.

I’m betting lots of people could compose their own list of libraries and information services that reflects them as a person that would be possibly very different, but would equally sum up them. So what libraries do you currently choose to live in, and what does that tell you about yourself?

My current life libraries / information services

NHS Education for Scotland Knowledge Services

My everyday working life, making available knowledge electronically to the NHS health and social care workforce in Scotland to enable them to improve their practice, to research effectively, to connect to peers and colleagues to exchange information, and, through all that, to improve patient care and safety.

Glasgow University Library

My part-time student life of all things ancient history and civilizations related from culture to language. 

Mostly I ghost late at night in the Archaeology Annexe yawning copiously, or perform the Five Minute Dash to Search and Retrieve before evening lectures. I also flit between levels a great deal between History, Fine Arts, Classics. Occasionally it’s Special Collections and Short Loan. 

Last week I found need to prowl the shelves in Geology which was a first.

Langside Library 

My local public library, just across from the bus stop, on the way home. Perfectly located for me. 

Where I tend to wander in not for any defined purpose often, but simply because I find it conducive to thinking, to contemplation as I peruse the shelves. I just like being there. Plus I usually find something of interest I end up going away with. Other times I’m there with a purpose, usually to pick up things I’ve reserved online and have been shunted over from other places in the library system.

The National Library of Scotland Research Library

One I really love, though I get there a lot less often than all the others due to the complete clash between my working hours in Glasgow and its opening hours in Edinburgh. 

But I do search out things electronically and get the lovely staff to put them aside for me and take days off to go work my way through. Mostly Egyptology. I love that I can spent the day in the NMS gazing at favourite galleries, and do a lot of research, and pop over to the café and reward myself with cake and coke gazing around  in happy contemplation.

Libraries as Reflections of Ourselves

So, what is the point of all of this as a blog post? Simply that my favourite libraries reflect the main areas and pursuits of my life. Many people can sum up their lives, their present, their past, in relation to the libraries that they most associate with that time. Equally, perhaps their future.

I don’t think any of that is only true if you’re a librarian or an information professional of some other kind.

The desire and need for good information is universal

Everyone works with and uses  information, to different extents, in different contexts. Everyone has curiousity, interests. Libraries are a means of accessing and satisfying all that, they’re fundamental to growth of people, organizations, companies, everything really. That’s why there’s libraries, collections or archives for just about any subject or concern you can think of. 

The need for access to information is pervasive. Above all we need quality and accurate information, so it needs to be properly curated and looked after by people who have developed a specialism, an expertise, and who use that to help others who deal with things less regularly or with less confidence.

So, anyway, this is simply my current life as illustrated in four libraries / information services. The ones I choose to spend my time in the most.