Friday, May 4, 2007

The scent of old books



Ah, the history in Missoula Public Library. This book card pocket was removed from one of our books today. My how we've changed. Today I had fun doing a tour of the library for some 4th and 5th graders. One of my favorite parts is taking them to the Audra Browman room where we keep lots of really old things that impress our younger patrons. We also usually have some folks in there doing research for writing a book or tracing their genealogy, also very impressive. The students and teacher all thought the 1911 Missoula directory was really neat and I think they enjoyed seeing our collection of historical photographs of the library and its staff. So, although we have lots of new books coming in daily to add to our shelves we still have lots of older books. And although we have a new computer lab and an online catalog we still have plenty of those dusty tomes and vintage magazines for those that have a more historical bent.

And by the way, our current checkout period is four weeks for most items, 10 days for new fiction, and our fines are up to 10 cents a day.

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