Travelling as a Librarian

November 19, 2012

On a recent (and marvelous!) trip to Italy, I had a few goals:

1. Spend time seeing a new part of the world with my husband.
2. Enjoy delicious food!
3. People watching to my heart’s content (and having the good sense to keep my thoughts to myself)
4. Visit the libraries!

We enjoyed our trip immensely, experienced a new culture, ate enough pasta to last us quite a while, observed the locals (and more frequently the fellow tourists), and, lo and behold, visited the libraries… sort of.

By "sort of," I mean I made it as far as the cramped entryway in Florence’s Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze before being told I wasn’t permitted beyond the ticket-taker-like window. Alright, so this wasn’t what I had in mind; I’m going to be honest. While I got some amazing pictures of the outside of the buildings (and they were amazing buildings!), I really wanted to visit beyond the beautiful façade and see, ya know… the books. The atmosphere. The practices of the librarians in a different culture. The way patrons interact with the space. The layout of the space itself. Alas, I managed to get to the window in front of the person informing me that those other sights were beyond my access, seeing as I wasn’t there on official business.

For me, libraries have always been a welcoming environment (not too surprisingly, I guess, as I chose this line of work for my career), and to be turned away was a new experience. I understand an institution only granting access to its members; it is simply not something I had ever associated with libraries.

Again, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity I had to visit Italy, but next time I will do my homework a little better and make sure I visit libraries that are accessible to the public without special requirements needing to be met in advance (these libraries do exist, I just didn’t know about them at the time). In the meantime, I can enjoy the libraries we have here stateside, brush up on my Italian with Mango (or Muzzy for kids), read some of our travel guides, browse our travel-related Online Resources, and get information on some of Florence’s libraries online through travel blogs (no passport required)! 

Amber W.
Lone Jack Branch