Disaster lecture

The weather is kind of interesting. It has been snowing since yesterday, and it is pretty cold, at least in the mornings. It's a little early for so much snow. Needless to say, traffic is affected, but not severely. At least not yet. The train was delayed yesterday, but not today, so they have some luck.

Yesterday afternoon all the staff assembled in a large lecture hall for - lectures. The theme for this staff education day was security. It sounds crazy, but it was very interesting to see what disasters can happen to libraries. The lecturer showed a film from the Haiti national library surveillance cameras during the earthquake. He showed photos from the library fires in Weimar and Linköping, and the collapse of the city archive in Cologne. He also explained why these disasters could happen, and all of us immediately thought of the old building we keep our books in. There is also the risk of flooding, which happened to an archive in Sweden not long ago. It's not only the cultural heritage and historical documents that are gone forever, people have lost their workplaces (and in reality their jobs). The other lecture was about personal security, and it was useful for us to hear about. There are unfortunately many thefts at the library, and that's because it's an open environment, everybody is allowed in. The library has lost several computers. The visitors have also lost personal belongings. There are now security guards all days of the week and we hope it will help.

The desk duty today was uneventful, not many people showed up. Probably because of the bad weather. We have had lots of visitors the entire fall.

I delivered the answers to the last genealogy requests this week. I was just thinking of returning to the long term projects that I always have, when I received another question. It's from a patron who has a most interesting ancestry. Tragic is not enough to describe it. It involves concentration camp survivors and prisoners of war. It will be a great challenge, but I will try to help her.

On the way home I got a much needed hair cut. Nothing else to report today.